Your Sherpa: Your Parental Guide to Financial Literacy
Parents: Help your children learn and navigate the world of personal finance
Are your teenagers and college students financially literate?
Do they understand how the many decisions they make early in life (choosing a career and college) could have outsized financial consequences (good and bad) in the future?
Jeff Tyburski, Your Sherpa, draws on over 30 years of personal finance experience to provide a roadmap for becoming financially literate, and to educate and empower a new generation of students on their journey to good financial decisions and financial freedom.
Easy to follow and accessible, Your Sherpa encourages parents and kids to talk about money and financial wellness and shows them how to navigate key financial decisions in their lives. Story-based lessons illustrate that financial literacy is not the tedious, academic subject many expect but rather a tool to achieve better life outcomes. These lessons include how to avoid excessive college debt, learn to save, and be ready to invest for their futures. He gives actionable advice geared to help a new generation of readers form healthy financial habits that will last a lifetime. With this book for parents and online resources for students at http://yourfinancialsherpa.com, the ultimate goal is to teach young adults to make daily decisions to save and build wealth, starting early and compounding for decades.
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This book is about saving money and building wealth. Unfortunately, you can’t begin to save if you have too much debt.
Part I addresses soaring college loan debt and offers alternative strategies to students and parents.
The process to choose a college is intimidating, if not totally overwhelming. I’ve been there with my kids. The cost to attend many
chools literally seems hard to comprehend or justify, and the price that applies to you doesn’t seem transparent. Plus, the whole system and national narrative is built entirely on a flawed assumption that everyone should go to college in the first place.
In an ideal world, the goal of this section would be to help students and parents totally avoid college debt. Given the high and rising costs of attending college, which we cannot change, a more realistic goal is to help you minimize debt. I also openly encourage you to consider options other than college.
Despite the daunting cost of college, I see and hear of behavior as if people aren’t even looking at the numbers. It’s hardly a joking matter but have you heard any of these, or similar, anecdotes? They are somewhat comical in a sad way.
- The student who became fixated on an $80,000 per year college because the club volleyball coach sent her a personal email wanting
her to be on the team. - The students who only consider schools with recognizable names from the NCAA basketball tournament.
- The students who think it is beneath them to go to a community college, trade school, or apprenticeship program. This is probably not a surprise with the national narrative calling these alternatives. This despite millions of job openings in our country which don’t require four-year degrees and millions of college graduates unemployed or not using their very expensive degrees.
- The countless high school students who visit schools and even make a final choice without even knowing the full costs to attend or the impact both on their future finances and their parents’ retirement plans.
- The students who, despite the high cost of attendance, push ahead to go to college with no specific career objectives, selected major, or any hope of graduating on time in four years
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