Five years after launching this blog, I’m stoked that Young Money: A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties, is finally available for purchase! Buy your copy below:
The last couple of weeks were, to say the least, pretty wild. Highlights include, but are not limited to:
Appearing on Scott Galloway’s podcast, not just once, but twice (and facing accusations of being a nepo baby from the comment section).
Chopping it up in the Bloomberg HQ with Barry Ritholtz.
Renting the NASDAQ for a day.
Seeing my physical book in the Barnes & Noble by my apartment.
Receiving dozens, if not hundreds, of emails from total strangers who loved the book.
Writing a book is hard. Seeing it in the world is cool. I will, over the next few weeks, share more details on both the book writing and book marketing process, as it’s a unique experience that’s tough to understand until you’ve gone through it yourself.
But for now, I want to focus on one particularly funny concern I had while going through the book promotion process: I wasn’t entirely sure how to “describe” my book when telling people what, exactly, it was.
Calling Young Money a “memoir” felt weird, as “memoirs” seem to be written by silver-haired business magnates reflecting on their professional endeavors or immigrants who survived their treacherous journeys across raging seas in homemade rafts to reach a better life.
So my elevator pitch usually settled into some version of, “Life advice for 20-somethings,” which, I guess, is directionally correct, but it also just comes off as dry. And, as I hilariously realized later, this description alienates anyone older than a 20-something. I received at least 15 emails last week from folks saying some version of, “I was really looking forward to reading your book, but I figured that I’m too old to learn anything from it since I’m 33.”
After replying to the 15th email saying that this book was written about my 20s, but it does not at all exclude all of the non-20-somethings from reading, enjoying, and resonating with it, I realized I probably need to clarify what, exactly, Young Money is for those who haven’t read.
Young Money: A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties is a memoir about my conflicting desires for achievement and adventure in the brief window of post-college adulthood, and my reflections on that period as I approach 30.
Young Money is not, as I have sometimes called it, “life advice for 20-somethings,” though many folks have since deemed it “essential reading for 20-somethings.” Young Money is the story of my struggle to strike a balance between the pursuit of “fun” and the pursuit of “success,” and my reflections on that period of life.
Five years after launching this blog, I’m stoked that Young Money: A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties, is finally available for purchase! Buy your copy below:
“Advice” tends to be pointed, narrow, and in the year of our lord 2026, outsourceable to an LLM.
Stories, however, are invaluable, because they’re relatable. A good story makes the reader feel seen and understood because it reveals a piece of their own nature through the experiences of someone else. Young Money is a story of a young man trying his best to make the most of his twenties before they were gone, a tale as old as time.
And judging from early readers’ messages, that story had wide appeal. Young Money sold thousands of copies in its first week, and I’ve received 100+ messages from readers who finished the book. From those 100+ messages, two groups of folks seem to really like the book:
“I’m somewhere between ~18 and 30, and this encapsulated exactly how I’ve felt but I didn’t know how to put into words. Thanks for sharing your story.”
“I’m in my 40s - 60s, so I didn’t think I was the target audience, but your story took me back to my youth. Thank you for writing it. I’m buying copies for my kids and my friends kids.”
Screenshots from folks younger than me:
Screenshots from folks older than me:
Why share all of this? Well, first, I’m happy that Young Money has some real traction, and it’s fun to share reviews from the crowd. But more importantly, I wanted to highlight that, while the book might be marketed toward 20-somethings, it’s certainly not only for 20-somethings. Young Money isn’t self-help. It’s a story that some folks might find immediately relatable, but a lot of folks, across all ages, have found valuable.
A couple of other things:
A lot of college students and recent graduates have reached out saying they want to buy copies for their friends as gifts, and I’m now speaking to ~75 students at NYU next month, with events lined up at Columbia Business School and Harvard Business School as well. Given that college students are now going back to school, I want to get Young Money in as many of their hands as possible.
If you’re a college student or employee in a leadership role in Greek Life, athletics, student government, investment clubs, or other organizations on campus, and you’re interested in placing a bulk order of books and/or also want me to speak to your organization, shoot me an email.
Similarly, if your company employees lots of recent graduates, and you think Young Money would be a valuable read for your employees just entering the work force or considering their “next” job, shoot me a note, because I’d love to send you some copies.
And if you’re my age or older, and you already survived that internal conflict in your youth, I think you’ll enjoy my story, and it’s worth checking out as well. Memoirs are so much more fun than “advice.”
As always, thanks for reading and have a great week.
- Jack
And make sure you leave an Amazon review :)
Thanks for clarifying the target audiences for this book! I'm 35 so I didn't feel like advice for 20 somethings would be relevant to me. My own career trajectory is very different from the traditional corporate life to more autonomous life too; I've actually never worked in corporate before, so being self-employed is all I know (it's complicated, but at least I enjoy my work as a psychotherapist). But it sounds like your book is for everyone, even those of us who had a more unconventional career path. :)
Listened to it last week and it captured a lot of things that I've talked to friends about.