Wake Up and Smell the Money: An Epistle to Women in Their 20’s

This letter is written to all young women who are in their 20’s and have the opportunity to go against the crowd and get on an unusual path. The way things are currently imagined in womens’ money lives is as follows:

the 20’s: student loans, travel, have fun, buy clothes, go out to eat and drink. This fits our culture’s ideas of the young years when one is supposed to be free before settling down.There is a lot of support for this way of being.

You may be hearing, “do it now before you are tied down.”

This is also a great time to get really serious about your money life.

Why now?

The 20’s are a time when you are laying down life patterns that will be in place for decades.

You can see this time as an investment in yourself, setting your self up to have options later.

You can get going on a career path and take the lower jobs that will take you up later.This is harder to do later on. Getting into a new system often means starting at the bottom.

You can live cheaply with roommates to share the cost.
You can use your natural ability to play and have low- cost fun.
You can use your free time to learn about investing and get started making your money work for you.
You can start a retirement account that will be working for you for 40 years.
You can question the ways you see and come up with original life patterns.
You can develop good habits of understanding your money to be sure you will have what you need when you need to be free later on in life..whether that means quitting a job, starting a business, staying with children, leaving a partnership or staying single.
You will have money to put into the opportunities that come your way…and they will come if you are watching for them.
You can see how your parents did it with more clarity and question to see if that is right for you.

You give yourself more choices down the line when you learn to think independently about money and don’t follow the current forces. This is the first mantra of succesful investors and there is no better investment than using this stage of your life to lay the foundation for a solid future with choices and options.