Truly, we are not whiners. 

A recent, heavy-duty Oppenheimer survey backs this up and offers an interesting quote: "This generation will face different and potentially greater financial obligations than their parents due to social trends such as people living longer, increased spending and having even less dependency on Social Security or pension plans." Um, yeah. We know. 

Adults under 40 are gagging on a hot and sticky financial climate and our biggest and possibly only advantages are time and information. We’ve navigating a cash-strapped minefield out there, built upon a level of personal finance sophistication previously unnecessary and unnatural for non-bankers. So-called credit repair. Universal default. Subprime mortgages. Elephantine student loans and miniscule starting salaries. Many of us are living paycheck to paycheck, and though the numbers show that this is the norm for our age group, it’s not normal, or good. 

Bad financial habits aside, too many of us are missing the boat because we don't have the expertise of accountants or certified financial planners. Think of it this way: who has a better chance of surviving a serious illness, the guy who takes the time and effort to research all the options, using his education, interests and contacts to be well-informed and then challenge and collaborate with his doctors on all the right points? Or the guy who says, “He’s the doctor,” and just follows orders? I’d say the informed guy has a few more happy healthy years. Information and access is power—very much so when it comes to the state of your finances. 

Our din of negative dollar-amounts is reaching high ears. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a demand for more personal finance education from the government in their recent 21st Century Challenges report. GAO reports that Americans aged 25 to 34 years old have a net worth well below their parents’ generations: in adjusted dollars, $15,000 vs. $19,000+. We also have substantially more debt than Boomers ever had at a young age: $30,000 in 1998 dollars, compared to $15,000 for our parents.

A positive net worth is the American dream. So it’s in the best interest of the housing market, Wall Street, the service economy, and everyone else, for adults under the age of 40—future leaders, consumers and investors—to be increasingly financially literate as financial responsibility and products become that much more dense. It’s also in everyone’s best interests for us to not be beholden to an alma mater for five figures, beholden to only ourselves to save for retirement, under the gun to save and afford to raise our children, and under duress for taking care of soon-to-be-very-old parents.

Lobbyists will do their thing, bankers will do theirs, big business will chug along and the markets will bobble, but it’s up to us to pull back from the computer screen a bit, look forward to a looming future of even more financial responsibility, and say “Hey, I’m going to sit for 20 minutes with my 401k packet and choose investments that will earn me something.” Or, “Hey, I’m going to take 5 minutes to read the fine print on this here credit card offer and decide whether it’s worth signing up, or shop for a better rate online.” Or, “Man, I gotta figure out where my money is going every week.”

Something tells me that if we put our minds to it, we’ll have just a few more hundreds to call our own.