Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together by Erin Lowry was written for the average twenty to thirty-something year old who wants to learn more about money or is struggling to get by and wanting to feel more confident with money. However, book reviewers agree that it is aptly suited for teens who are just learning about money and starting to build habits. By following Erin Lowry's tips, you can set yourself up early for financial success.
Lowry opens by asking readers to think about how they spend money and how their parents talk about (or don't talk about) money. Are you likely to spend your babysitting cash on lunch with friends? Or gas to go to the beach? Broke Millennial suggests curbing your spending by adopting a budget. For teens, time is on your side. The sooner you start saving money, the more money you can have in the future.
A good budget to start with is a Zero-Sum budget. This means using the money that you made last month to pay for this month's bills and is one of the most effective methods for beating the paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle. To start, you'll need to write down all your income for the month. Then, you'll write out how you want to spend your money. As a teen, some expenses may include car insurance, self care, entertainement, savings, an emergency fund, a cell phone bill, or gas to school. The Zero-Sum approach says to take whatever is leftover and add that to those categories until you get to zero. For example, if you pay for everything and still have $20, you could be put $10 more to self-care and $10 more to savings. It make take some time to get down to $0 perfectly, but this is a great way to make sure your spending is controlled. As Lowry emphasizes in her book, the younger you start, the more you'll have for the future. If Zero-Sum doesn't sound good to you, Lowry mentions a few more methods in her book that you can checkout from the library with your student library card.
The book is friendly and easy to read. Lowry covers many more topics from finding the right bank to investing to having money conversations with your friends. She talks about complex ideas like how banks work and the complexities of the benefits that credit cards offer. Lowry's advice may not be good for a millennial who has already racked up thousands in credit card debt, but it's helpful for those who haven't dipped their toe into the world of credit. It's also not as constraining as books by Dave Ramsey, which suggest that having any debt or a credit score is useless for consumers. Although readers understand that Erin Lowry came from a financial place of immense privilege (her parents knew enough about money to teach her and she didn't have any student loan debt from her college degree), Lowry provides good lessons to help you avoid the mistakes that the Millennial generation have often been roped into.
You can read her books from the library, check out our Business & Finance page, or follow the author on Instagram, her blog, or Twitter for more money tips.