Launching Financial Grownups. Bobbi Rebell

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Introduction

      In October 2019, Kelly Ripa appeared on The Jimmy Kimmel Show and joked about how her son, Michael, was adjusting to being an adult: “He hates paying his own rent, and he's chronically poor. I don't think he ever really experienced extreme poverty like now.”

      The comment, taken by some out of context, sparked some backlash. But Ripa stood by her parenting strategy, posting later on Instagram, “Michael goes to college and is a senior and works full time. He is in his first non-parent subsidized apt with roommates. I didn't grow up privileged and neither did @instasuelos [her husband, Mark Consuelos].”

The truth is, Ripa and her husband are probably doing a better job at helping their kids become financial grownups than the majority of Americans. Data from Merrill Lynch and Age Wave shows that 79 percent of parents are providing support for their adult children.¹ As so-called helicopter parents get older, they seem to be doubling down on their overparenting. This is having a huge impact on their adult children's ability to gain financial independence. Many aging Gen X parents are on a dangerous path that could have catastrophic consequences for their own golden years. I first witnessed this phenomenon as a parent. And then, as a business journalist and a certified financial planner™, I realized I could become part of the solution.

      It started on New Year's Eve 2019.

      My two older kids, both in college, had come home for the holidays. We had been discussing putting their earnings from their jobs into Roth IRAs. They would then be able to grow their money without paying taxes on the earnings. They both had agreed to do it. #parentingwin

Yet here we were, hours away from the deadline to open an account. It wasn't done. Nothing was happening. I had given them both the phone number and email of the brokerage firm we used as well as the contact information for an actual human they could call with questions who had been assigned to our family. I had told them that I was available if they had any questions. And they were free to research and find their own investing platform if they didn't want to use the same company. I had reminded them of the deadline. They had said they would do it.

      But here we were.

      And here I was, having spent a couple of decades as a financial journalist. I actually wrote the book about becoming a “financial grownup.” After the book came out, I had gone one step further to bolster my knowledge and became a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER^™ practitioner. I was facing the harsh reality that I, as a parent who knew on paper what should be getting done, could not get my own kids to do this one simple thing.

      My own journey into this laser focus on getting adult kids to pay attention to their personal money situation started a few years earlier when I was a full-time business news journalist at Reuters. After 15 years in the business, I was the old guard. Younger colleagues would ask me for money advice. I always thought that was odd, because literally everything is available online. (The IRS website, irs.gov, if we are being honest, is pretty awesome. Check it out sometime.)

      But the advice was never put in human terms, so it felt like a chore to them. They wanted to hear from someone they viewed as accomplished. They wanted to hear how successful people – role models – made financial decisions in the context of real life. And of these financial decisions, they wanted to know which ones were the most important for accomplishing their larger adult goals. From my experience offering guidance to my younger colleagues, I came up with the idea for my first book, How to Be a Financial Grownup.

      In my years of journalism, one skill that had carried me far was my ability to identify and then get high-profile people to be interviewed. I always made sure they had a great experience, so they would come back. At one point, when I led booking at CNN's short-lived business news network, CNNfn, I supervised a staff that scheduled as many as 50 guests a day on various programs. I loved chatting with them before and after the segment. The guests were fascinating people with so much more to say than the three minutes typical of a television segment – often focused on data and quick tips – would allow. They had valuable life lessons to share. But a short television segment did not allow for that.

And then the big idea: What if I could give these high-profile people the opportunity to share personal money stories, not just regurgitate the data their company compiled in a survey. Now that would motivate and inspire readers to become financial grownups. I started close to home with the editor in chief of Thomson Reuters: Steve Adler. He loved the concept but was skeptical about whether I would be able to get what were effectively business “celebrities” to really share personal stories. That said, he was the first one to agree to participate, and I am forever grateful.

      In the end, I pulled it off. How to Be a Financial Grownup featured a mix of business headliners from Tony Robbins, Kevin O'Leary, and Sallie Krawcheck to Cynthia Rowley and Jim Cramer. I even managed to snag an impromptu interview with actress and entrepreneur Drew Barrymore. I extended the concept in podcast form, and with about 350 episodes have been able to continue the conversation with young adults (and financially young adults of all ages) through that platform.

      But I've also come to realize as my own children become young adults that parents play a bigger role than many of us fully appreciate. In an ideal world, my young colleagues at Reuters who were so hungry for money advice would have started their journey toward financial literacy at home.

      Sometimes we, the parents, are the obstacles keeping them from truly growing into their own and moving away from dependence on us. The term helicopter parent grew in our culture for a reason. It's pretty accurate for many of us. If we coddle our kids financially, they will СКАЧАТЬ