Julia Cancro ’12 didn’t realize how much more she knew about personal finance than many of her peers. Not until helping a friend did it occur to her that few young professionals receive any education in financial literacy. That prompted a project that became a book, More Than Cash: What To Do with Your Money Now That You’re Finally Making Some.
Cancro’s e-book — published digitally in 2023 “so it’s very Gen Z friendly,” she says — draws on knowledge gathered from childhood lessons from her father, a financial professional. Recognizing that many people don’t have such a resource as they embark on their professional lives — a lack of knowledge that could compromise their financial futures — she set out to provide the benefit of her experience.
You majored in psychology and Spanish. Where did a book about personal finance come from?
When I was in college, like many students, I did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to make sure I was getting the most out of my college experience. And to me, that meant being really engaged in my classes and enjoying what I was learning. I loved my psychology classes. I loved my Spanish classes. I knew I wanted to study abroad in Spain. But I really loved psychology because I enjoy understanding how and why people do what they do and having a name for certain behaviors. I think ultimately that interest in people’s behaviors and what drives them to do things has been a consistent thread in my career. I started my career in merchandising and buying, which is a lot of understanding why people buy certain products, how much money are they willing to spend, what’s motivating them to transact.
How did you get enough financial knowledge to write a book about it?
I was having a conversation with a friend from work in 2021 during the pandemic tech boom. She said, “For the first time in my life, I have accumulated savings and I don’t know what to do with it. I just have it in a checking and savings account, but that’s it.” And it occurred to me that I had a unique advantage growing up, in that my dad was in financial services.
Some of my early memories of money as a kid were rolling pennies and quarters with my dad. I had this Coca-Cola plastic piggybank. When that was full with coins we would sit and roll them and then go to the bank. And he would make me fill out the deposit slip by hand, go to the teller and have a human conversation.
I realized in my conversation with my friend that not everyone grows up with parents who are financially savvy, and that’s a disadvantage. There’s an audience who is financially responsible, who’s not taking on a lot of debt but doesn’t want to become, you know, an options trader or day trader or something. Where do they go for information? And so I just wrote down five different accounts for my friend to think about, and it started from there.
The intention of the book is to help people develop an awareness of a few different financial instruments that would be valuable for someone who doesn’t want to go too deep on any given solution.
Picture a graduate just hired at a first job. What’s the first step that person should take?
Your very first step depends on what situation you’re in today. If you have student loans or credit card debt, your approach to what you should be doing right now is different from someone who graduated without student loans or without credit card debt. It’s hard to say that there is a blanket statement for what you should be doing.
I think most sound financial advice is about first getting out of any sort of credit card debt because that’s a very expensive debt to carry. If your company offers a 401(k), setting that up and contributing, even if it’s just a very small amount.
Because of the dearth of financial education in structured education environments, a lot of the responsibility falls on family members to ensure that their loved ones are being set up for success. The point of this book is to provide people with a mental framework of what is available to them and how to think about those things. I’m not a financial adviser — this is not me giving you advice and saying that you should invest in these things. This is more, these are your options, here are the questions to ask yourself, here’s how to think about these things.
Life comes at you fast, and then suddenly you realize you’re 30, and you don’t have the savings required to retire when you’re 60.
Interview by Sam Coffman, an American studies major and journalism minor who was this magazine’s summer intern.