3 major financial milestones everyone has in life, and the ideal ages for reaching them by Amanda Dixon on Jul 31, 2018, 2:36 PM Advertisement
 - Financial firsts, like buying your first home and opening your first credit card, can come at a different time for everyone.
- How old you are, where you live, and how much money you make can determine how soon you're hoping to reach these milestones.
- The younger you are, the more likely you are to say that it's best to retire earlier.
- Today, the median age for first-time homebuyers is 32.
- While millennials have shied away from taking on credit card debt, they seem more open to using credit cards.
Few 25-year-olds can say that they've paid off their student loans and started saving for retirement. Cody Clegg has done both. He set up a budget that allowed him to quickly wipe out $16,000 in student debt. And since his company offered to match retirement contributions, he has about $33,000 socked away in a 401(k). "Engineering jobs tend to have a pretty high possibility of earning a pretty good salary, but on top of that I focused really hard on eliminating all of my student loan debt within one year of graduating," says Clegg, a manufacturing engineer in Augusta, Georgia. "I was just setting up the budget to make sure I'm minimizing debt and maximizing my potential to invest." Age may be nothing but a number. But we can use it to track our progress toward reaching certain goals. And according to a new Bankrate survey, how old you are, where you live and how much money you make can determine how soon you're hoping to reach certain financial milestones. SEE ALSO: I'm a financial planner — here are 6 things you can do to master your money before turning 30 Lofty financial goals?  It's normal to get a driver's license at 16 and to go off to college at age 17 or 18. But if you're wondering about the right time to get a first credit card or retire, you might get different responses depending on who you ask. Members of every generation agree that 21 is the ideal age for someone to buy or lease their first car. And everyone except the oldest Americans say you should buy your first home at age 28. The Silent Generation says 26 is the ideal age to be a first-time homebuyer. But the younger you are, the more likely you are to say that it's best to retire earlier. According to Gen Xers, it's best to retire at age 60. Whether reaching a milestone at a certain age is realistic depends on your own personal circumstances, experts say. More importantly, you have to think about how much money you need to save in order to accomplish your financial goals according to your timeline, says Chantel Bonneau Stewart, a wealth management adviser at Northwestern Mutual in Los Angeles.
Buying a first home  Buying a home at 28 could be a realistic goal for some people, Stewart says. But many Americans find the idea of entering the housing market at a young age challenging. Today, the median age for first-time homebuyers is 32, according to the National Association of Realtors. More than half (52%) of lower-income individuals who earn less than $30,000 per year think that it's best for new homebuyers to be at least 30 years old. You're also more likely to say that it's best to wait to buy a house if you live in a region like the Northeast, where the cost of living in many places is high and affordable housing may be out of reach. If you're hoping to get a mortgage and buy a home as early as possible, see if you qualify for local programs that offer down payment assistance. And find out if you qualify for an FHA loan, which allows homebuyers to make a down payment as low as 3.5%. But that doesn't work in every housing market, Stewart says.
Opening a first credit card  The ideal age for getting a first credit card is 22, according to Bankrate's survey. That age is a bit high, says Kevin Morrison, a senior analyst at Aite Group. "I would think that the majority would start opening as they enter college or during college or get their first job right out of high school," he says. "So I would think it would be the 18-19 range." Compared to their parents and grandparents, millennials are more inclined to say that it's best to open a credit card at a younger age. Nearly two-thirds (63%) think it's best to get a credit card before turning 21. Only 37% of older folks feel that way. While millennials have shied away from taking on credit card debt, they seem more open to using credit cards to make purchases. "I think what we're seeing is that millennials are hesitant to incur credit card debt. But the aversion to credit cards as a method of payment is something that seems to be diminishing," says Greg McBride, CFA, Bankrate's chief financial analyst. "When you look at the success of the Chase Sapphire Reserve and a lot of that is attributed to a huge adoption rate among millennials."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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