The Brady Bunch and My Observations On a Younger Generation
August 03, 2012The Brady Bunch is coming back!!! I was very excited to read about that!!! As a kid, I was a huge Brady Bunch fan and if I see it on when I’m scrolling through the channels, I almost always stop and watch for a little bit. I even think Marcia Brady might have been my first celebrity crush. The show is just an absolute classic. My kids even like it. And, I can still sing the theme song without hesitating on the lyrics. (For your own protection, I absolutely won’t link an MP3 file here so that you can hear my rendition; your ears would bleed…)
One of the things that seeing the story about The Brady Bunch being re-made (by Vince Vaughn, who I think is one of the funniest men in entertainment) made me think about is that a lot of things from my youth are coming back into style. Let’s not talk about the fashion part, because that is just filled with painful memories. Bell bottoms and disco died for very good reasons!
One of the other things I remember from my youth (aside from the horror of seeing myself in “teenage years” pictures) is a lot of simplicity & a “back to basics” way of life. Maybe I’m nostalgic, but life seemed much simpler then. I know all “old people” (as my kids call my generation) look back fondly on their youth as a golden era, and I’m no different.
But I have noticed a trend recently in meetings that I’ve had with recent college graduates. Many of the recent graduates that I’ve had the opportunity to meet within the last year or two remind me of an older generation. I’m going to paint with a broad brush for a minute. They aren’t very materialistic. They don’t seem to be driven by driving a nice car and buying a big house. In fact, there’s almost a thrill I see in them from driving a smaller eco-friendly car and sharing their living space with a roommate or two in order to keep housing costs very low. Paying down or paying off debt is a high priority with many of the grads I’ve met. They seem well grounded, mature beyond their years and fiscally responsible. Is every one of them like this? NO! But, so many of them are that I’m noticing a trend. Simple things like spending less than you make, paying down debt, and investing in a way that’s consistent with your goals are the solid core of good personal financial behavior no matter what generation you’re from. Those are the basic principles on which everything else can be built.
I have had meetings with young people recently that have focused on debt pay down strategies, savings strategies, and the basics of investing and a lot of the meetings have a similar theme. “What can I do now to put myself in a position so that I’m not like my parents when I’m their age?” Their parents are suffering from job losses, underwater home mortgages, credit card debt and issues that afflict far too many Americans today. Is this generation of recent college graduates going to learn from the mistakes of prior generations and become our most financially responsible generation? Will the economic collapse, poor economy and massive debt at the personal, corporate and country levels inspire this generation to approach life differently?
I know that anyone I’ve met who was impacted by the Great Depression NEVER forgot the lessons learned then and they were very much a financially literate, financially responsible generation. Maybe the good news that will come out of the financial crisis/collapse/etc. of the last 5 years (and seems like it has no sign of ending anytime soon) is that we will have a new generation of individuals, some who I hope will become influential leaders, who appreciate and live by a “back to the basics” approach to finances. If that happens, there’s a lot of reason for optimism over the long term.