Erin Lowry

Erin Lowry is an American personal finance author whose Broke Millennial series teaches financial fundamentals to young adults with humor and directness that the category usually lacks.

Erin Lowry published Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together in 2017, addressing the specific financial situation of young adults who earn money but have no coherent relationship with it — no budget, no savings plan, no understanding of debt, and significant anxiety about all of the above. The book covers basics that are genuinely basic — what a credit score is and how it works, the difference between a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA, how to negotiate a salary — without condescension.

The Broke Millennial series has expanded to include Broke Millennial Takes On Investing (2019) and Broke Millennial Talks Money: Scripts, Stories, and Advice to Navigate Awkward Financial Conversations (2020). Each volume addresses a specific aspect of financial life: the first book covers getting started; the investing book covers building a portfolio; the conversations book covers the interpersonal dimensions of money — how to talk to a partner about financial incompatibility, how to handle money imbalances in friendships, how to approach the subject of inheritance with aging parents.

Lowry writes with the voice of someone slightly ahead of her readers on the learning curve rather than far above them — someone who made the mistakes and learned from them and is reporting back. This proximity to her audience’s actual experience distinguishes her work from personal finance books written by people who have been wealthy long enough to forget what it felt like not to be.