“Great, Katie, I’ve got Zach, who’s in training, on the line for this call and I’ll be stepping in to fill an advisory role,” assured the deep voice booming out of my phone.
I reflexively squeezed the button on the side to lower the volume. Self-conscious that people in the surrounding cubicles would hear my conversation, I slipped into a nearby fishbowl phone alcove and slid the glass door closed behind me with a force that revealed my unfamiliarity with my new workplace’s meeting rooms.
Enclosed in the small, transparent nook, I settled into one of the cloth spinning chairs, stationed so I could look out at the passerby. Only a few months into my first full-time job, I was trying to figure out what to do with a steady paycheck. Most of my efforts felt more like LARPing adulthood than actual progress. I cleared my throat after an awkward pause. “Sure, Jake, that sounds great,” I said, trying a little too hard to sound comfortable.
“So, Katie,” Zach began, with equally forced bravado, “what are your financial goals?”
“My financial goals?” I paused, considering a question that would’ve felt completely absurd only three months ago when I was still making minimum wage. “I guess I’m just trying to . . .figure out how much I can save every month?” I asked back. Another long pause. Does anyone on this call know what’s going on? I wondered.
I noticed two older men, both of whom occupied conspicuous leadership positions in my department, conferring in the dining area outside the fishbowl. I became suddenly embarrassed at the thought of them hearing my faltering side conversation with two financial advisers, as though I had been caught playing dress-up in my mom’s clothes. This is what adults do, right?
Talk to financial advisers? Again, a question.
“Well,” I continued, my frustration with the entire ordeal transmuting into confidence, I already know enough to know that I don’t know what I’m doing. I just need to know how much I should save.”
“Right!” Zach chirped. “Why don’t you get back in touch when you know about your financial . . . situation?” And thus concluded my first bewildering call with a financial adviser in the summer of 2017.
My question was simple, but it went unanswered
The men on the phone were calling from a firm I now know to be more in the business of insurance sales than financial services. I didn’t understand at the time why, in their position as financial professionals, they were unable to answer what was — to me — a simple money question: How much should I save? I had accepted their invitation to the conversation in an earnest effort to go through the motions of being an adult, skeptical that I hadn’t been asked to pay for it (“How do you make money?” I had asked, oblivious to both the industry and obvious social convention).
Unsatisfied, I returned to my desk and pulled up a half-hearted attempt at a Mint budget I had created using Intuit’s now-defunct, clunky-but-free online spend tracking software. As…
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