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Hello, everyone.
It is Chelsea Fagan.
And I am back with another episode
of The Financial Confessions.
This time, with an unusual guest, a man,
someone we rarely see the show, but also someone
who is an incredibly astute and-- dare I
say-- even funny expert on money.
So he should make for a very interesting conversation.
But first, I wanted to give a quick hello
to our beloved partners with whom
we create every episode of The Financial Confessions.
So as you guys almost certainly know by now,
we make this show in partnership with Intuit.
And if you have not heard of Intuit,
you have almost certainly heard of a lot
of their amazing products.
I am personally someone who has used Mint ever
since the very first moment I decided to get good with money.
That is a full year before I started
at thefinancialdiet.com.
And it was the only app that ever allowed
me to really confront my money.
So I really immediately fell in love with Intuit's products
and wanted to learn more about what else they offer.
And lo and behold, I ended up filing taxes
with TurboTax, which totally simplifies the process.
Another great product they make.
And I now use QuickBooks every single day
to manage my business's finances.
And of course, I still use Mint on my personal accounts.
Basically, Intuit has become an indispensable part
of my financial life.
It helps me make my decisions.
It helps me manage my goals.
And it helps me just get a very clear picture every day
of the exact state of my financial health.
Intuit basically makes everything
you need to do money better.
If you can't wait to get started,
check them out at the link in our description or our show
notes.
So as I promised, we have a man in the studio.
Who let him in?
He is a CFP.
In fact, I've heard you maybe even referred to
as the millennial CFP.
I'll take it.
He's a New Yorker.
He is someone who loves a good tie.
He's an expert on money.
He tweets.
His name is Douglas Boneparth.
Hey.
Hi.
What's up?
Not too much.
Welcome to The Financial Diet.
Thank you so much for having me.
Tell our audience a little bit about you.
Sure.
Sure.
I'm the founder and president of Bone Fide Wealth.
It's a wealth management firm that specializes primarily
in now older high-achieving millennials.
So we don't care how much in assets you have.
We care about where you're going and what
goals you want to accomplish.
And I was one of the first people
to go out and say, hey, I'm going to work with millennials.
And if you did that seven years ago, you got
laughed at in the profession.
Right.
But look who's laughing now.
Is it you?
Yes.
Are you laughing person?
Not.
I'm not-- I think my wife's the one laughing really.
Mostly at me.
Uh.
Yeah, yeah.
We should have a little counter up for how many times you
mention your wife.
For those joining us, so Doug is a man who loves his wife.
Yes.
Mentions her a lot.
And so hopefully, we'll hear a lot more about this elusive
person.
She'll probably come up a lot.
A lot of her financial story is our financial story.
Oh, how nice.
We co-authored a book together.
So I guess that's the next part.
Look at you guys.
We wrote The Millennial Money Fix in the three months
she had off after having our first child.
Yeah.
OK.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We really--
I got tired just hearing that.
Right.
Right.
We really-- you know?
If we're not going to sleep, then we
might as well be productive.
So my wife and I wrote this story
to pretty much address the massive amount of student loan
debt that we've taken out respectively.
And we wanted to show you that if you do understand
personal finance, you can get organized enough
to get out of really precarious situations.
Right.
Something that was very unique to millennials
is the average amount of student loan debt on their heads.
And we wanted to show that you can still
achieve your great things in life
despite these financial realities and obstacles that
are kind of unique to our generation.
So she's an attorney.
Yes.
And you're an MBA.
Yes.
Got it.
So how much-- do you ever disclose how much
student loan debt you have?
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're very forward about it.
It's right in the book.
Right now outstanding balance is just shy of $300,000.
Woo, buddy.
Yeah.
Good gracious.
It's a lot of money, right?
That is a lot of money.
Goodness.
But if you work hard enough and are
deliberate about how you want to build your career
and go after your goals, and prioritize them right,
you can deal with stuff like that.
There's-- you know, humble brag, not really,
but you've got to have a lot of income to deal with that
expense and still put two kids through daycare,
and buy a house, and afford living in that house.
So for all the flak that the generation gets
around millennials don't own homes,
and they can't do x, or start families,
settle down, and get married, I'm
here to tell you that that's just not true.
And there's some real practical things
you can do to get on your way.
I think there are--
I think that's not totally untrue.
I think there is some reality to it
for a lot of people who maybe have similar levels of debt,
but perhaps not the earning potential to go with it.
But we can get to that in a bit.
I'm curious in your particular situation,
so that's quite a significant amount of debt.
Is there any element of your education
or how you took on the debt, how you went through school,
that you regret?
For me and my decision to go get an MBA here in New York,
I have zero regrets about that decision.
I think it was always a goal of mine when I moved to New York.
And I think it was necessary to acquire
a few things that I would need to continue
building my business.
It was a very calculated decision,
down to how many clients I would need
to acquire within graduating to make that student loan payment,
you know, a wash.
And then how to make money on top of that.
And granted, I went to business school
after Heather went to law school.