Transforming Financial Futures For Millennials And Gen Z – Exclusive Interview With Ibi Ibru
- Jun 5, 2024
- 6 min read
Ibi Ibru (CFEI) is a certified personal finance educator and coach on a mission to develop intentional wealth-building in Millennials and Gen Zs. She has helped her clients start investing, manage their money better, increase their overall income and positively re-engineer their mindset towards money.
Ibi Ibru, Personal Finance Coach
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
Hi! My name is Ibiyinka ‘Ibi’ Ibru (CFEI®) and I’m a certified personal finance educator & coach on a mission to develop intentional wealth-building in Millennials and Gen Zs.
I’ve helped hundreds of clients start investing, manage their money better, increase their overall income and positively re-engineer their mindset towards money.
I teach personal finance strategies designed specifically for Millenials and Gen-Z’s who want to make more money and build their dream life - it’s my job to show them how to use the foundational steps of wealth building to build the lives that they want.
I have a BSc in Neuroscience from King's College London and an MSc in Management from Imperial College Business School London and worked for over 9 years of experience in the corporate world across financial services, consulting and financial technology.
I spend my free time reading, going to the beach, scrolling through Netflix for new shows to watch with my husband and chasing my toddlers around!
What inspired you to create Money Start Co LLC, and what gap in the market were you aiming to fill?
In 2018, the year I got married, I realised that despite working for the last four years, I had little to show for it. I had two degrees from prestigious universities and had a good job in a reputable industry. Yet, I had no savings or investments and was living paycheck to paycheck, barely making ends meet each month.
I had assumed that my finances would eventually sort themselves out, but after four years of being pretty much always broke, I knew I needed to get INTENTIONAL about my finances. Even though I was determined to change my financial situation, I had no idea where to start or if it was even achievable for me.
Through trial and error, I figured out a strategy that worked, which now forms the core of my business offerings.
What shocked me the most was realizing how many other 20/30-somethings were in the same boat—struggling silently with their finances, feeling 'behind,' and believing everyone else had it all figured out.
I launched this business to dispel the shame, fear, and anxiety that many Millennials and Gen Z have when it comes to money.
My goal is to help people break free from being 'stuck' and reach the financial well-being they've always wanted.
In what ways does Money Start Co LLC differentiate itself from other financial services or investment platforms?
There are two ways Moneystart is different to other financial education platforms out there.
The first is that aside from teaching how to manage money and grow investments - we actually help our clients discover ways they can make more money, within and outside of their existing careers.
The main reason a lot of Millennials and Gen Zs feel like they can’t build wealth effectively is because they feel like they’re just about making ends meet. A lot of people in my generation want to build a strong financial foundation but figure they’ll start when they’re older and have more money.
This ofcourse means that most of them miss out on the major advantage of investing in your 20s/ early 30s, which is allowing your money to grow over time!
One of the core modules in our coaching program (Multiply), is solely focused on proven strategies people can apply to their lives to make more money in their existing careers and build additional streams of income via side hustles or businesses.
The second thing that sets Moneystart apart is our consideration of your financial mindset and mental health and how that impacts your relationship with money and your financial decisions.
People often discount the fact that financial habits and mindsets that they may have picked up from their childhood, their parents, their environment or past experiences might be negatively impacting the way they view money and therefore their financial decisions. Stress, anxiety, fear and shame are the emotions most commonly associated with money and these emotions usually stem from a feeling of a lack of control, lack of knowledge and simply just feeling stuck, which ofcourse impacts daily life.
We have entire courses, workshops and digital resources dedicated to helping people learn how to properly identify the beliefs they hold towards money, overcome mental financial limitations and train their brains to make them wealth magnets.
At Moneystart, we use a holistic approach to building wealth and achieving financial freedom. We do this by first arming people with the tools they will always need to make more money at various points in their lives and careers, making sure they have no harmful mental barriers and
then building on the tools to manage money and start investing in line with their personal goals to put them on the path to financial freedom.
What is the biggest mistake that you see millennials and Genz’s make when it comes to building wealth?
Most people don’t want to hear that building wealth takes time.
It’s the critical component I see missing in a lot of people's plans for their finances and how they want their money to evolve.
People typically jump straight into investing because of FOMO (fear of missing out), because they know it’s the way to make your money grow and work for you.
However, jumping into trending investments before doing your own research first and having a strong financial foundation ( at least having an emergency fund) is more harmful than helpful to your finances overall because you end up having to sell off the investments to fund emergencies or expenses or worse, losing money!
Building wealth is sort of like building a house; you have to have a stable foundation or the house will crumble. A well-designed house takes time to build and the same goes for finances and building your way to financial freedom.
As a generation that grew up in the internet age, we also have to deal with distractions on a scale that I don’t think generations before us had to when it comes to spending.
We see hundreds of images and videos a day, from an algorithm that’s studied our habits and knows exactly what we want. This makes it much harder to control spending and weigh the costs of buying the next new thing versus making progress on financial goals.
Making sure you have stable and diversified streams of income, a budget you can consistently stick to, savings that tie into your short-term goals and an investment portfolio that feeds into your long-term goals is something that will take longer than a few months to build.
Luckily, the mistake of not allowing for time when it comes to your financial journey can be easily corrected by setting small milestone goals on your journey to your overall big picture.
If you could change one thing about your industry, what would it be and why?
I think there needs to be a lot more transparency and thoughtfulness from the experts and teachers of financial education.
I think that sometimes while trying to position themselves as authorities in the personal finance space, a lot of experts unintentionally alienate the market because their focus is so heavily on establishing their position as thought leaders that they forget to show their audience that they were once not always an expert that had finances all figured out.
When educating on a subject that is as socially and emotionally sensitive as money, I think it is important to establish a welcoming and supportive environment that doesn't further perpetuate the idea that finance is only for very intelligent people, or people who work in the financial industry or have a certain type of privilege.
I speak a lot about the mistakes and missteps I have made on my financial journey because they serve as good learning for my clients to not repeat my mistakes and it helps people know that they aren’t alone in their financial situation and there is always hope to make improvements and get to where you want to be.
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