First Peek at the 2018–19 MacroMonitor

The new data are available. From the following links, you can enjoy mini-presentations about various topics that demonstrate the depth and breadth of the MacroMonitor.

In the First Peek at the 2018–19 MacroMonitor mini-presentations series, Larry Cohen—director of Strategic Business Insights' Consumer Financial Decisions and the MacroMonitor—looks at seven leading-edge topics:

• Millennials: As of 2018, Millennials is the largest age cohort in the United States. Born between 1977 and 1996, Millennials head households that represent 33% of all US households. Because of their size, the providers they use, the channels they prefer, and the services they expect will become the norms for all households. But Millennials are not a homogeneous group.
• Peer-to-Peer Services: Year over year, awareness of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) financial services continues to grow. Of the three services—Payments, Investing/Lending, and Borrowing—Payments is growing fastest, reaching nearly 50 million households and on the verge of becoming mainstream. P2P Investing/Lending and Borrowing serve, respectively, about 4 million and 2 million households.
• Retirement: Retirement in the United States is about to encounter a perfect storm: more people in retirement, increasing longevity, the demise of pensions, eroding Social Security, large amounts of debt, many more households with insufficient savings, and more financial needs than ever.
• Robo Advisors: In the past two years, awareness of Robo Advisors has increased considerably, and use has expanded from 5.2 million households (2016) to 8.6 million households (2018). Nearly 45 million households would be willing to invest in an account for which a computer made the day-to-day decisions.
• Financial Advice: For two decades (1994–2014) the number of households that (always or sometimes) obtained financial advice before making a major financial decision declined. In 2018, for the first time, advice seeking is increasing, especially for three Life Stages: households with young children, the preretired, and older retired.
• Debt: For the past two decades, the number of younger debt-free households has been increasing. At the same time, among household heads age 60 and older, the proportion with no debt has been decreasing, except in 2018.
• Insurance: The Great Recession was an inflection point for insurance-protection needs. Homeowners and renters reversed their long-terms trends, households with life and vehicle insurance continued a decline, and health, disability, and long-term-care insurance increased.

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