Fear Causing Young Adults To Risk Retirement

More than 40 people under the age of 40 made Forbes‘ list of billionaires this year, but studies show members of the millennial generation remain hesitant to invest their earnings.

A survey by Capital One ShareBuilder for CNN Money found that 93 percent of millennials are less confident about investing because they distrust the financial markets and lack knowledge about them, CNN Money reported today.

Millennials were born between the early 1980s and early 2000s, and experiencing the Great Recession as a teenager or adult is part of what fuels their fear of investing. Some millennials are also just old enough to remember the bursting of the dot-com bubble.

Almost 60 percent of millennials distrust financial markets, according to the survey.

“Witnessing this state of the market during formative years of their lives shaped their perceptions, leaving them very skeptical about investing and the markets in general,” Garrett Silver, head of investing products at Capital One ShareBuilder, told CNN.

The millennials who do invest are more likely to do so independently, ShareBuilder found, with 87 percent of them trusting themselves to make investing decisions on their own. That’s compared to 68 percent of seniors.

Younger investors’ fear of investing is causing experts to worry about whether young people are saving enough for retirement, as we reported was the case last year.

“The preference for cash and aversion to the stock market among young adults is very troubling considering this age group has the biggest retirement savings burden,” Bankrate chief financial analyst Greg McBride said. “They won’t get there without being willing to assume a little short-term price risk in their long-term money.”

What about you or millennials you know? Do you worry about their investing or retiring? Let us known in a comment below or on our Facebook page.