Introduction

My friend Maggie is a millennial, just like you and me. She is a Physician Assistant, married to an environmental lawyer, and they have two young children. They also have the burden of over $300,000 in student loan debt.

Maggie moved to Miami after graduate school, and I made frequent weekend trips to visit her. We had a blast. We were young and single, with no real responsibilities, and we spent those years (and our money) living it up. All the while, the balance of Maggie’s student loans was like a dark cloud hanging over her head, just waiting to make her sunny life miserable with reminders of where her money should have been going. When monthly statements came in the mail, she’d throw them away unopened, saying, “I don’t even want to look at it.”

She felt hopeless, like she’d never get out from under her debt. Avoiding it made her feel better, at least for a while. Maggie even installed one of those apps that rounds up every online purchase to the nearest dollar and puts the change into a savings account. The account grew slowly, increasing by pennies, nickels, and dimes. But she would end up spending the savings on clothes or nights out at the bars rather than paying down her loans. Her situation got more unmanageable by the day.

Then Maggie met Greg, an environmental lawyer with a heavy student loan burden of his own. They got married, rented an apartment in Miami together, and had their first child. Although they lived comfortably on two incomes, they didn’t put any extra toward their student loans.

Instead, they continued making minimum payments on Greg’s debt, while Maggie enrolled in the public service loan forgiveness program (PSLF). Because the hospital where she worked was a nonprofit, she qualified for this program, which required only the smallest of regular monthly payments for ten years, at which point the loans would be forgiven in full. The catch? She had to continue working full-time in an eligible position for the entire duration. The other catch? The minimal monthly payments permitted under PSLF barely covered the interest portion of each payment, meaning that the 7.1-percent interest on her loans would continue to grow the remaining balance larger and larger over that ten-year repayment period.

Then, as it so often does, life came calling.

Greg was offered a job opportunity in Colorado, a dream job (with a dream income) that was too good to pass up. So they uprooted their lives and made the move. Upon arriving in Colorado, Maggie had a difficult time finding a job. Then she and Greg were presented with another surprise: she was pregnant with their second child!

Between these two circumstances, Maggie was out of work for about a year, and no longer qualified for the public service loan forgiveness program. “I’m so screwed,” she told me.

In fact, she was more screwed than she thought. Not only would her massive balance no longer be forgiven, but the interest had been accumulating on her loans for years while she made minimal payments under the PSLF program. She and Greg actually owed more now than they had when they got married, in addition to a mortgage and two additional mouths to feed.

“What can we do?” she asked me on one of our video chats. Even through the screen, I could see the toll the stress was taking on her.

“Well,” I began, before she cut me off, blowing her bangs off her forehead with the force of the gigantic sigh she heaved.

“What does it even matter? Making those payments is like dropping grains of sand on the beach.”

Their lives, their debt, and their financial future felt out of control.

What We Need

Maggie’s story is a very specific example, but it illustrates common themes for people of our generation—and, as a millennial financial planner, I hear similar stories all the time.

This may not be your exact experience. You may have less debt. You may live somewhere with a lower cost of living. You may come from a different background or have a different career path. Whatever the specifics of your life and your financial situation, we universally face a different landscape than that of the generations that came before us.

Many of us came of age right around the Great Recession, and, as a generation, millennials are still behind. According to the report “The Emerging Millennial Wealth Gap” by nonpartisan think tank New America, millennials make an average of 20 percent less money than our parents’ generation did at our age.1

We’re also under-employed to a much larger degree, regardless of education level. On top of that, many of us are facing massive student loan debt burdens unlike anything ever seen before—a unique, if not defining, trait of our generation.

In pursuit of financial success and stability, many millennials have ended up in the opposite situation. Innocently and optimistically trying to better our lives with the best of intentions, we bought houses because that, we were told, is what you do. We got graduate degrees because that’s the way to a good life. We bought cars and spent and borrowed because that is what worked for our parents, our role models, our financial influencers—and now many of us are stuck.

We all have different stories to tell, but at the end of the day, we generally have similar goals. We want to know that we can pay for the things that are important to us. We want the peace of mind that comes from knowing we’ll be okay later in life. We want stability, security, and freedom.

I’m here to tell you that there is a way for you to have all of that—and more. But it won’t necessarily happen by following in your parents’ footsteps.

Not Your Parents’ Financial Planning

We millennials need sound financial advice tailored specifically for us.

I’m not writing this book because there aren’t any financial planning or wealth management books out there. In fact, there are a ton; it’s a hugely popular section of Amazon’s listings. Personal finance is not a new subject, but much of the information currently out there isn’t aimed at people like me and you. Most of the financial planning and wealth management books out there speak to a baby-boomer-aged (or older) audience.

And that’s why I’m writing this book. As both a millennial and a Certified Financial Planner™ (CFP), I’m keenly aware of the unique obstacles millennials face when it comes to building wealth.

Maybe in reaction to the difficult economic climate during which we came of age, some pretty out-there trends have caught on in the millennial personal finance community. One example is the FIRE movement, which stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. Followers of this movement save a relatively large percentage of their income—as high as 80 percent—for a period of years, in order to achieve financial independence and retire in their thirties and forties. Many FIRE followers go to extreme lengths to hit their savings targets: living in vans, cutting their own hair, eating canned beans, and giving up most, if not all, material comforts.

There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but I personally don’t find it very appealing. I’m more of an “everything in moderation” type of person, so extreme lifestyles just don’t appeal to me. I enjoy getting my hair professionally styled, dining out, and indulging in life’s pleasures here and there. That’s why this book isn’t going to tell you to cut up all your credit cards and never get another. It’s not going to tell you to cut your own hair to save money. I’m also not going to lie to you and say that skipping a latte once a week will lead to riches beyond your wildest dreams.

I wrote this for people like myself—people who don’t want to live in vans and life-hack their way to early retirement, but who do want to get on the path to financial independence and learn how to build wealth over the long term. The advice in this book is tailored for millennials, people in their late twenties and thirties who have already earned their degrees and begun their careers. They’re starting families, buying first homes, juggling student loans, and saving for the future—often all at the same time.

And I know how all of that feels—while writing this book, I got married, bought my first house, and became pregnant with my first child. It’s been fun, but it’s a lot. That’s why I focused on making sure that the advice in this book is moderate, reasonable, and actionable. As a busy young person, that’s exactly what I would want in a financial advice book.

Facing the Facts

My goal is to give you practical advice that all of us should know—but which most of us don’t, not even many of the most educated and highest-earning professionals among us. I can’t tell you how many brilliant lawyers, doctors, and entrepreneurs I come across...