Camilo Maldonado
Camilo Maldonado.
- Camilo Maldonado was born in Colombia and as a child came to the US, where he was raised in poverty by his widowed mother.
- After graduating from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, he got an MBA from Harvard Business School. His career then took him to Wall Street and start-ups before he launched a personal finance site with his twin brother.
- Here are seven money lessons that have a larger impact to your financial stability than you realize, and that he believes everyone should learn before they hit age 30.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
I recently turned 30 years old, which is a scary time financially. You're old enough to feel like you should have made more progress financially, but young enough that realistically you are still battling the challenges of a modern young adult, like paying back student loans and an increasing cost of living.
According to the 2014 Census figures published in August of 2018, the median net worth of single-person households under the age of 35 is $4,166. If you exclude equity from a primary home and the related mortgage, the figure drops to $3,310.
They say that 30 is the new 20 - and from a financial standpoint, it certainly looks that way. It used to be common to work your way through college and graduate at 22, debt-free, and immediately start saving for a down payment on your home. It's virtually impossible to do that now, since the cost of tuition has increased nearly 8x faster than wages have over the past 30 years.
Today's new graduates are saddled with tens of thousands of student loans. Upon graduation, you're not even thinking about saving for a down payment on a home because for the next few years, you're working to repay the student loan companies.
It can be scary to turn 30 and feel like you face an uphill battle from the very beginning, but there are a few lessons that you must learn if you are determined to build a solid financial foundation for your future.