Preface
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 ...