Your Money Mentors: Expert Advice for Millennials

by Russell Robb, Katharine Robb Meehan, David Tabatsky (Editor)

Overview

"[P]rovides fundamental information and a wealth of resources that readers can use to focus on areas of particular interest." Booklist, Starred Review

Your Money Mentors offers advice for millennials and their parents on how to succeed in the years post college graduation. Co-written by a millennial, and based on the author’s sixty-plus years of experience in finance, the collective advice is full of data, current research, anecdotes, and suggestions regarding mentors, continuing education, internships, careers, starter jobs, setting financial goals, budgeting, and money matters concerning marriage. The book is presented in three parts: Foundations for Success, Careers, and Making Your Money Work.

The book features real-life stories of successful millennials in the traditional working world and those who have joined the “gig” economy, by choice, or otherwise. It considers an American school system that has slowly but surely become woefully inadequate in many parts of the country when it comes to preparing our millennial population to succeed in society. With that in mind, it offers concrete advice to help millennials and the generation coming up behind them excel in their futures. Your Money Mentors is an uplifting guidebook for this generation and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538149485
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	02/08/2022
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	5.89(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Russell Robb is a seasoned financial professional, who has held top positions at highly prestigious firms. He is the author of Buying Your Own Business, and he edited and published a successful monthly newsletter, called M&A Today. Robb is the former president of The Hamilton Trust, and received their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. He also served as president for the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) and was awarded their Meritorious Service Award in 1995. A former Lance Corporal with the U.S. Marine Corps, he has four children and seven grandchildren, whom he regularly advises on financial matters. He and his wife live in Massachusetts.

Katharine Robb Meehan is an executive level administrator, working for nonprofit organizations and government agencies. Committed to deploying her skills to support organizations with impact, she served the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, The Nature Conservancy, and the Trustees of Reservations. Most recently, she supported the leadership team at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, a wellness retreat center in the Berkshires of Massachusetts.

David Tabatsky is a writer, editor, and performing artist, based in New York City. Among his more than fifty book projects, he was consulting editor for Marlo Thomas and her New York Times bestseller, The Right Words at the Right Time, Volume 2: Your Turn, coauthor of Chicken Soup for the Soul’s, The Cancer Book: 101 Stories of Courage, Support and Love, coauthor, with Dr. Mark Banschick of The Intelligent Divorce—Books One and Two, coauthor with Dr. Randy Wright of The Wright Choice: Your Family’s Guide to Healthy Eating, Modern Fitness and Saving Money, and has written essays for The Forward, Parenting, and Sesame Street Parent, among others. His memoir, American Misfit, was released in 2017. Please visit www.tabatsky.com.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One: Foundations for Success

Chapter 1: The Personality Factor

Chapter 2: Friends and Mentors

Chapter 3: Continuing One’s Education

Part Two: Careers

Chapter 4: Making the Most of Starter Jobs and Internships

Chapter 5: Landing the Right Job for Any Stage in Your Career

Chapter 6: Thriving in the Gig Economy

Chapter 7: Advice for Entrepreneurs

Part Three: Making Your Money Work

Chapter 8: Setting Realistic Financial Goals and Making Sense of Loans

Chapter 9: Budgeting Techniques to Keep You on Track

Chapter 10: Marriage and Family Finances

Conclusion

Bibliography

Notes

Index

About the Authors

Editorial Reviews

12/13/2021

Retired financial professional Robb (Buying Your Own Business) and his millennial granddaughter Robb Meehan, an executive-level administrator, advise millennials and their parents on generation-specific financial challenges in this well-intentioned but unfocused guide. As an educated, underemployed, and debt-ridden generation, millennials need a specific set of financial knowledge for landing work, starting a family, and planning for the future, the authors write. They lead readers through such tasks as finding a mentor (look for someone respected and encouraging), choosing a “starter job” (a reputable company looks good on your résumé), and tackling the gig economy (it’s got plenty of shortcomings, but “could be an ideal situation for couples with children who can’t afford childcare”). Each chapter ends with “Katie’s Korner,” in which Robb Meehan offers advice on leadership, education, and developing soft skills (communication and social-emotional intelligence have served her most, she writes). Unfortunately, the book’s organization is messy, the authors tend to repeat themselves, and Robb alternates between underestimating his audience’s knowledge (claiming, for example, that millennials are “financially naive”) and overestimating it (he fails to explain such terms as ETF and IRA). While it’s a fine look at the younger generation’s unique concerns, millennials will likely find this to be a case of diminishing returns. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Your Money Mentors, as written by a senior citizen and his millennial granddaughter, provides a handy guide to economic survival for 85 million young adults. It contains bountiful and practical advice, distilled wisdom, and lived experience, which define boundaries and conditions for success in life and business. It is especially valuable for parents who overlooked opportunities to impart market advice to their children as well as for those young adults who ignored parental advice and are now starting young families of their own. Your Money Mentors is timely, as the structure of business is changing rapidly to adapt to digital media and technologies, but the ground rules of ethical practice have not changed, and the Robbs sum them up succinctly.

Brian Rosborough

This highly informative, timely, and readable book of advice for millennials, as well as their parents and grandparents, draws superbly on the author’s years of financial and business experience and his great wisdom regarding career choices attained over his life journey. It is both a must and a most enjoyable read.

Frederick H. Lovejoy

What makes this book unusual is its wide-ranging focus, starting with the foundations for success—personality factors, friends and mentors, and the continuing education, which places all that follows in context. Tools are less than useful unless they are tempered by an awareness of who you are and who has influenced your life. Rarely does a book offering guidance emphasize these crucial aspects when one is setting off on a professional career.

Walter Birge

Your Money Mentors offers well-researched advice for young people, with a grandfatherly tone and plenty of good, practical suggestions on friendship, mentors, jobs, and especially financial matters. I wish I had this book when I was blundering my way into the world.

Alan Lightman

The tone of a caring adult mentoring a cherished family member moves Your Money Mentors from dry financial literacy tome to trusted heirloom. Inspired by a group of seasoned high-level financial professionals and fellow grandfathers, the book builds on the real-world challenges experienced by their millennial grandchildren…. Robb provides fundamental information and a wealth of resources that readers can use to focus on areas of particular interest. The reviews following each chapter guide individuals as they process and adapt the content to move along their unique pathway. The authentic experiences and insights shared by granddaughter Katie make this highly relatable for readers while modeling the “take what you need” approach to using the guide. As relevant for Gens X and Z as it is for millennials, the book is a great supplement to learning in financial literacy programs and would work well as an aid to parents delivering needed practical guidance. Your Money Mentors is a much needed, accessible addition to public and school library collections.

Starred Review Booklist