by Michelle Stein posted in Parenting

First comes love, next comes marriage, then comes the baby in a baby carriage.
Well, not necessarily if you're a millennial. And according to a new report, this explains why we're all so broke.
It turns out 55 percent of 28-to-34-year-old millennials are "doing it out of order" -- having babies before earning at least a high school degree, finding a full-time job, and getting married, that is -- compared to only 25 percent of the youngest baby boomers who did the same. The new analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics' Panel data by the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies found "the most financially successful young adults today continue to be those who put marriage before the baby carriage."
Here are a few key findings from the analysis:
? Millennials are much more likely to succeed financially if they follow the ?success sequence? ? meaning they get at least a high school degree, work full-time, and marry before having any children, in that order.
? A whopping 95 percent of millennials who married first are not poor, compared to 72 percent who had children first.
? Even millennials from low-income families are more likely to be better off financially if they married before having children. Seventy-one percent who married before having children ended up in the middle or higher end of the income distribution by ages 28?34. Yet, only 41 percent of millennials from lower-income famil...