You have no idea how personal finance works. Actually. There are only two things that your education should have taught you: how to deal with having money and how to deal with not having money. (“Go to grad school?”) It has taught you neither. Instead, you know the names of Renaissance poets and different things you can do with ribosomes in the privacy of your home. People have offered Millennials financial literacy tests and their only conclusion is that we have no idea what to do with money. Save it? Spend it? Invest it in something that will accrue in value over time, like ironic wall-paintings of Michael Jackson? Who knows? You had better figure it out quickly, though, before someone arrests you for tax fraud.

Read more …