I love my friends, and I love a coffee date where we debrief life and get to share solid tips back and forth.

My friends bring amazing self-care and makeup ideas into my life, and I get to bring vintage fashion and rad money ideas into theirs.

After a recent babe chat fest, I thought I’d share a few of the top questions I ask and tips I give the people I love the most whose success feels most important to me.

I want you to sock some away for your retirement.

I really want you to have enough later. Even if your parents have money now. Even if it’s 40 years away. Please, please, put some money into a retirement account (ideal) or investment property (a backup strategy) — and if your work gives you a match, babe meet the match and TAKE THE MONEY.

What’s up with your student loans – you’re dealing with them, right?

Are you in deferment or IBR based on your income? What’s your plan? Do you need to see about refinancing or see if you qualify for public service loan forgiveness?

If you’re making under $38k for the love of god auto-deposit at least $50/mo into a ROTH IRA.

You’re paying like no taxes and you’ll never pay tax again on this money. This is not a joke, this is math. Will you trust me, now that I know what it’s like to pay 30% in taxes, and just set it up? Plus you can take it out after 5 years if you really need it later, so it’s not a forever thing.

Have you ever added up how much you spend on car services or takeout each month?

Almost everyone I know who lives in a city is making that sexist craphead at Uber* SO RICH not even realizing it because all the car service apps – on purpose – don’t summarize our spending. If it’s not that stealing yr dollars then it might be just how expensive TAKEOUT is. Add up what you spend on one of these in a month for me, and then tell me you don’t have money for savings or retirement.

Are you getting paid enough?

If not, how can we get you more income? Trying to figure out what we’re “worth” at jobs is tricky territory – it tends to be a lot simpler to acknowledge if we have “enough” or not. If you don’t have enough, I know how it is. How can we get you closer to enough? To enough? PAST enough?

Do you leverage your time spent working?

Cuz we gotta hang out and slay, balancing work time is majorly important. Is your small business helping you invest for retirement, pad your income, or create deductions to manage taxes? Or is it like… a lot of time and not a lot of money? How might you change that so it give back to you what you put into it? Is your job underpaying you?

It can be easier, sometimes, to do caring things for other people than for ourselves.

So, if you struggle to do super caring things for yourself: consider what you’d do for your BFF, or want to see your best bud doing for themselves — and then, do it for you. Real friends want to see each other succeed.

Be a friend and pass this post along to someone who needs it!

*If you are about consent and #MeToo or Divestment and say you won’t invest because stocks are icky but you take Uber… my friend, there is no gold star but this is a tad hypocritical.