Emily Starbuck Gerson, who blogs at Taking Charge, has a guest post at Free Money Finance that’s getting some buzz in the blogosphere: Young people face increasing financial stress.

A snippet:

While the results of this survey are depressing, I am certainly not surprised. As a financially independent woman who has been out of college just over a year, I can certainly relate to some of these findings. I’d like to be saving more money for retirement and travel, but I am overwhelmed by the rising costs of gas, food and energy. I’ve definitely noticed that my money isn’t going as far as it’s used to, and it’s disheartening to think about the possibility of more inflation.

While some months I scrape by, fortunately, I do not have any major debt — just the occasional couple-hundred on the credit card that is almost always paid off by the next month. For that, I am extremely grateful, because I have many friends drowning in student loans and other debts. I have done my best to avoid accumulating debt and I feel very lucky to have escaped that burden for the most part. I just hope the cost of living doesn’t rise much further, because that may be enough to put many debt- free young people in the red.