Millennials are helping all of us save a bunch of money in vast numbers of industries. They’re getting to being the largest group in the population, so retailers have no choice but to adapt.

One of them is with car repairs. Typically you take in your vehicle and deal with a service advisor whose job is to coordinate the work and to upsell you! Yes, they call it a treasure hunt – where they look for other work that could be done, or might need to be done sometime… The modern way has started at a service shop in San Francisco called Luscious Garage: No service advisor – you deal with the mechanic directly. That’s the person fixing it, and that’s who you communicate with, so it immediately takes out communication problems, the adversarial relationship, and the stress and pressure of being upsold.

The mechanic will text you with what they’re working on. So you might get a text update that they did the breaks, and here’s the picture of the newly installed pads. And there’s a hose leaking – here’s the picture of the leak. Want us to replace this hose for $30, and half hour labour cost? Customer love it – and that’s the wave of the future!

Online mattress purchases are only around 15% but that’s enough to drastically shake up the industry right now. The same is true for Gillette, which is in massive upheaval with an online retailer called Dollar Shave Club. It just take someone to find a better, cheaper, and more convenient way to shop. And it’s a great thing for an industry with massive markups. The industry has always been thought of as being right up there with buying a used car! Any upheaval will be your financial gain. The industry upheaval is to the point where Mattress Firm, the largest seller in the U.S., has filed for bankruptcy.

The changes are for two reasons: Firstly, Amazon has now gone into the mattress business. Look at the companies that also sell them and their massive decline in stock prices when that was announced late last year. The other one is a company called Casper. They’re way cheaper and compress a mattress so it can be shipped via courier. And, from what I’ve heard, they’re supposed to be great. You can also go to Costco and buy one in a box. And they’re all compressed to be able to fit into the back of a Honda Civic – that seems to be the industry rule for shipping size. Plus, now you have upwards of three months to return it – try that with a traditional mattress purchase!

Virgin Hotels caters to millennials. One of the biggest pet peeves of customers on every survey is the quadruple priced stuff in the minibar. That $2 package of nuts for $9! Their hotels price it at exactly the same as stores in their area – period. Managers send a staff member to the nearest Macs and Walmart to get the price that they’ll use in the minibars!

George Boelcke – Money Tools & Rules book – yourmoneybook.com