Missed Out on Early Basics

But the truth is, we are not set up for success. Most of us didn't learn about personal finance in school and unless a parent or mentor went out of their way to teach us about money, we probably didn't even learn about it growing up.

Talking to parents, I discovered that this was far from a malicious choice. Many found dealing with money so stressful that they didn't want to burden their children with that stress before they needed to. Others thought that they had made so many mistakes, who were they to teach their kids about money?

Regardless of our backgrounds and upbringings, we get to a certain place in our lives where we have to deal with money almost every single day. Yet most of us have learned very little about it and it can feel too taboo to bring up our questions, even to our closest friends and family.

Not to mention, many come from families where they are the financial first, like first generation. The financial first to go to college and navigate paying the tuition bills that come with. The financial first to have a W-2 salary and a 401(k) as part of their compensation package.

You might even have an early memory where you asked someone like a parent or teacher a question about money and they shut you down: “Oh, we don't talk about that,” “You can't ask questions like that,” or “I don't know, I don't handle that.”

From these experiences, you end up internalizing the idea that money is an inaccessible or shameful thing, and not to be talked about and discussed. You probably make some major assumptions about money – that it's bad, not for you, or something only greedy people care about. When it's time to engage with your own money, you bring these beliefs with you and they have a great impact on your relationship with money.

It might sound weird, but we have a relationship with money just like we have a relationship with a friend or colleague, in how we interact and relate to it. When we believe money is shameful and greedy, we might avoid dealing with it. Imagine if you treated your best friend the way you treat your money. I'm sure she wouldn't appreciate being ghosted!

Unsure of Where to Get Help

When it's time to figure out something in our financial lives, we probably start by googling (I know I did). I found pages and pages of results and resources with contradicting evidence and advice, often shaming me for my choices. I decided it might be easier to ask a financial professional or expert, but it was hard to know how to find someone and whom to trust.

The financial services industry is the least trusted of any other industry. Only 2% of people really trust financial professionals¹ – and for good reason! We hear horror stories from friends and see media coverage of the terrible things that happen. Between 2005 and 2015, 87,000 financial advisors (7% of them)² were disciplined for misconduct or fraud. And that's just the ones who were caught.

Then there's the natural conflict of interest we feel in our own interactions with financial professionals. The people who are supposed to be educating us are the same people who are selling us things, and they earn big commissions from those sales. This can lead to a lot of misinformation and recommendations that are not in our best interest.

Don't even get me started on the jargon and unnecessary complexity that's been perpetuated to keep the majority of the population out of the conversation.

Money Is Tied to Emotion

Money is also really emotional and in a lot of ways is very similar to food. I believe food and money are so similar that I wrote a book called The 30-Day Money Cleanse, which applies the principles of a juice cleanse to budgeting and developing our money mindset.

Sometimes we know exactly what we should be doing to reach our goals but really struggle to follow through on those actions. Nutritionists say, “Only eat until you're full” or “Weight loss is just about calories in minus calories out.” This all sounds simple but if it were actually that straightforward, there wouldn't be a multibillion-dollar dieting industry.

One of the reasons money is so emotionally charged is that it comes with a lot of promise. If I could just pay off my credit card debt, I would finally get ahead of my expenses. If I could afford that vacation to Tahiti, I'd feel so much more fulfilled and refreshed. If I could purchase a home, I'd feel much more financially stable.

Money means different things to different people, but having it (versus not having it) makes a tremendous difference in our lives. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Companies use this emotional pull to sell us things. Ads promise that if we just buy this one thing, we'll finally feel smart enough, beautiful enough, like we belong, or [insert desire here]. Brands play off our emotions to get into our wallets. They spend millions of dollars to do it, know way too much about us, and are absolutely brilliant at selling us things.

Because of everything we have working against us, financial experts who spout shame and fear drive me nuts. The system is rigged; so many other industries (financial services, credit cards, retail) benefit when we make financial missteps or choices that don't align with our best interest. To ignore that is ignorant and unhelpful.

It's Easy Not to Think About Money

Technology has also played a part in keeping us from financial adulthood. Back in the day, people had to use cash or write a check (and then balance their checkbooks). While technology has made our lives much more convenient, it's also made it a lot easier to lose track of where our money is going.

We hop in and out of Lyfts without actually having to pay, we click one button and the next day packages show up at our door, and we swipe our credit cards, which feels very different than handing over a wad of $20 bills.

Then There's Oppression

Not to mention the systemic racial and gender gaps that affect every aspect of our financial lives. Women, and much more so, women of color and moms, earn far less for the same work than white men. They have to pay more for the same things (it's called the pink tax), pay higher rates for credit despite having the same or better profiles, and face discrimination in the workplace.

The Black and Indigenous communities have been stripped of wealth over and over again through policy and theft since the United States was built on the free labor of the enslaved. This, along with policy and discrimination, has created the vast racial wealth gap in the United States.

If you are BIPOC, you carry generations of oppression into your financial life.

A Financial Adult Takes Small, Consistent Steps That Add Up to Big Results

When it comes to improving our financial lives, action is everything. We can learn and read about money all day, every day, but until we take action, it won't meaningfully impact our lives.

What I find has the biggest impact is taking small consistent steps over time. Not only does that make change a lot more manageable (and easy), we start to see results and that builds our motivation. This inspires us to take more steps and our results become exponential.

So it's a win–win. Small steps make it easy but also lead to big results. This financial adulting program will provide you with the small steps needed to get there.

A Financial Adult Understands What's Happening with Their Money

This one might sound simple but it's actually tremendously powerful and profound. Understanding what's happening with your money means you know what's coming in and where your money is going, whether that's where you're spending it or how you are allocating it toward your goals.

As a financial adult, you have a clear picture of what you have and where you have it, and understand what's happening with your investments (including your retirement).

We have a tendency not to want to know what's happening with our money. We might be afraid of what we'll find, thinking it will be less stressful to not know and remain unaware. But until we know what's happening, we can't do anything about it. And there's no power in that.

Once we know what's happening with our money, we can make conscious and intentional choices. We can make sure our finances align with our goals and what's most important to us. We can choose to support organizations and causes we believe in and vote for our values with each dollar we spend and invest.

Clarity and awareness give us choices. And that's exactly what we need before we can make a plan. I feel a sigh of relief already!

A Financial Adult Feels Confident in Their Financial Plans, Knowing They Will Get to Have and Experience What They Want in Life (Which Is the Whole Point of Having Money Anyway!)

This one is a biggie! Financial plans often get a bad rap. We think of financial plans, especially budgets, as being overly restricting or limiting our fun. That's why we understandably avoid making them. But that comes at a really high cost.

Having a financial plan actually does the opposite of restricting us. It gives us peace of mind. Can you imagine knowing exactly how and by when you will reach your financial goals? Now imagine that you can also build in the things that make you really happy. You can spend on the nonessential things you really want without feeling guilty because it's all part of the plan.

Now we're talking.

A Financial Adult Understands the Critical Context of Equity and Personal Finance, Recognizes That Privilege Can and Should Be Used to Help Close Racial and Gender Wealth Gaps, or Realizes That They May Be Starting at a Disadvantage Due to Historic and Systemic Obstacles

We can't talk about personal finance without talking about equity. While much of the work you'll be doing in this book is about transforming your own financial well-being, that doesn't mean there aren't systemic inequities at work.

We don't start on an equal playing field. BIPOC communities face significant disadvantages compared to white communities, LGBTQ+* communities face discrimination and costs that straight communities don't, women are not on an equal playing field to men, and BIPOC women, specifically Black women, Latinas, Native women, and mothers, face both systemic racism and sexism. There are racial and gender gaps in earning, debt, investing, homeownership, and the list goes on and on.

Financial adults understand this critical context and recognize that their privilege can and should be used to help close racial and gender wealth gaps. Financial adults also understand they may be coming from a place of disadvantage due to historic and systemic obstacles.

I am by no means an expert and still have a lot of learning to do, which is why I'm excited to turn to the experts in the coming chapters in this book. What I do know is that the more BIPOC, feminist, and anti-racist people who build individual wealth, the more we'll see the institutional changes, changes in leadership, and changes in policy we want to see.