Please don’t misunderstand the title. I’m not encouraging you to use money to buy friendships. Nor am I suggesting you should only be nice to rich people, even though that could pay off when you’re down and out. Jesus teases us with that idea in Luke 16:9, but he is really talking about being shrewd managers of our money. The point I’m making is to treat money very well because the two of you are in a long-term relationship.

That’s also the point of Erin Lowry’s book Broke Millennial and why she established brokemillennial.com. She tells the members of her generation that now is the time to get your financial life together (#GYFLT). She knows her audience and realizes from personal experience that no one teaches young people about money.  

That’s nothing new. No one ever talked to me about money either. A family friend suggested I marry a rich girl because I could learn to love her. But no one said anything about credit scores or diversified portfolios. No one mentioned dollar cost averaging and dividend reinvestment as ways to have more money later in life. No one told me that when you pay off debts it’s like giving yourself a raise. What most people know about money is that you earn it and spend it and try to earn more so you can spend more until you can’t do either one anymore. So where do broke baby boomers go for advice? 

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?” (Luke 14:28).