A new SpectremGroup report on millennials focuses on income levels ratherthan net worth in an effort to discover how this generation of high earners is using itssignificant income to create a portfolio of investment and savingsvehicles.
|Spectrem noted that the oldest millennials are approaching 40,and the way in which they invest their money has implications forthe future of the advisory industry.
|"As America's largest generation, millennials have fully arrivedas investors,'' Spectrem's president George Walper Jr. said in astatement. "They matter now to all financial advisors and providerswho are paying attention to generational changes amonginvestors."
|The research was restricted to millennials with minimum annualincomes of $100,000 for singles and $150,000 for couples. It wasconducted between May and August, and involved 443participants.
|Two-thirds of high-income millennials in the study hadeducation-related debt, but only about half reported a personalfinancial effect from their student loans.
|This is in contrast to the situation millions of Americansburdened with student loan debt find themselves in.
|The Spectrem research found that high-income millennials placeda higher priority on saving for retirement than paying off studentloans.
|At the same time, more than half agreed or strongly agreed thattheir education-related debt prevented them from contributing asmuch as they would like to their 401(k) or other employer-sponsoredretirement program.
|The study shed light on how high-income millennials are savingor spending their money, and how they are allocating theirinvestable assets.
|Among the findings, 53% of millennials defined success as theability to afford leisure activities, while 45% said it was raisinga family.
|About half purported to be more concerned about their agingparents' health than about their own, which could influence theirinvesting decisions, Spectrem noted.
|Three in four millennials in the study said they planned toretire between the ages of 50 and 70. Spectrem said this indicatedthat few put themselves in the "I will never be able to retire" or"I don't plan to ever retire" categories.
|Slightly less than half of high-income millennials reported thatthey had a financial advisor, and a comparatively higher percentageof younger ones said they had found their advisor throughadvertisements rather than from referrals.
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Michael S. Fischer
Michael S. Fischer is a longtime contributing writer for ThinkAdvisor. He previously reported on trade and intellectual property topics for the Economist Intelligence Unit and covered the hedge fund industry for MARHedge and Reuters News Service.
