Plus, I think you might be surprised to see how our revenue and expenses break down (hell, I was surprised). 

Moreover, my experience building a business within a business has been interesting since Money with Katie was “acqui-hired” in January 2022 by our parent company, Morning Brew. Prior to that acquisition, I was a solopreneur, and my revenue was roughly $250,000 in Year 2 (an infinite increase from Year 1, when I made $0). 

The acquisition meant that I would join the Brew to run the franchise and have access to part-time resources within a larger, more established media business, and…well, the results speak for themselves.

We don’t gatekeep in Money with Katie Land (if anything, we prefer gate-opening), so without further ado, here’s how the franchise made money last year, plus key takeaways () where applicable:

“Direct to Consumer” Revenue: $663,048

Affiliate revenue, merchandise sales, Wealth Planner sales, and educational products, like our Budget Like a Millionaire and Tax-Smart Investing master classes (though the second didn’t launch until 2023).

Affiliate revenue ($83,801): One of our revenue streams is affiliate links for credit cards that we recommend in our Travel Rewards content, but it’s really our only source of affiliate income. While affiliate revenue is a popular choice for many creators who organically plug products they believe in, it’s not part of Morning Brew’s broader sales strategy, which means it’s a smaller one for Money with Katie, too. 

I think of affiliate revenue like a double-edged sword—it can be truly passive, but I think it works best as a “quality over quantity” game. In our world, it was more beneficial to focus explicitly on a small handful (and now only one!) high-value affiliate relationship that was easy to build into content we would’ve been making anyway.

Merchandise sales ($107,318): Think our trademark RETIRED sweatshirt, Rich Girl Summer koozies, and the “Mom, I Am a Rich Man” line. We did a lot of testing and learning around product in 2022, and ultimately decided that while certain kitschy offerings are fun, we mostly want to focus our efforts on functional tools rather than branded merchandise.

Frankly, I was surprised this line of business did this well. Our best merchandise products played off something happening in real time within our community, like the My Qualifications mug, which spawned from a cold DM I received from someone who told me our feminine branding was “off-putting” and that we could reach more people if we’d drop it. The message closed with, “As a straight man, I can assure you my opinion carries weight.” I shared the DM on Instagram Stories and said I wanted to put it on a coffee mug—then we did, and it sold out overnight. On the flip side, merchandise that we developed in a vacuum sat on the shelves.

Wealth Planner sales ($407,750): This is our flagship, core product, and the apple of my eye. In the UX world, we did something called dogfooding (eating your own…dogfood? I don’t know, it’s a metaphor that leaves a lot to be desired), or using your own product in order to help make it better, and man, that’s been true for the Wealth Planner. I’ve been eating my own “dogfood” since Day 1, which means I think of new enhancements almost every month. We try to keep the price point accessible for this product, but also want to avoid making it so cheap that it inadvertently suggests it’s a low-value product. We just kicked off development for the 2024 Wealth Planner, which will launch in November, because it typically takes 5–6 months to get it right.

The Wealth Planner is by far our biggest single source of revenue, and it’s also the line of business that makes me proudest, because I know how impactful it can be in someone’s financial life. The pricing of a digital tool is always the tough part, and we’ve increased the price incrementally over the years, as we’ve had to invest more money in development and as we’ve made the functionalities more robust. Having a staple product that you know will work for most everyone in your community (because it directly addresses the reason they’re interested in your work) is nonnegotiable for a creator-led business (Thomas Frank addresses this in this week’s episode, too).

Educational products ($64,179): This is an area we’ve devoted more resources to in 2023, after assessing where we want to be investing more of our time and energy. It hadn’t historically been a major focus for us—probably because we give away the vast majority of the value we provide for free to our audience (made possible by an advertising model). Our courses focused on a deeper dive into budgeting and building a spending plan that actually works, as well as tax-smart investing philosophies that aggregate all the goodness of the tidbits you’d find strewn throughout our blog posts, podcasts, and social media into a coherent curriculum.

I struggle with courses, mostly because of the price point. It’s an area where I know we need to improve, because we get questions all the time about more advanced offerings. We tried a cohort-based course in early 2022 and ended up not moving forward with it because we didn’t have enough sign-ups to cover our expenses; this was a big surprise for me, as I figured live courses would be preferable to asynchronous learning. Turns out people don’t want to air their financial grievances to strangers—which, fair.

Advertising Revenue: $489,465

Ads sold for the newsletter, podcast, and social media (though our social media sponsorships are all part of our larger podcast sponsorship; we rarely do one-off social media campaigns that aren’t also part of a broader campaign).

It’s difficult to delineate advertising revenue by product because we don’t typically sell things à la carte (instead, a full package for a sponsor might entail coverage on all our properties), but we tend to work with fewer, large sponsors as opposed to a ton of smaller ones.

Total 2022 DTC + Advertising Revenue: ~$1.152m

Adjacent sources of revenue ($30,123)

On the side, I’ll sometimes do corporate speaking engagements or seminars for large groups, but this isn’t something I actively seek out, as running the business described above takes up most of my time. 

Expenses

Ah, yes—the non-fun part of the equation. How much does all of that cost? 

Merchandise ($31,280): When you sell physical product, you first must buy physical product. 

Delivery and production ($39,546): Software, tech products, and other production costs. 

Salaries, wages, healthcare, 401(k) matching, contractors, and payroll taxes ($502,113): The “people” costs side of the equation, and by far the largest line item.

We’ve also expanded in 2023, which means our staffing costs have increased—but in 2022, we were a one-woman show (read: me) until May, when we made our first full-time hire: Henah, my executive producer. (You know her! You love her! She’s…my Rich Girl Roundup costar and the wind beneath my wings.)

There are some other smaller costs—a few thousand dollars for travel, a couple hundred bucks in office supplies, some small licensing fees, etc.—that I’m not including here because they cumulatively don’t add up to more than $10,000 (1% of our budget, based on revenue).

And, of course, three big lessons learned

1️⃣ The importance of hiring well. Our first full-time hire, the aforementioned Henah, came directly from Rich Girl Nation—and her involvement in the business made a world of difference last year when I was drowning on my own. It’s hard to overstate how crucial proactive competence is in the early stages of a business (or how damaging it can be when you’re either understaffed or incorrectly staffed).

2️⃣ The challenges of a creator-forward business model. Sometimes your biggest strength as a creator brand (i.e., the ease of relying on your own personality and opinions) is also your biggest weakness. There are obvious issues with long-term scalability when the brand ethos is so dependent on one person, as well as the fact that—at any moment in time—everyone could decide they think my voice is annoying and my takes are bad and, well, that’s the end of that! We’re actively thinking through how to address the potential vulnerabilities this introduces.

3️⃣ Trying to do too much. It’s so easy to get distracted in an entrepreneurial landscape that’s constantly evolving, and I have to continuously remind myself that we need to focus on our core competencies and what actually matters for our bottom line and larger goals. Aka, not virality on TikTok or rapid “follower” growth on Instagram, but instead producing an incredibly high-quality show every single week and delivering enough value to our newsletter subscribers to make them feel as though the time they spend reading is well spent. I had to reevaluate where I was spending the bulk of my time at the end of 2022, and realized I was falling too often into the trap of petty metrics (How many plays did that Reel get?) and not enough time on the higher ROI activities, like researching and writing.

Looking forward

There’s a saying I like in business (and life, I suppose): “What got you here won’t get you there.” 

The pure relentlessness of my obsession and a truly serendipitous full-time hire helped us scale from $250,000 to $1m in annual revenue, but in order to reach more people with even better products (whether that be the podcast, the Wealth Planner, or something else entirely), we need to make sure we build systems that support us (vs. just brute-forcing our way through the week, every week). 

Part of this entails making sure each person in Money with Katie Land is operating in their zone of genius for the majority of their time spent working. And once we’re confident we can run our existing platform(s) excellently (and like a well-oiled machine!), we’ll be able to explore things like four-day work weeks, new lines of business, and more unique opportunities.

Every time I read something about negotiating a salary, a major takeaway is usually that everything is negotiable—e.g., if Corporate Daddy won’t budge on base pay, you can negotiate more time off. A few extra days off would be great—but usually, I want more money. I can’t invest my PTO in a Roth IRA (well, unless I quit and cash out, which is a viable short-term strategy).

Until I started my own business, I had always worked (a) for big companies with monstrous compliance departments that standardize everything and basically won’t budge on that type of stuff and (b) at levels low enough in the organization where negotiating the “extras” isn’t really on the table.

(If you’re negotiating as a director, vice president, or some other high-level position with a compensation package that screams “I have a price and you better pay it,” you may have better luck!)

Preparing for a negotiation and quantifying your track record

I agree with the advice that you should track your wins at work and measure them where possible, so you can unfurl your scroll of badassery when it’s time to talk about promotions.

If you’re saving the company money or earning the company more, the negotiation should probably go in your favor. The most common issue with this advice, I’ve found, is that the company likely already expects you to earn more for them or save them money in some capacity. Numbers that illustrate you’ve somehow gone above and beyond the scope of what your role is already compensated for are the real needle-movers.

This is probably stuff you’ve heard before, and when it works, it works! 

Negotiation tactics matter, but they’re not the most important thing when negotiating on the “inside” of your current company

The most important thing—from what I’ve observed—is having an engaged network of advocates inside. We’re talking about other, more senior employees (ideally including your manager) at the company who (a) know you and (b) are willing to go to bat for you. Without this, it’s going to be very difficult to negotiate.

This is less about the words you say in the negotiation itself, and more about laying the groundwork over time. How you do your job when you’re not negotiating typically impacts the negotiation most.

The cool thing I noticed during my time in Corporate America is that you didn’t have to go the extra mile to stand out—usually, going the extra yard was enough. A few examples: 

• If your deadline for a project is Friday, hand it over on Thursday.

• If you have a standing 1:1 with someone whose opinion impacts your compensation, send an agenda ahead of time and manage up. 

• If you’re asked to pull a report on three factors influencing conversion, throw in a fourth. 

• If you’re bringing an issue to someone, come prepared with one potential solution, too. 

It doesn’t mean you need to be on Slack on Saturday mornings firing off compliments to everyone on payroll—but the “extra yard” mindset goes a long way in building a disproportionately robust perception of your work ethic that doesn’t typically take that much additional work or time.

You can be the best negotiator in the world, but if you’re not good at your job, it doesn’t matter. So much of the negotiation happens before you even come to the table.

That said, if you’re working this way and not moving “up” (whether via raises or promotions) at least once every ~24 months, it’s probably time to strongly consider looking elsewhere. Sometimes leaving is the best thing you can do for yourself.

Now that we’ve covered our basics, let’s talk about the overarching truth I’ve noticed in the last few years of negotiations. 

The person who cares less wins.

If you enter into a negotiation willing to walk away, you suddenly have basically all the leverage.

Now, that’s easier said than done, as most people kinda care about maintaining their employment—but operating from a position of “I don’t need this” shifts the perception of power to your side. 

That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’d actually walk away if you didn’t get exactly what you wanted, but entering into every negotiation with a floor (the lowest offer you’re willing to concede) helps you stay strong in the face of pushback.

It also doesn’t mean you’d approach the negotiation with a flippant or careless attitude. It just means that the person who’s operating with optionality on their side automatically has more power.

So how do you put yourself in that position authentically? It’s actually pretty simple: Have a better offer. 

This line of strategy works best if you’re negotiating with a company you’re already employed by, because it gives you the time to get your ducks in a row before coming to the table.

Negotiating with your current employer

Whether that better offer comes from another company, your own business, or a different team inside your current company, you immediately uplevel your negotiating position when you can share—in the spirit of transparency, of course—that you’re weighing your current role against another opportunity. 

While there are plenty of Jedi mind tricks and pricing approaches you can learn from negotiation experts (and we’ll explore some of my favorites in this week’s YouTube video), this is the ultimate cheat code. 

It cuts out all the verbal gymnastics and careful scripting and “win” documentation and boils it down to a very simple, very primal truth: You can walk away if you don’t get what you want. 

That essentially forces the other person to offer you the most they possibly can for what you’re worth to them, and if it’s not enough to be worth your while, you have a decision to make. Stay where you are, or walk.

There’s another upside to employing this strategy: It helps you explore the job market and understand your market rate. 

How do you efficiently secure another job offer?

I’ll state the obvious first: Yes, any other better offer will do, but you’ll get the most juice for your squeeze here if it’s a job offer you’re actually excited about. Apply to companies in your field that you’d be excited to work for. 

How to go about the application process, you ask? 

Well, in my (limited) experience, there are a few best practices that helped me land great gigs:

Leverage LinkedIn. You don’t have to start posting LinkedIn humblebrag monologues or cosplaying a VC, but making sure your LinkedIn profile is #optimized will work wonders. Describe your “position” on your profile in such a way that it’ll be a search result for the types of jobs you want (i.e., if you need to massage the verbiage of your current role a little, do it—they don’t always translate company to company, and you want LinkedIn SEO on your side when recruiters are hunting for new people). 

Personal anecdote: I was a Brand Copywriter at Southwest Airlines when I started working there and eventually ended up doing mostly UX Writing and training under our Principal UX Designer. My official title at the company? “Associate Manager of Customer Strategy.” Bitch, what is that? Nobody knows. I wanted to continue pursuing the path of becoming a UX Writer, so I called myself a UX Writer on LinkedIn, because that was effectively the work I was doing anyway. 

I had the portfolio pieces and experience to back it up, but I would’ve looked qualified for the absolute wrong types of jobs had I called myself what my company was calling me. Calling myself a UX Writer got me hired at Dell (which added another feather in my resume cap), and I began getting recruiter messages from Google, Facebook, JPMorgan Chase, and PayPal for UX Writing jobs—all because my LinkedIn profile was crafted to be a magnet for those types of positions.

Cast a wide net and embrace rejection. Back in the summer of 2020, I was applying for jobs like I was unemployed. I used the “Jobs” feature on LinkedIn to find and apply for roles. It became my little employment hub.

Any company that excited me got an application. Spotify? Check. Pinterest? Yep. Google? Double-yep. I went application crazy and got (mostly) flat-out rejections. I ended up in lengthy interview processes at NerdWallet and PayPal, and eventually ended up getting an offer for a contractor role from Dell. 

The point is: You’re going to get told “no” a lot, but it doesn’t matter. You only need one “yes” to have another offer in hand that you can leverage. If it’s less than you make now, maybe your current market rate is actually lower than you think for your level of experience—or maybe your current employer is actually pretty good, and that’s worthwhile information to know, too.

Molding your experience for jobs you actually want

If you’re casting a super wide net, you can’t mold your profile to fit every single application—but it’s worthwhile to open 5–10 job postings that appeal to you on separate tabs. Look for common phrasing or experience requirements, and make sure you’re using the same type of language that’s coming up frequently in your own profile.

Practically every single job I’ve ever gotten (or had a good shot at getting) had nothing to do with who I knew or what I applied for—it happened because something on my profile showed up in a recruiter’s search. 

But if you’re reading about negotiation, you’ve probably already got your job offer

Great, so we’ve hit the high points on how to get another offer that you can leverage in a negotiation with your current employer. What if you’re negotiating with a new company? 

Negotiating with a new company that’s offering you a job

Know that it’s unlikely the number they’re coming in with is the top of the range they’re authorized to offer. (It’s probably nowhere near the top, unless you’re way overqualified.)

All that to say: They’re giving themselves breathing room because they’re expecting you to negotiate. When you’re in that position, there are a few things you can discuss regarding your old compensation that can help juice it a little and give you some leverage:

• Your old 401(k) or HSA match, if you had one

• Your old bonuses or profit-sharing

• Any other benefits that had monetary value

Stack that shit one on top of the other: If your base pay at your old employer was $60,000 but they gave you a $4,000 match, a $1,000 bonus, and a $500 stipend, your old compensation wasn’t $60,000. It was $65,500.

If your new offer from another company comes out the gate at $72,000, you can say:

“Thank you so much for the offer. I’m so excited about this opportunity and really grateful for it. My current compensation is in the high $60s, and in order to make leaving my current role worthwhile, I’m hoping for at least a 15% increase from my current compensation. Is $75,000 doable?” 

If you have other bargaining chips, like being overqualified or leaving your current company before a bonus hits, you could ask for even more. 

But in that one (totally reasonable) request, you may have just increased your base pay from $60,000 to $75,000. It’s only $3,000 more for them (a blip!) but a meaningful increase for you.

Just make sure you’re actually happy with the number you’re proposing. If they say yes to it, it’s likely the negotiation ends there. You can’t exactly come back later and say, “Cool, so what about $78,000?” 

The reality, though, is that you’ll probably already get offered quite a bit more than what your current employer is paying you, so this trick only works if you can juice your current compensation enough to give yourself that springboard.

I’ve used this tactic three times and it’s never failed me.

If for some reason it doesn’t work, you can try leveraging a bonus (or other reward) from your current position that you’re forgoing in the job switch for a one-time signing bonus.

For example, if your current employer does a cash bonus or profit-sharing of $5,000 per year and you’ve been offered a new job a few months before that’s scheduled to hit, you can use that “lost” bonus as a bargaining chip:

“I’m so excited about this opportunity, but I’m set to receive a performance bonus at work in a couple of months, and since I’ve earned it, I’d really like to receive it on principle. Would you be open to matching it in a signing bonus?”

(These scripts aren’t gospel, but hopefully they illustrate the point.)

What about research using Glassdoor or other sites that share salary data?

This information can be a little difficult to wield tactfully, depending on the relationship you have with the manager or recruiter in question.

“Well, Glassdoor says the average salary for this job is $82,000, not $75,000.”

You may be met with a, “Cool—and?” unless you have a masterful way of leveraging it. I like to use these ranges on salary transparency sites as guideposts for what I can talk a recruiter up to for an unrelated reason (or, if you have a good relationship with your manager, a less clandestine approach may work just fine).

For example, you make $60,000 ($65,500 when padded; let’s round up to $66,000), they offer $72,000, but you see $85,000 on Glassdoor. 

(There’s a chance it’s higher on Glassdoor because those inputting the self-reported data have more experience, but that’s neither here nor there—you still want to ask for what you think you can feasibly get.)

If you have $85,000 in your head as the “average” or the “ceiling,” you really just have to come up with a reason to inch closer to that. You’ve heard my go-to tactic, but unless you’re obviously overqualified or have an extenuating circumstance you can wield, it may be difficult to play the “I’m worth more” card until you’re actually inside and can ~justify~ said value.

You’re probably aware (if you’ve gone through the job application process before) that the recruiter will ask for a ballpark number. This is to make sure your expectations for the role’s compensation are on the same planet as what they can actually offer you, so they don’t waste your time (and vice versa). I know traditional advice is not to give an answer, but I think there are creative ways to approach this in states without salary transparency laws.

How to answer the question, “What are your salary expectations?”

While this question can feel like a trapdoor, how you answer it depends on where you are in the process.

Let’s say you’re only willing to leave your current company for $70,000 or more, but you’d be thrilled with $80,000. If the top end of their range is $60,000, you’d probably rather know that up front so you don’t waste your time in the interview process (and if there are other openings that are better suited for you in the company, they can shuffle you there instead).

Refusing to give a number or deflecting can make it seem as though you’re not sure what you’re worth or what the role should pay, so if it’s early in the process, I like to say something like this:

“It’s hard to specify a target right now without knowing what the role entails and what success looks like, but I’m hoping to be somewhere in the (here’s where you give a very padded range!) $75,000 to $85,000 range.”

It’s unlikely you’ll undershoot a realistic estimate if you Glassdoor-stalk the role ahead of time, though there’s always a chance they had you pegged at $95,000 and now they’re looking at you with dollar signs in their eyes because they know you’ll probably take $80,000. It’s a risk you can mitigate with proper due diligence. 

If you’re just a little over what they can offer, they’ll tell you, but I went through a screening call once where I told them I was expecting something in the range of $120,000 to $140,000 and they told me flat-out that the cap for the position was $95,000, but that they’d keep me in mind for more senior roles in the future. 

If I had played coy, I would’ve been majorly pissed after wasting all the time on the process to learn the maximum salary was way below my target.

I know this isn’t traditional advice, but in my experience, throwing out numbers that actually excited me has never backfired. 

I’m not an expert

…but I think my track record speaks for itself:

• 2017: Started at $52,000 (didn’t negotiate because this was more money than my 21-year-old self could fathom)

• 2018: Negotiated a raise after one year to $60,000 (15%)

• 2019: Negotiated another raise after another year to $66,000 (10%)

• 2020: Switched companies when I was offered a base pay of $108,000 (when I made the copywriter > UX writer switch!) (63%)

• 2021: Negotiated up to $115,000 (6%) with $25,000 in bonuses and stock for a total compensation of $140,000

…and now I’m a post-acquisition business owner who’s faced with tough negotiations more than I’d like, and still trying to find novel, better ways to increase my income.

A wealth gap so gappy, it makes the Boomers look egalitarian

The young adults of today are shuffled into a system that creates even bigger winners and losers than the one their parents’ generation faced—which means they may find themselves priced out of the lifestyles they enjoyed as kids, even if their professional success rivals or even exceeds that of their parents.

According to data from the Federal Reserve’s 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances, the median net worth of someone aged 30–34 is about $19,000—while the net worth of a “Top 1%” 30- to 34-year-old is $1.37m. That’s a whopping 70x larger than the median for the age bracket. 

The story is even more damning for the 35–39 camp, where the median net worth is about $36,000 while the 1% net worth is $2.8m—77x larger. 

For comparison, the “60–64” group that’s inclusive of boomers has a 1% net worth that’s 60x larger than their median counterpart, and the 65+ camp’s 1% net worth is 54x larger than the median. A veritable socialist utopia, huh?!

So that’s median and 1% — but what type of wealth is considered “middle class”?

According to Pew Research Center, the median wealth (adjusted for inflation) of someone considered “middle class” overall in the US is $125,000. If one examines the “middle-of-the-road”-aged millennials (those 30-34 in 2019 when the data was collected), only the top 20% had a net worth that hit this middle class median wealth threshold. Those in the 20th percentile had a negative net worth, and those in the 50th percentile had a net worth of around $20,000.

You could probably explain some of this away by the simple factor of age; it’s common to have more debt when you’re young and accrue more wealth over time as your investments compound (for example, the median net worth for the “50-54” crowd was $122,000). 

For that reason, it’s probably fair to say that young people have a decent shot of aging into middle class wealth.

But how do we explain the sub-cohort of millennials that are thriving far beyond the historical average, when the majority clearly aren’t? 

Meet the millennial 1%

So how much do you need to earn to call yourself a millennial 1%er? 

Based on income alone, if you’re under 35, you’re a “top 1%” earner if your household earns more than $225,000. Something to #strive for, I suppose. 

My friend Nick wrote a great piece on Of Dollars & Data, so please enjoy this chart he labored over that shows top percentile earnings by age range:

And while income can be a good indicator of financial success, net worth tends to be a heartier measure of “things going right for longer,” as it’s more permanent than income (that can go away with little warning). To have a 1% millennial net worth (aka to be in the top 620K of the 62M existing millennials), you’d need to have socked away between $600,000 and $2.8M, depending on which cohort you belong to within the millennial spectrum. 

Sure, a 25-year-old can luck into a really great gig earning $250,000 per year—but how does one amass $2M by age 30? 

That’s a little trickier, and requires more digging. 

Because most millennials are still too young to have amassed decades of wealth from a successful career, the biggest factors in millennial net worth outcomes are whether or not they have student loans, if they own property, and their incomes. (Note that two of the three are strongly correlated to the amount of wealth their parents have.)

Because who are the millennials’ parents? The Boomers, baby! The Boomers, who are collectively poised to pass down approximately $70 trillion, are the single-richest group on planet Earth. 

(They hold more than half of all US wealth, and control about 17% of all wealth globally, a fact that really begs the question: How do we recreate the post-WWII economy without another World War?)

Student loans & property

I asked Canadian personal finance expert Bridget Casey, who wrote a piece called “There Is No Such Thing as a Millennial Middle Class,” to weigh in on the show this week, edited here for brevity: 

“It’s called the ‘Funnel of Financial Privilege.’ If someone receives some financial advantage from their parents, there’s a high likelihood that they received others—and those benefits tend to accrue. 

Someone whose parents could afford to give them a down payment are likely the same parents who could afford to pay for their post-secondary, who tend to be the same parents that can probably afford to pay for a good chunk of your wedding.

It becomes a funnel that pushes [their children] to a really high net worth much earlier in life than people who didn’t have any of those advantages.”

So it stands to reason that millennials whose parents foot the bill for college (and maybe even gifted them the down payment for their first home, or provided an interest-free loan) are in a radically different position today than those who did not have this leg up. 

Now, I realize that “some people just have rich parents!” doesn’t feel like a particularly revolutionary finding, but there’s a double whammy at play here: Not only did access to family capital allow this group to avoid taking out debt early in life (debt that doesn’t have an appreciating hard asset to offset it, mind you), but it also granted them access to an asset class that was on the brink of being propped up by expansionary monetary policy. 

Real estate’s all about timing, and millennials were between the ages of 15 and 30 in 2011 when the real estate market bottomed. The eldest millennials were in a prime position to buy their first properties right as real estate was cheapest. And it wouldn’t remain cheap for long, though as long as you got in before 2020, you saw the value of your asset skyrocket. 

Elder millennials with generous parents (or highly paid jobs!) were well-positioned to take advantage of one of the largest downturns in history. 

This theory sounds intuitively true, but is it accurate? We can pressure-test it: According to a Coldwell Banker luxury report that’s cited ad nauseam online, 92% of millennial millionaires own property. The average number of properties a millennial millionaire owns is 3, and their average real estate portfolio value is $1.4M. 

And because real estate is an asset class that primarily uses leverage to generate returns, this group’s parents wouldn’t have to be the yacht-owning, company-leading, Rockefeller types—a single, large cash infusion from a decently well-to-do family member at the right time can spark a mushrooming real estate portfolio, if you know what you’re doing. 

Of course, that’s not to suggest that every millennial real estate mini mogul got a large cash infusion from a family member—unfortunately, there’s no data to tell us how common that is. But it stands to reason that those with generous parents were more well-positioned than those in generations past, if for no other reason than the housing crash in the early aughts was the largest of all time.

Will the “Great Wealth Transfer” be the Great Equalizer? Probably not

According to Cerulli Associates in 2019, millennials are estimated to inherit $68T from the Boomers over the next decade or so. On its face, this sounds (?) like a good thing—the millennial generation as a whole is about to get a hell of a lot richer and close the gap, right? Start buying shares of $SBUX now!

Wrong! The Federal Reserve’s analysis shows that millennials who are already in the top 10% of the income distribution are twice as likely as millennials in the bottom 50% to receive an inheritance.

Per New York Magazine, “The millennial rich and upper-middle class will be the wealthiest [generation] America has ever known. Working-class millennials, meanwhile, are poised to enjoy less economic security than their parents, as their wages fail to keep pace with the rising costs of housing and health care.”

Based on these two factors alone—higher education costs and housing—you start to get two radically different classes of millennial experience, and variations of the two somewhere in between.

So what’s a 99% millennial to do?

History would tell us that—to some extent—it’s statistically likely that more of this generation will age into the middle class over time. 

But tactically speaking, if you’re dealing with student loans, can’t afford a house, and don’t stand to inherit a bunch of money from your rich-ass Boomer parents, there’s really only one piece of the puzzle we touched on today that doesn’t rely as fully on external factors: Your income. 

Developing more marketable skills, working to surface more opportunities more frequently, trying different things…these are the highest points of leverage for many young people without the other tailwinds we described today, like family wealth or a house you bought in Boulder in 2012. It’s where your time and energy are likely going to go the farthest and provide the highest ROI.  

If you’re trying to determine where to focus your energy as a millennial in 2025, I think the answer is clear, if dystopian: Human capital.

Because this post is going to border on spiritual, I want to make this fat, practical disclaimer first: I am arguing that it is more economically advantageous for you to embody an abundance mindset. Regardless of your belief system, this will get you farther ahead.

The best example I can think of for scarcity vs. abundance mindset are two of my friends – and after I describe their personalities, you’ll probably be able to guess which friend is now more of an acquaintance. You’ll also probably be able to guess which one has become more abundant in her financial situation.

These friends started out in financially similar situations with comparable salaries.

But when I’d go grab a few things at the store with one of them, we’d no sooner have exited the threshold of Kroger’s automatic doors than she’d Venmo request me for half the amount. “Scarcity Mindset Friend requests $5.12.” You know the type. Sometimes it’s good to be on top of your Venmo requests so people don’t forget, but there’s usually some level of “It’ll come out in the wash!” that’s mutually agreed upon in friendship.

The energy around the behavior was urgent and untrusting – if I’m not in control of this $5.12, I’ll never get it back because you’ll forget or you won’t want to pay me back and I need this $5.12 because my paycheck isn’t for another week and and and and—

This stream of consciousness leads nowhere positive, because the energy is negative. And at the risk of revealing my true status as an aspiring Woo-Woo McGee, the more you emit these radio waves of I don’t have enough, the more you create situations in which that becomes true (but more on that in a little bit).

Now let’s take a peek behind Door #2, on the other end of the scarcity/abundance spectrum.

This friend insists on treating you. Coffee after class? She’ll physically block you from the cash register so she can cover your nitro cold brew. Insist you don’t want anything? She’ll come back with a venti version of whatever she got and hand it to you, smiling. You get the sense with this friend that she’s absolutely not keeping score.

While you could spin this case study a few different ways, it’s my go-to example for scarcity vs. abundance because I became friends with the woman behind Door #2 after being accustomed to the prior nickel-and-diming method of navigating the financial ebbs and flows of life. “I brought wine to a party and you had two glasses? Well.. aren’t you going to Venmo me for that?”

So one day (during a coffee date), I told her: “You are so generous.”

“It’s abundance mindset.”

I don’t know what that is, but it sounds made-up, I thought.

Abundance mindset is the belief that you have enough – and not only do you have enough, but you will always have what you need. It is, in its truest essence, a trust and belief in yourself and your ability.

In the next few years, I observed different paths for these two individuals. One of them has stayed more or less stagnant in their financial standing and career trajectory, gripping the reins tightly – and the other has seen exponential growth in her income and potential.

You could (and probably will) argue that this anecdotal example is a shallow coincidence, but I’d love to invite you to think of people in your life who fit these same archetypes. I would be willing to bet those who walk through life with an attitude of abundance are exposed to more opportunity than those who do not.

Why does an abundance money mindset actually create more abundance?

It’s certainly not superstition – instead, it’s the qualities of openness and generosity that predispose you to better opportunities, an expanded network, and a bias toward risk and action.

Think about the microcosm in the example above: Which friend would you be more inclined to treat for lunch? Which friend do you think you’d rather travel with? If you were given the opportunity to attend a free event and could bring a plus-one, which one would you call?

To quote my Catholic elementary school education, when you give of yourself to others, they will give of themselves unto you. (Or something like that – it’s like the golden rule meets ECON 101, with a grammatically dense twist.)

That same energy that dictates the small, person-to-person level interaction governs the way the rest of the world interacts with you, too.

Think about the way you’d apply an abundance mindset or a scarcity mindset when it comes to investing: You notice you have a few hundred dollars left over at the end of every month that hasn’t been accounted for in the Save & Invest tab of your budget yet.

The scarcity mindset looks at this and says, “I might need that later. I’m going to keep it in checking just in case something comes up.”

The abundance mindset says, “Wonderful. I’ll increase my automatic transfer to general investing – clearly I’ve outgrown my old expectations for myself, and it’s time to level up. There will always be another paycheck.”*

*The personal finance Mother Hen in me feels the need to disclaim here that, in this scenario, both examples already have emergency funds. This is truly leftover money that they could either hoard or invest.

The abundance mindset is quick to recognize when it’s time to grow, take a risk, and pursue more – because the foundation is trust that there will always be enough.

You show up differently for life when you believe there’s an abundance of wealth and opportunity waiting for you. Remember “self-fulfilling prophecies” from high school literature? Turns out it’s a thing in life, too. You’ll bounce back faster from disappointments, you’ll become more psychologically resilient, and, as a result, put yourself out there faster and more frequently if you believe good things are in store for you.

Since so much of career growth and wealth-building is about having time and consistency on your side, it behooves you to adopt an aggressive strategy that allows you to pack more into each and every year of your life. You can’t pack very much in if you’re feeling bad for yourself and intermittently swearing off LinkedIn because you didn’t hear back from a company.

The scarcity mindset says: “I’ll never get a job better than the one I have now, so I’m not even going to try.”

The abundance mindset says: “I must not have gotten that job because something bigger and better is waiting for me – I better go start pursuing that bigger and better thing with even more tenacity, because this rejection is proof that it’s out there. Otherwise, I would’ve gotten this job.”

How can a scarcity mindset hold you back?

The irony of a scarcity mindset is that it’s self-defeating – the counterintuitive goal of scarcity is to protect you from failure. And with the walls that you build around your checking account to keep everything sealed in water-tight, you inadvertently shut out more.

A scarcity mindset is the white-knuckle grip that tells you if you let go for even a second, everything will disappear – that you’ve built a precarious house of cards that you need to relentlessly guard.

Of course, most of us know that growth – and not incremental, inch-by-inch growth, but exponential growth – requires taking calculated risks. Someone who believes there’s a metaphoric safety net underneath them will almost certainly jump with more faith and confidence than someone who does not.

This shows up in our career paths, in our approaches to money (I can’t even begin to tell you how often I hear, “I would invest, but I don’t want to lose money!” to which I say, “Well, you’re certainly losing money allowing your cash to drop by 2% in value to inflation every year in your savings account!”), and in our relationships.

The direct correlation between our relationships and our success

I wish we could amend that saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” to say, “What you know only matters if people want to be around you.”

In other words, as much as we’d all love to sink under the covers and bask in the blue glow of Hour 7 of an HBO Max binge and turn the iMessage notifications off forever, your success – to some degree – hinges on likability.

Think about your own work and life for a second, and think about some of the most magnetic people you know. I’d surmise they’re doing pretty well for themselves. That’s because businesses are made up of human beings, and human beings like to be around people who are generous, charismatic, and cooperative.

Combining competence (read: a generally above average level of talent) with a likable personality will almost certainly take you farther in life than JUST a lot of talent. You can point to anomalies; glitches in the matrix who people love to exalt as proof that this isn’t true (Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg), but there’s a reason there are only a handful of names that come to mind.

You know whose names probably aren’t coming to mind? The names of the other 498 CEOs in the S&P 500 who aren’t freakish super geniuses, but instead people who were good at their jobs and generally likable.

This is good news for most of us who are going to have an easier time developing traits like “generous” than we would joining the ranks of 1%-level intellect.

This is also why the woman who insisted she treat me to coffee and would stop on our walk to Starbucks to pop into three different storefronts to say hello to someone she knew went from making $38,000/year to $10,000/month in four years – because her abundance mindset allowed her to trust her instincts when a different industry welcomed her in, and she nurtured the relationships within it enough to become her own self-employed brand.

It all starts with believing it’s out there for you

…and that’s why this topic often has spiritual underpinnings – but I want you to know that it doesn’t have to. Yes, you’ll probably have an easier time believing that an abundance of opportunity awaits you if you believe there’s something out there in the universe bigger than you that’s leaving you breadcrumbs to guide you forward on your path, but you could forego that line of thinking entirely and still employ this methodology: Self-fulfilling prophecy is merely the principle that you create your own reality. Generosity begets generosity. Lack begets lack.

Of course, I think it’s more fun to believe in breadcrumbs from the universe. This is how I think of the “great mystery” – as a literal mystery, or puzzle I have to solve for myself. What does it mean that some concept has come into my consciousness four times today through different avenues? Why do I have the urge to go this way to the studio instead of that way? Where’s this instinctual pull to reach out to that one woman coming from, and am I going to listen to it?

You can take the idea of abundance magic as near or far as you’d like to, but I ask you this: What do you have to lose? What would it hurt to trust, even if just for a little bit, that you’re on a path to wealth and abundance, and behave accordingly? What jobs would you apply for? What opportunities would you pursue? Who would you talk to?

As you look back on the last few years, I’ll bet you can see how each opportunity – and sometimes, how one, single choice – led you down a completely different path. There are probably some instances in which your life would be completely different had you not done that one thing, for better or worse. If you let the energy that guides your decisions come from a place of abundance, I bet you’ll identify more opportunity and choose differently.

It’s not woo-woo if it makes you rich, right?