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would change my life forever.

      “So, do twins run in your family?”

      There's nothing quite like the moment you find out you're going to be a mother. And we all have different experiences, whether we were expecting it or were surprised by it. Maybe you were waiting an exceptionally long time for it to happen or perhaps you waited years to adopt and the phone call finally comes.

      In that moment, when the tech showed me my twins, I felt a healthy dose of shock. Much as my husband and I were trying to start a family, I did not once expect to be staring at a screen with two little dots on it. That was probably evident from the fact that I said, “Holy shit” over and over and over again, completely unfazed by my husband, who kept whispering, “Shhh, stop saying that!”

      I went home that day in a daze, holding the long sheet of ultrasound pictures with little lines pointing to the dots that said, “Twin A” and “Twin B.” I cut one of the pictures out and put it in a frame by our bed, and I stared at it. I just couldn't believe it. I felt different. I had two extra people with me! The responsibility felt enormous, but from that moment forward, it was clear I had to prepare and plan—after I went and vomited in the trashcan, of course.

      One of my core beliefs is that all of us are capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for. On the day I found out about my twins, I truly didn't know how I was going to manage being a mom to two babies. I was 26 years old with a job, a growing side hustle as a blogger and freelance writer, and a husband who was a second‐year medical school student (with such a long, long way to go before he reached the end of his training).

But I knew that, one way or another, I would figure it out. That's the thing; we all have an enormous ability to learn new things and to hone our skills. And, if you're a mom, you already know how to think on your feet. You've already managed incredible levels of responsibility. You know how to plan. And managing your money fits in well with that skill set. Right now, though, you're overwhelmed and you likely don't know where to start. That's why I'm here to help.

      For the past decade, I've been supporting other moms in my career as a personal finance writer and financial educator. Through my work and talking to hundreds of other women, I've noticed that money, more than any other topic, produces the most anxiety and emotional baggage. It's also a source of shame and rarely do women feel confident when talking about it.

      But, the great thing about personal finance is that the knowledge is available to everyone, and you can build wealth once you find a method that works for you. If you picked up this book, I'm hoping it's because something about the title Mom's Got Money: A Millennial Mom's Guide to Managing Money Like a Boss resonated with you.

      I want to encourage you by stating I believe anyone can succeed with money no matter who they are, where they come from, or the type of education they have. Some of you have very different starting lines. You may even be the first person in your family to go to college or open an investment account. You may be wading through generations of financial trauma and unfair setbacks. You may be starting with nothing or recently left an abusive relationship. I see you. The best way I can help, as an ally, is to be your guide and have a steadfast belief in your ability to win with money.

      I will walk you through the steps to gain financial confidence and take control of your finances. This book is more than teaching you about budgeting or how to raise your credit score. It's about helping you recognize your own abilities as a mom and showing you you're highly capable of making financial decisions.

      Right now, you have a lot on your plate. Your family looks to you to make most of the household decisions. Sometimes, the weight of your daily decisions takes a toll. I know it's exhausting to be the glue. But, we have a choice.

We can let this responsibility frustrate us or intimidate us. We can stay up at night worrying if we're making the right decisions for our families. Or, we can step into the role of boss mama with full confidence. Because you see, taking charge doesn't mean being perfect. It means being powerful, being a planner, delegating, and anticipating that mistakes will happen. It takes leadership, some guts, and a little bit of know‐how. And guess what? You have what it takes.

      By the end of this book, you'll no longer be a mom who worries about money and her kids' future. You'll be an organized leader who possesses all the skills necessary to run your family ship effectively.

      You can have a 9‐to‐5 job or be a stay‐at‐home mom or a single mom and still become the boss of your financial life. Stepping into that mindset means you've committed to learning about money, and nothing is going to stop you from improving how your family handles it. It means you have so much fire in you, so much oomph, that nobody—especially not the naysayers—is going to stop you from reaching your goals.

      From now on, when you think about your financial journey, I encourage you to consider that you have limitless potential. I want you to think back to when you became a mom, about how much responsibility you took on. If you can do that, surely you can handle a little thing like money, right?

      But, how can you get there? The best way I can explain it is your brain is incredibly powerful. With it, you have the ability to cultivate a worldview and a mindset that can lead your family and you to a better life. Every single one of us carries within us lessons, triumphs, scars, and failures as they relate to our past, our relationships, and our money. We can use the failures as examples of why we're undeserving of the life we want. We can self‐sabotage. We can be overwhelmed. Or, we can decide to do something different.

      But, in order to do something different, you have to radically shift your mindset. Your mindset is, to put it simply, your outlook on life. For example, when people discuss having a positive mindset, it usually comes with the glass half‐full analogy. But, what many people don't realize is that you can have a friendly, cheerful disposition while simultaneously harboring a negative money mindset, a lack of money confidence, and the weight of intense emotional labor (which I'll explain in full in this chapter).

      Let's start with the first one. A negative money mindset, also called a scarcity mindset, shows up silently. It creeps quietly in the moments when you're deciding whether or not to donate to a cause (“I don't have enough money to donate”). It comes when your child asks to go to camp (“We can't afford that”). It slips in when your boss tells you to enroll in your retirement plan (“I've always been so bad with money. I don't know how to do that”).

      When you have a negative money mindset, you feel like money is hard. It's confusing. You tell yourself it's too complicated, that you've always been bad with money, and that you can't figure it out. You try to learn about money but you quickly get overwhelmed. You might not want to ask someone for help because you feel like, as an adult and a mother, you should know the answers already. When you have a scarcity mindset, you believe—whether you realize it or not—that you don't have enough. It's hard to part with your money. You're afraid someone's going to come and take it. The worry sometimes keeps you up at night. Negative money mindsets are tricky like that.

Now let's couple that with a concept called emotional labor that's been gaining popularity as it relates to how women feel within their households. In 2017, Gemma Hartley wrote an article for Harper's Bazaar entitled “Women Aren't Nags—We're Just Fed Up.”¹ This article deeply resonated with women, so much so that Hartley wrote a book on the same topic the following year, Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward. Emotional labor, as she describes it, is the mental weight women feel because they manage hundreds of tiny, seemingly insignificant tasks for their households and their children.

Same‐sex couples also experience emotional labor. Trish Bendix wrote a response article to Hartley's piece entitled “I Live With a Woman—We're Not Immune to Emotional Labor,” which was also published in Harper's Bazaar.² In it, Bendix explains that same‐sex couples can struggle with the same imbalance. For example, if one member of the partnership works from home, she might feel like

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