Built by someone "bad at budgeting"

I'm Kristin Messerli. I've spent six years studying how millennials and Gen Z think about money and homes, and I run a nonprofit that teaches first-time buyers how a mortgage works. I know the numbers. I've taught them to thousands of people.

I also carry financial shame. I avoid my own statements. An unexpected expense can sit on me for days whether or not I can cover it. For a long time I read all of that as proof that I was bad at budgeting, which is a strange thing to believe about yourself while you write financial education for a living.

The knowledge was never the problem. Underneath everything I knew, the way I'm built around money, anxious, avoidant, quick to judge myself, was running the show, and every plan I made was written for a person who didn't have that build. The plans that finally stuck were the ones written for the person I am: smaller steps, a set day to look, one number at a time, and help from people who show their work.

That's the idea behind this quiz. A clear read on how you're built, and next steps sized to fit it, from someone who needed exactly that.

NextGen Research, the practice behind the quiz, has spent six years asking millennials and Gen Z how they think about money and homes: more than 10,000 people, published every year, cited across the housing industry. The 2026 study behind this quiz went one layer down, from what people believe to how they're built, and measured four things that, taken together, make sixteen builds.

Built Like That is the consumer side of that work. It exists because the most useful thing the research found is also the simplest: how you're built around money is a starting point, and the skills are learnable. The quiz is free and always will be. NextGen Research owns and operates it.