So You’re a Young Professional…Now What?

When your younger clients—those just out of college—enter the workforce, they often become fully responsible for their finances for the first time. But, because so many have no substantial personal finance knowledge, they rarely know how to start.

Episode 2 of eMoney Advisor’s “That Makes Cents” podcast focuses on exactly this dilemma. Celeste Revelli, CFP®, eMoney Director of Financial Planning, and Eric Roberge, founder of Beyond Your Hammock, detail the difficult start of their financial journeys.

Revelli graduated from college into the Great Recession of 2008 and, struggling to find one well-paying job, worked two. Roberge resigned his role at J.P. Morgan intending to start his financial planning practice in 2007, then the markets crashed in 2008. Neither felt prepared to handle their finances after college.

Revelli came out of college with $90,000 in student loans, which became $150,000 when she got married. Today, she provides advanced financial planning assistance to eMoney advisors and heads continuing education for eMoney’s CPA and CFA clients. But when she graduated from Loyola University in Maryland, she didn’t have nearly this level of financial planning sophistication. Instead, like many new college graduates, she learned quickly how little she knew about her student loans. That included how much she owed, what her loan interest rates were, and how quickly she had to start repayment.

She says they didn’t have a good financial education at home where talking about money openly to be more aware of how it works wasn’t the norm. In fact, she says, neither she nor her husband learned solid money management skills before college.

But in the end, Revelli and her husband, who opened a brewery shortly before they married, found a way to repay $150,000 in student loans in 10 years.

Roberge experienced some lean years between 2007, when, at 27, he left mutual fund work, and 2013, when he launched Beyond Your Hammock. Those years included working as a waiter while the post-recession economy rebounded. Now, he is Lead Advisor at his successful fee-only financial planning firm in Boston, and the winner of multiple industry achievement awards.

From those lean years, he gained insights from watching how difficult it can be in this industry to hold people’s hands through a very challenging time.

Today, he has about 75 clients between the ages of 30-50 who earn approximately $250,000 annually.

Both Roberge and Revelli’s personal financial experiences have informed the way they offer advice to young professionals. That includes things like developing financial priorities in daily spending, achieving debt reduction goals, and making retirement savings decisions.

Listen to the information-packed 34-minute Episode 2 of That Makes Cents now and get professional tips to serve your younger financial planning clients profitably.