“What are Your Financial Goals?”

“Great, Katie, I’ve got Zach on the line for this call and I’ll be stepping back to fill an advisory role,” the deep voice assured. I stepped into the fishbowl alcove and slid the glass door closed behind me with a force that revealed my unfamiliarity with the phone room.

Enclosed in the small, transparent nook, I settled into one of the cloth spinning chairs and stationed myself so I could look out at the passerby, presumably working on things that were more important than the conversation I was currently having.

Only a few months into my first full-time job, I was trying to figure out what to do with a steady paycheck.

I cleared my throat. “Sure, Jake, that sounds great,” I squeaked, trying a little too hard to sound comfortable.

“So, Katie,” Zach began, with forced bravado, “What are your financial goals?”

“My goals?” I paused, considering a question that only three months ago would’ve felt entirely preposterous. “I guess I’m just trying to… figure out how much I can save every month?” I answered as if it were a question.

A long pause. Jake spoke up. “Right, great! All right. So… we can help with that.” He seemed determined to maintain some air of certainty in the conversation, of which I was contributing approximately none.

I noticed two older men, both of whom occupied conspicuous leadership positions in my department, conferring in the dining area outside the fishbowl, and became suddenly self-conscious that they could hear my faltering side of a conversation with two financial advisers. I felt as though I had been caught playing dress-up in my mom’s clothes. This is what adults do, right? They talk to financial advisers? Again, a question.

“Right!” Zach repeated, bringing my attention back into the fishbowl. “Why don’t you let us know when you know more about your financial… situation?” he offered.

The two men who had been conferring outside the fishbowl seemed to resolve whatever issue they were discussing and walked in opposite directions. I looked down at the green dress I had plucked carefully from the sale section of a J. Crew Factory store and smoothed the top of it over my lap.

“Well,” I returned, with slightly more confidence, “I already know enough to know that I don’t know what I’m doing.” I was surprised at the frustration in my voice. “I just need to know how much I should save.”

And thus concluded my first call with a financial adviser in the summer of 2017.

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I know now, in retrospect, the men on the phone were probably more interested in selling me a financial product than answering questions about simple budgeting. But I didn’t understand at the time why, in their position as financial advisers, they were unable to answer what was (to me) a simple money question: How much can I afford to save?

I had agreed 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 your money?” I had asked, incredulous to both the industry and obvious social convention).

But much like I had begun rising voluntarily before 7 a.m. and wearing shoes with a heel every day, I was hellbent on giving “young professional” my best shot.

Growing up, I had seen my parents sit on the same side of the kitchen table, hunched over scribbled-on graph paper and the chunky plastic conference phone, a vestige from my mom’s sales job. Their foreheads in one hand and mechanical pencils in the other, they’d concentrate for a seemingly heated conversation twice a year with a man named Dennis – he was their financial adviser.

They exchanged words I didn’t understand, like “allocations” and “mutual funds,” referencing things with names like “529” through strained teeth and exchanging glances with one another as Dennis’s voice cracked through the speaker of the old off-white office phone.

Occasionally one of them would punch the mute button and speak very quickly to the other, in a performance that rivaled the side effects litany at the close of a pharmaceutical ad. Doyoubelievewhathe’ssayingrightnow? Whatdoyouthinkaboutthis?

The whole charade oozed with importance and maturity.

The 9-minute fishbowl conversation was my first genuine attempt at recreating the concerted effort they’d entertain biannually, sans graph paper. I dreamt of the day where I had assets worth doodling about on scrap paper. Until then, I was content to ask sheepishly, So, how much should I save?

Unsatisfied with their answer (a variation of, “Let us know when you know more,” to which I asked, “More what?”), I returned to my desk and pulled up a halfhearted attempt at a Mint budget I had created using Intuit’s clunky but free online spend tracking software.

As I scrolled through my budgets, I wasn’t sure I even knew what I was looking for. $100/month for eyelash extensions? I mean, it sounds OK, right? That’s not that much, is it? Budgeting felt like writing your own rules and then leaving them up to yourself to enforce. What would happen if I made a shit budget? Even if I followed it perfectly, wouldn’t the outcome still be shit?

These were the questions Zach and Jake would never be able to answer, no matter how many licenses they each tested into – because they were personal choices.

The young female’s relationship with a financial adviser lacks even a stereotypical edge because so few young females actually attempt to work with a financial adviser.

Perhaps this is because the average age of a financial adviser is 55 and only 23% are women. If a woman wants to talk to a financial adviser who looks and sounds like her, it’s a little more cumbersome to find one.

And so many of us go through life (or, at least, the early years of young adulthood before marriage) content to shuffle a meager amount of leftover money into a savings account every month that earns 0.1% or – if we’re advanced – open an account with a robo-advisor and start contributing something to a general investing account, but most of us are not approaching our finances with any real systemized plan or intention.

Whether it’s the chicken or the egg, I leave up to interpretation: 68% of women say they’re not even interested in financial planning or investing. This is, perhaps, not surprising, since 81% of women report living paycheck to paycheck, regardless of their income.

This phone call laid a foundation. One of the results was the blog you’re reading right now.