Are millennials financially savvy, or are they toofiscally naïve to watch out for their best interests?

The answer might depend on which source you consult.

While Credit Karma is saying millennials are more financiallysavvy than their current reputations indicate, Bankrateis saying that they either are not savvy enough to be in the stockmarket or don't have enough disposable income to invest.

Credit Karma provides free credit scores (although not the FICOscores used by most banks) and credit monitoring to consumers,albeit with the assistance of targeted advertising that recommendsfinancial products to users based on the information they provide.Those ads and recommendations are how Credit Karma pays itsbills.

The site also provides a way to dispute credit score errors —something that could save millennials lots of money on interestpayments when applying for loans their scores qualify them for.

Bankrate, for its part, offers all sorts of financial advice, aswell as analysis of bank interest rates, mortgages, credit cards,insurance and other products and services. Its most recent BankrateMoney Pulse survey finds that millennials are slower to invest instocks than other age groups; while 54% of Americans don't invest,only a third of millennials do. And only 18% of those between 18and 25 are investing.

But is this because they're financially ignorant of thepotential stocks offer, or because they don't have the money?Millennial survey respondents cited the latter as the reason, with46% giving that as their reason. However, the second most-citedreason was not knowing enough about stocks.

There's a possibility that a third reason has a lot to do withtheir abstention from investing, of course — a distrust of thestock market, especially after seeing what it did to parents andgrandparents during the Great Recession. In fact, a study lastyear from Northwestern Mutual found that they were old soulswhen it came to money, quite conservative and risk-averse.

Some of the Credit Karma data bear this out. Among the 38percent of millennials who said they have not taken out creditcards, Credit Karma found that 48% cited an aversion to debt astheir top reason.