Answer: Pay down debt (22.4% of respondents)

Here were the next 4 most popular answers:

• Real Estate (15.1%)
• Education (9.9%)
• Virtual Currency (9.2%)
• 401(k) or Roth IRA (8.5%)

Questions:

• What would you do with $10,000 to invest? 
• What type of debt do you think most millennials would choose to pay down?
• Over 9% of millennials would choose to put their money in virtual currency (e.g., Bitcoin). Do you think this is a good decision? Why or why not?
• Do you think of “paying down debt” as an investment?

Here's the ready-to-use slides for classroom use. 

Behind the numbers (from Visual Capitalist):

But here’s a situation that might be a bit more peculiar. One would guess that with student debt being at $1.5 trillion in the United States, many Millennials would opt to pay down debt with their $10,000 check. Interestingly, fewer Millennials (22.4%) chose to pay down debt than either Gen X (25.3%) or Boomers (33.1%).

On the same token, Millennials were more likely to choose either real estate (15.1%) or cryptocurrency (9.2%) as an investment. For contrast, look at Boomers, a group that had 11.2% choose real estate and only 3.1% choose crypto.

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Check out NGPF's Managing Credit resource page for more great ideas on this all-important topic. 

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.