Brian: I opened a C.D. after graduating college, with my savings, and I’m putting into my 401(k). I’ve been treating the rest of my income as fun money, but my mind-set has really changed in the past few months. I’ve started to cut down on my excess spending.

Zach: What’s the best and worst financial advice you’ve received?

Emily: I knew it was going to be bad advice when my mother prefaced it the first time with, “So, I know I’m a boomer and that means that you think that I don’t know anything but …” and then she started pushing me to start looking for at least a condo to buy, or a house, even saying the classic phrase, “Don’t waste your money paying your landlord’s mortgage.”

I said, “O.K., but then when the laundry machines stop working the same month that the heat goes out and they have to replace everything, it’s also not my checkbook.”

Morgan: The best advice I got was not dumping out my retirement fund to pay for my year living in London, because now I still have that. It would be bad if I had no retirement at all. It’s better to take out student loans than empty your savings.

Kirk: I think “never break the habit” was the best advice I ever got. Even when you’re dirt poor, just completely broke, still at least throw a dollar into your savings account. I think that building habits is so hard to do, and breaking them can be so easy to do.

Travis: I’m going to start telling my younger siblings that they have to start investing because it’s so easy now with these apps like Stash. It invests $5 for you every week. I had $5 when I was 16 and that would be worth so much more now.

Zach: What about retiring hasn’t come up that we should be talking about?

Mauricio: I want to question the assumption that to have a decent retirement requires a high amount of literacy right now. It doesn’t have to be that way. I’m playing the game as much as anybody, and I’m doing whatever I can to save as much money for myself, but there are alternative systems that wouldn’t require that every individual be thinking about this and picking the best mutual fund or that sort of thing. The older model of pensions or something like that on a national scale would mean that people can retire without having to be financial gurus by the time they’re 60.