Here's the takeaway: the frugals/similar bloggers are bad because they, "are telling an older generation of elite Americans — the very people whose policies and financial decisions kneecapped the economy — what they want to hear: that everything is more or less okay, and young people just need to be more thoughtful about their money."

While it's debatable whether everything is "more or less okay", and -- to some degree -- there are definite systemic issues preventing people from being where they want to be financially, I guarantee you that adopting this attitude ("it's not my fault I can't get ahead, the system is messed up") is going to make you worse off financially vs believing/focusing on what you can control and your own agency.

For example, I do think there are some current millennials who sort of got unlucky with the student loan/college bubble and "were told" (or believed) that they could just borrow whatever they wanted to study whatever they wanted, and it'd all turn out OK. But I'm not sure people graduating high school now nec have that excuse. And if you are graduating high school and reading this, for gods sake, please take it upon yourself to think a bit about what you might like to do and take a long, hard look at what exactly borrowing the median 10's of k's of debt might get you before you do it.