For most of American history, financial adulthood arrived with a recognizable set of keys: the house keys, the car keys, the filing cabinet where you kept the insurance paperwork. The timing was fairly predictable—late 20s, early 30s at the outside. Then it took a while longer to get the keys.
A new survey from fintech company Chime, which commissioned a poll of 3,000 U.S. adults as part of its Millennial Money Report, suggests the answer is yes, in a specific and measurable way. Eighty-four percent of millennials say their 30s triggered a fundamental shift in how they think about money: what success means, how to measure it, and whether the old benchmarks still apply. The mindset recalibration that used to accompany the first mortgage and the first kid now arrives on its own schedule, decoupled from the milestones that used to produce it automatically.
