If anyone were to know about personal finance, you'd expect it to be me. I majored in finance in college (at Wharton) and then worked in finance. I learned a ton and I know that a lot of what I learned translates to what I do now. Yet, never once in college or in my time working in corporate finance did anyone talk about my own money – my personal finances.

As I went through my twenties and thirties, and was trying to “adult,” I continued to come across new financial systems I had to understand and navigate. First it was understanding how to put together a budget and afford life, then retirement and investing, then insurance and credit, then navigating finances with a partner and buying a home, and then planning financially to start a family. Each new milestone came with a system that was just as complex and opaque and daunting as the one before, even for someone who has a background in finance and helps people with their personal finances all day, every day.

Taking all this in took a lot of time, learning from mistakes (big and small) and seeing that each of these systems does not serve people equally. As a woman, and later a mother, I experienced differences from say, what my husband (a white man) experienced, but I also know that as far as women* and mothers go, I'm probably as lucky as they come.

Let's Talk About My Privilege

I am a white, nondisabled, cisgender, heterosexual, upper-middle-class woman, mother, and business owner, and I benefit greatly from intergenerational wealth.

Intergenerational wealth is any type of financial support provided by the generation(s) before you.

This is a tremendous privilege. It means that not only have I received financial support from family, but also that I have not had to support them. Having to support parents and grandparents is a financial reality for many.

Coming from an upper-middle-class family, there's a security in knowing that if something were to happen financially, I'd be okay. It's not necessarily a spoken-about safety net, but I know it exists. I know that if all else fails (or even kind of fails), I'll have a place to go (and it's probably a really nice place).

I graduated without student loan debt. My parents paid for my college education and my living expenses for those four years – and all the years leading up to it.

My parents gave me a monthly stipend the first year I moved out on my own in New York City as I adjusted to managing my own money. My husband, Justin, and I had our wedding paid for by our parents, and our parents have given us gifts to support us in everything from our first home purchase to helping pay for our children's school to taking us on vacations.

Why Do I Share All This?

First and foremost, most don't share my privilege. Intergenerational wealth, or even the opportunity to build intergenerational wealth, has not been available to much of the population, especially BIPOC† families. I cover this in detail in Chapter 2.

At the same time, I have so much gratitude for our parents – for their generosity and what they've been able to build and share with us. I hope to be able to support my children in similar ways.

Despite all my privilege and finance background, being a financial adult was really challenging. As I experienced predatory insurance sales (more on this in Chapter 10), came across credit repair scams (Chapter 12), or try to navigate childcare as a working mom (Chapter 4), what comes up, over and over again, is that if it's this challenging for me, I can only imagine how challenging it is for others who don't share that privilege.

Privilege has to be part of the personal finance conversation. We can't pretend we're all starting from the same place – we're not. We have to call out our privilege or this is never going to change. It's not okay to attribute our financial success to our individual actions alone.

I'm Hopeful

Despite all the problems, I'm hopeful. If I weren't hopeful, I wouldn't be writing this book.

I see the personal finance conversation changing. I see more and more people uncovering and talking about what's wrong with our financial systems. I see personal finance educators and creators of all different races/ethnicities, economic backgrounds, and perspectives having these conversations.

I see more and more new companies popping up that aim to solve financial inequalities and serve people with transparency and integrity. I see companies that already exist shifting and learning.

I'm hopeful.

I'm Learning

I've been a money coach for over 10 years, but in the past couple of years I've realized that I've been providing financial education tainted by my privilege and experience. I was a white feminist working for the equality of white women and because of my privilege and ignorance, I didn't even realize it.

I've been doing the work ever since. Feminism is for all women and while it gets a radical rap, it is just the belief that women and men are equal and should be treated that way. Shocking, I know. We all should be feminists. Despite how obvious it sounds, we have a long way to go until women, and especially women of color, experience our financial systems equally or fairly. I have had the opportunity to learn from the example and wisdom of many incredible intersectional feminists and personal finance experts and you'll see that I feature many of their voices in this book.

So this book will be different. This book is a personal finance how-to (on lots of topics) with a look at some of the inequalities in our system and a sprinkle of exposé – because as financial adults we have to learn to navigate the systems we've got but also want to understand where they are unfair so we can use the privilege we have to change them. We can continue to do the work together.

I'm excited for you to join me on this journey.