Laura Adams: The Best Advice I Ever Received (Video)

“Make money while you sleep” is the advice Laura Adams heard from her entrepreneur father when she was young. Today, she’s a personal finance expert and the host of the top-rated Money Girl Podcast, and the author of multiple books, including Money Girl’s Smart Moves to Grow Rich. Learn how her lifelong interest in money and building wealth shaped Laura and what she discovered throughout her career, starting as an MBA to being a regular financial authority featured on ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, NPR and other media outlets. Find out what she finds most rewarding about what she does and hear the advice she gives everyone.

Video Transcript:

The best advice my dad ever gave me was to make money while you sleep…. And I've always remembered that, and put that into everything that I've done in my career.

When I was younger, I remember spending afternoons with my dad, just doing fun stuff, and him having a lot of flexibility with his work. And I found out it was because he was an entrepreneur. And because he was an entrepreneur, I thought, you know, this is something that I want to do. I want to have that in my own life. 

I realized that his business was working while he was sleeping. His money that was invested was working while he was sleeping. Even the money sitting in a bank account was earning interest while he was sleeping.

I'm Laura Adams, personal finance expert, author, speaker and spokesperson.

I was one of those kids who really wanted to manage money. I wanted to have my own money. I started learning about it, reading about it, studying at a pretty early age. And then, later on, decided to formalize that education and get an MBA. 

When I was in graduate school, I met a lot of very successful people who were doing well in their career, they were doing well with their education, but they were not doing well with their personal finances. There was a disconnect there. 

And that made me really want to help them and understand-- help them understand their finances better so that they could make better decisions in their personal finances, as well as for their career.

I think that, in many cases, successful people are making a lot of money, and so they're spending a lot of money as well.  And they're going into debt, and thinking, "Well, one day it'll just work out. One day, you know, I'll get that promotion, or the bonus, or the raise, and I'll pay the debt off." 

If you can begin saving for retirement, let's say, in your 20s instead of your 30s, that could mean the difference between having a comfortable retirement or just scraping by. So the earlier you can begin—even if you're just putting away very small amounts of money, it's really going to pay off in the end.

When I get an email from someone and they say “I took your advice and now I have a retirement account.” That just really makes me smile. Makes me happy. 

I think if you don't have the answers on your own, there's nothing wrong with raising your hand and saying, "I need help," whether it's with planning, taxes, retirement-- we're not born knowing the answers. These are all very complicated issues. Personal finances are- are challenging and difficult. So I would encourage anyone who needs help to simply reach out and get it.

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