I'm a bit cynical, or at least skeptical. I was an engineer, analyst, and portfolio manager for a combined 33 years so I am guilty, at times, of being too black and white, too analytical, and too focused on identifying problems around me. The flip side is that I am trying to find problems so that I can come up with solutions (I haven't learned from my wife saying "I don't need you to solve it").
As a professional investor, at times personally responsible for literally billions of dollars of other people's money, I always respected how hard it was for those clients to have saved that money in the first place. Over time I became more aware that those clients were unique, that not just many, but actually most, Americans are struggling with saving.
As I analyzed the problem (why people aren't saving) I saw that many don't save because they are in no position to start. They are already in a hole. They have too much college debt. Or they can't get and hold a good job. Or they do earn good money but have no daily habits to save.
Perhaps my solution is a bit of a cop out. I hope my work can help adults who need money management skills but my strategy is to go further upstream and to help parents help their kids build good habits right out of the gate. The kids are the target audience. The mission is to be ahead of and avoid problems in the first place. Teaching good habits, and not having to 'unlearn' bad habits, is more of a repeatable and scalable objective. My goal is to help parents get key lessons and messages to their kids as students and young adults so that they become 'future-ready'.
Future-ready means the life skills and mindset to be ahead of avoid problems. Future-ready means to seek out a career path you'd enjoy and want to grow and succeed at. It means to have the awareness to attain your initial career goals without taking on crippling debt. It means to have the perspective and skills to embrace change and to keep investing in yourself to stay employed in our challenging world. And ultimately, being future-ready, means to have the mindset to save (simply choosing a lifestyle to do it DAILY FROM A YOUNG AGE) and the method, roadmap, and personal process to get it done.
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