No One Ever Told Us That: Money and Life Lessons for Young Adults

INTRODUCTION

This is a book for all of you new grown-ups, out in the world for long enough to have experienced some early bumps in the road, and long enough to know how challenging this new century is for you, in all areas of your still-young lives.

I speak to you as if you are my children, all of them relatively new grown-ups, and needing practical advice for all these new crossroads you face.

I have advised, and still advise, thousands of people, in hundreds of professions and careers. And I've done this for more than 50 years. No rookie, no virgin either, in finding solutions to so many of life's problems.

And as you all are at various new crossroads, I'm at another major one myself.

After my last book, No One Ever Told Us That, had been out for several months, a young man knocked on my office door. He seemed to be in his late twenties or early thirties, in a suit and tie, with highly polished English shoes. I seldom see young people so turned out. He was holding a small package wrapped in bright paper, like a birthday present.

“Do you have a minute?” he asked.

“Not really, I said, “but come on in.”

He held up the package. “This is for you,” he said. “You changed my life.”

“How did I do that?” I said. “Although I'm flattered.”

“I read your book,” he said. “In a chapter about the problems in almost all families there was a line. I've had issues with my family for years and it was eating me up, having to stifle my feelings. Your line was, ‘Love your family, but don't let them ...