Each year, thousands of college students graduate into the real world with little or no preparation for its many financial decisions. While each generation has its own struggles with coming of age, this generation is facing record levels of student debt and an uncertain job market. For help, some are turning to apps to learn the personal finance skills they didn’t learn in school or from their parents.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. “Adulting” seems harder than ever these days.

The reasons young people are finding it harder than ever to incorporate themselves into adult society are myriad. Failure to launch can be blamed on the rise of helicopter parenting, a lack of instruction of real-world skills in school, and economic factors that have forced many young adults to live at home with their parents, says Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of the book “Your Turn: How to be an Adult.”

2. To help with financial literacy and planning, some young adults are turning to apps for help, and others are founding them.

After Hannah Semmes graduated from college last year and began her first full-time job, she wasn’t sure which credit card to get, how to find an apartment in New York and whether to invest part of her new salary in a 401(k) or an IRA. Ultimately Ms. Semmes turned to an app to help guide her. She chose a bank through the Realworld app, which bills itself as the “Mary Poppins of adulting,” a friendly guide to help steer young adults through grown-up decisions. And in a Realworld chapter on credit, Ms. Semmes learned not to close out a joint credit card with her mother that would have negatively affected her credit. Realworld founder Genevieve Ryan Bellaire saw the need for such an app after she began working at an investment bank at age 26, fresh out of law school, and realized she didn’t know much about the real world.

3. Credit Karma, Nerd Wallet and Mint are popular apps that help with building credit and cutting out unnecessary expenses, the first major step toward independence.

The first thing 20-year-old Riley Blair did when she got a credit card was download Credit Karma, based on her dad’s advice. The app monitors credit, explains what affects credit scores and offers ways to improve the scores. Her father, Chris Blair, said he has tried to instill in his daughter the importance of maintaining good credit, saving money and making payments on time—lessons he said he wishes he had paid attention to when he was her age. Still, he said, there are so many more choices now when it comes to credit cards, financial institutions and investing that it’s tough to advise her on everything.

Read the full story by Julie Jargon here.