Are  millennials really broke because they’re making choices out of order, such as having kids out of wedlock? According to a new study, it seems so.                   

A new analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Panel data by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), found that “the most financially successful young adults today continue to be those who put marriage before the baby carriage.” Yet millennials are doing it differently.

Unlike generations before who put off having children until they either married or had careers established, millennials aren’t racing the baby clock. They are having them now. “A record 55 percent of millennial parents have had children before getting married — compared to 25 percent of the youngest baby boomers who did the same — and the trend could be costing them,” CNBC reported.

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“Even millennials from low-income families are more likely to flourish if they married before having children: 71 percent who married before having children made it into the middle or higher end of the income distribution by the time they are age 28 to 34,” the AEI and IFS report.

It seems the way to success is putting having kids on the back burner.

“The new findings support the idea of a “success sequence,” which was first introduced by Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution in 2009. It says that the path to economic success and away from poverty is to do things in order: 1) Earn at least a high school diploma, 2) get a full-time job, and 3) marry before having kids,” CNBC reported.CNBC,