About Launching Financial Grownups

Learn how to give the young adults in your life the knowledge, confidence, and motivation to make adult money decisions, and create their own strong financial foundation and independence, so you can all live richer lives.

In Launching Financial Grownups, popular personal finance expert and Certified Financial Planner Bobbi Rebell gets candid about the very real-life challenges of getting young adults to choose to be financial grownups and develop their own financial foundation and security. She shares her own personal setbacks and solutions (both from her own past, and as a parent), and walks readers through the ups and downs of financial adulting milestones. Rebell has put together a practical and specific adulting launch plan for parents of young adults along with tips on how to open money discussions, the questions to ask your children, the most effective listening strategies, when to step in to stop them from making mistakes, and when to let them learn from their mistakes.

Launching Financial Grownups provides the tools to help your teen or young adults navigate the challenges of adulthood including debt, credit cards, peer pressure that leads to bad money decisions, negotiations, how to manage their own household, different investing opportunities, insurance needs, charitable giving, the legal documents they need to have in place in case of an emergency, what they need to know about your finances and even starting to think about their retirement planning. All this while also addressing recent demographic trends driven by the pandemic including young adults moving back into their childhood homes, and becoming financially dependent, after having been independent.

Launching Financial Grownups offers:

• Solutions for parents who want to avoid ‘cutting off’ their kids at a seemingly arbitrary age or life milestone and are looking for more supportive solutions to get their young adults to be well adjusted financial grownups.

• Strategies for parents to protect their own financial well-being and retirement resources.

• Advice from top parenting and money experts including “How to Raise an Adult” author Julie Lythcott-Haims, “The Price You Pay for College” author Ron Lieber, “Grown and Flown” co-author Mary Dell Harrington, Tori Dunlap of “Her First 100K”, “How to be a Happier Parent” author KJ Dell’Antonia, Tonya Rapley of My Fab Finance and Jean Chatzky, author and CEO of HerMoney Media

Essential for the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends and everyone who is vested in the financial success and independence of young adults, Launching Financial Grownups is a must-have financial resource for long-overdue and timeless advice in an engaging and supportive package.

My two older kids, both in college, were home for the holidays. We had been discussing putting their earnings from their jobs into Roth IRA’s. They would then be able to grow their money, without paying taxes on the earnings. They both had agreed to do it. But here we were, hours away from the deadline to open an account. It wasn’t done. And they weren’t moving.

I had given them both the phone number of the discount broker we have been using, as well as an actual human they could call with questions. I had reminded them of the deadline. They had said they would go.. but here we were.

The clock was ticking, and here I was, supposed to be this personal finance expert, even a Certified Financial Planner, and I could not get my own kids to do this one simple thing.

We can teach our young children the basics. They will do what we say. But what happens when they get older. And they become… teenagers. And young adults. Sometimes they stick with the lessons you taught them. They do all the things- study, have jobs, and are all-around nice people. But sometimes, when it comes to doing something pro-active about their money, they would rather go out with their friends.

Update: They both opened up accounts. Brad’s investments are growing in diversified ETF’s as he gets ready to graduate college this coming May. He’s really excited about how much his investments have grown over the last few years. Ashley decided to allocate most of her resources to her goal of buying a New York City apartment of her own, which she did in the spring of 2021. But she has proudly informed me that she is now maxing out her 401(k) at her consulting job.

And they both also inspired me to write my new book Launching Financial Grownups.

Bonus: Ashley, who is now 25 years old shares her own financial grownup tips at the end of the book!