It is control, but it's also different.
When I was 17, I had three (banking) things: A check book, a pass book (it looked like a passport, but it was the register for my bank account) and whatever cash I had. I had these expenses: rent, food, gas, car insurance, electric, beer. As long as the check book matched the pass book, I was good to go.
When his mom (my wife) moved out to live with me, we went over this with my step son (a very smart, very reasonable young man; we did the same thing with my step daughter when she got married, and with my daughter when she went to college). Asked him what "his expenses" are: rent, food, gas, car insurance, car payment, electric, water, cable, internet, phone, Spotify, Netflix, Sirius, beer. We walked through what all that "later" stuff added up to, and it's not at ALL insignificant.
Anyone heard of Dave Ramsey? In simple terms: "take your paycheck, and put the cash in envelopes: $20 for food, $100 for electric, $$75 for cable, etc. and pay those bills out of the envelope. If you want to 'drink beer', put an envelope, but the trick is, don't drink more beer than there is cash in the envelope." It was an almost impossible thing to do virtually (as in not tangibly). It's impossible. You're at the bar; "want another round?" click click on the phone, "yeah there's $100 in my account; let's do it!". Or, for my step son, "hey, a cool BMW M3 series engine is on Craigslist.... click click, there's $500 in my account, let's do it!"
Honestly, it's not about "the kids these days" for me; I don't agree with him 100%, but I think TAC is generally right in that the kids today aren't dummies, but honestly, I don't think we as humans are wired for this. This is not a circumstance or arrangement that any human in the history of the PLANET has ever had to contend with. I was never really great with money, in the sense that I had that youthful invincibility ("I'm Stadler, I'll make more if I need it!") about the future, but I find myself now struggling in terms of "does this make sense? Is this necessary?" I'm like anyone else; I have my stresses and my pressure points, and I've been going through my CD collection, inputting it into Discogs, and it's actually, literally dizzying to see what I've spent on 4 3/4" silver disks. Add social media to it, and all the rest...