Feeling My Financial Age

Many, many jobs ago, I worked in Time Inc's Custom Publishing Department, developing custom magazines for corporate clients. Part of my job was securing content from Time's magazine properties--Money Magazine, Fortune, Parenting, Heath, Food & Wine, you name it--to repurpose in these titles. The job required that I browse dozens of magazines every week, a task that kept me up-to-speed on everything from fashion to the latest study on the effects of caffeine.

Many of the magazines I worked on were in the financial services realm and required that I pore through issues of Money magazine; I didn't realize the magazine had an effect on me, but it did. In the end, the job didn't take, but the money lessons did--until now.

I was 24 at the time and followed to the letter all prescribed courses of action for young adults right out of college. All of us, these magazines assumed, wanted to buy a house in three to five years, to get married and fund our children's education and to not be poor in our old age.  I had no idea if I wanted to buy a house; I lived in New York at the time and aspired to renting my own one-bedroom someday, never owning it. I didn't have a car and was fine with riding the subway for the rest of my life. Marriage was more a nice to have than a necessity and kids were purely speculation. But the thought of getting old with no savings scared the hell out of me.

Fortunately, these magazines provided loads of case studies with what-if scenarios: if you socked away X amount over the course of Y years you'd have Z dollars to spend per month by age 65.

The biggest lesson I learned was save early. I had a whopping $2,000 from selling stock my grandparents had given me in college. Just putting that away put me ahead of roughly 70% of the other people in their early 20s. I made a pittance, but I still managed to sock away a bit with every paycheck. Every freelance check I received I put into savings and filtered funds into a Roth IRA. I opted for the maximum 401k contribution I could afford. It didn't seem like much, but I read that by even stashing $25 a month a person in her early 20s could grow up to $1 million by the time she was 65. I figured that just by saving early I could be the next Doris Duke.

I felt a sense of superiority over some of the poor (literally or figuratively) families who agreed to be profiled in these magazines and had their income, financial portfolios, credit card debt and obvious ignorance about money analyzed and dissected for public consumption. I was perplexed by their willingness to make their finances public and equally perplexed that they never made the connection between their current spending and investing habits and their future.

I'd silently scoff at the 29-year-old single woman who had racked up $30,000 in credit card debt on top of her college loans and was now forced to give up going out to dinner for the next seven years; or the young family who'd blown 401(k) money on a starter home and had never opened savings accounts for their kids' education. I wondered why these people weren't more like me, or like I would be if I was in their shoes.

I never spent more money than I had, paid off my credit card every month, never touched savings, and planned to get married only if I had enough to afford a proper wedding. That, or marry rich. Meeting the right man was never a concern; if I didn't I had enough to take care of myself.

My history with personal finance offers some perspective behind the dramatic shift in my habits as I got older. The lessons are still there, but the events in my life have made many of them irrelevant. The other day I received a personal finance magazine from my mutual fund company--the kind that I used to produce at Time Inc. I'd been throwing these out for years, but for some reason I decided to read this one, perhaps out of some sense of nostalgia. This title offered textbook-version content of what I used to read, and yet the content felt more mocking than enlightening.

The couple profiled were younger than me; they'd recently bought a house, having saved for a few years to make a down payment that required no PMI. The husband contributed the max to his 401(k) and received a maximum matched contribution from his employer. They'd established an account for each child and a separate stock portfolio, in preparation for their retirement in 35 to 40 years.

I looked at my own "case study" of my financial life since leaving that highly perked job at Time Inc.: Freelance employment with no retirement savings, let alone a company match, and a huge tax bill that I miscalculated and ended up owing on--with penalty--years later. Large income increase with Dot Com company, still with no 401k, but plenty of stock options. Loss of job during the bust, loss of options, and loss of half of my savings during period of figuring out what to do next. Slow rebuilding, supposedly high-paying job that cost more in sanity, and yielded less than I expected during the downturn, and sudden loss of income when I opted to keep the backwash sanity I had left and entered a new field that interested me but couldn't pay anywhere near my former base. Then back to freelancing and now ramping up an organization that is in start-up mode.

During this period I contradicted every assumption that these personal finance magazines make about people in their 30s--that they are "established" in their careers, that they continually make more money; that they get married promptly and have kids; that they stay at their jobs for a long time and always take jobs with benefits.

My reality was clearly in the realm of questionable financial future: a good portion of my savings was spent in the downturn, no retirement contributions were made, no house was bought, no rich men were found, (but I did manage to snag a good man in grad school--I repeat GRAD SCHOOL). For both of us the thought of home ownership outweighs lavish nuptuals. I bought a car and got a new place while unemployed, out of a strange sense of optimism. I started two businesses with no funds. In each transition I managed to have money to get by, but I wasn't saving at the clip prescribed by the experts, if at all. Months had gone by with no savings, just withdrawals. I took money out of long-term investments so that I could have it on-hand for emergencies.

For years I refused to go to the Fidelity calculator for fear that I might have to tack a few more decades onto my working life in order to afford the level I once thought I'd reach so easily.

Reading about this couple who did everything "right" I felt badly about myself, but only for a minute. My self-preservationist tendencies reminded me that these articles and calculators fail to account for the human factor. Sure, you'll read about some transitions--the sudden inheritance or job loss, the divorce--but never have I read about the man who couldn't sit another day in his cubicle and decided to sell popsicles for a living instead. The New York Times might cover this guy in some story about such random profligacy, but never have I seen a case study that earnestly maps out the scenario for people who want more from life than security.

Because we don't treat these stories as legitimate career courses we don't bother to explain to others how to plan for them. During the downturn I read plenty about executives who lost their jobs and were now bankrupt, but never about how to do something extraordinary when the chips were already down. It's no wonder more people don't strike out on their own and attempt to create their own career paths; we treat the unpredictable course like it ends in ruin. And no doubt it might. But for many it ends in a stronger quality of life than was ever possible working at an unloved job, socking away $25 a week.

I spoke this weekend at a conference for college women about to enter the workforce. In the women I spoke with I sensed such drive and such fear about their futures. One, a film major, told me that her mother wanted her to get an office job "just in case". And I know that her mother would have killed me for suggesting that she do exactly what she wants...now.

Generation Y, in my opinion, is more equipped to handle the unknown than the working generations before it. Despite not knowing what lies beyond an entry-level job, they, on the whole, vow not to be bogged down by unsatisfying work, hoping that it might lead to something better.

To be sure, I don't suggest that experience and savvy are not required to get by. I suppose I'm grateful to have learned money lessons early on, which helped me save and afforded me some runway for what has become an uncommon career journey. All I'm saying is that I'm no longer an anomaly. Life happens. And it ain't over when 401k contributions stop.

I'd like to see a magazine that addresses how to use financial tools when money dries up for months at a time, when someone has to get out of a job and doesn't have six months of savings, when someone decides that financial risk is worth greater potential happiness, when we have to shoulder the entire burden of our health insurance, when we realize we can't plan the swerves and curves of opportunity.

What then?

personal finance women and money retirement planning women entrepreneurs entrepreneurs

Comments

[Dan]

Jory: Thank you for this post. I have struggled for years trading off the ideal versus the real. Money is a very hard, perhaps the hardest driver; less personal than nature and more insistant than most addictions. How do we create an alternative to the gasoline that makes the American engine run...without losing? You are helping make something that has been untouchable for far too long conscious and discussable. You call us to examine an illusion.

[Mike]

I see those kinds of articles and TV segments, but they're scattered around. Maybe a magazine focused around entrepeneurship would have more of them than usual?

This could be a good webzine: articles on how to live responsibly while following our bliss. Or maybe a book?

[Photopoppy]

Thank you for posting this. I'm in the middle of a messy situation with an entry-level job that not only didn't go where I hoped it would, but turned unsatisfying after the first couple of years. I stayed because once my 401k had built up enough, I took out a loan against it to pay off my college credit card bills. Financially, I'm worse off than I should be by 31, I've spent most of my savings moving across the country to find a place I was comfortable living in. I would *love* to see the magazine you describe - and I'd add, one that presumes that its readers, male and female alike, want something more out of life than a paycheck. Maybe even profiles business people and their hobbies or entertainments.

[Donna]

I think you should publish that magazine, or that book -- I know that I would want to read it.

I agree with the advice you gave that young film major. Back in my day, my dad would mail me help wanted clippings when I was between production jobs. After several years of on again off again work, in a weak moment, I took one. Biggest mistake I ever made.