Katie Kieffer is a national columnist and political commentator. Her multimedia website is KatieKieffer.com.  She writes a column for TownHall.com every Monday. Katie has a background in journalism, multimedia entrepreneurship, public speaking and commercial real estate. Due to her diverse experiences, Katie is a popular public speaker for college campuses and professional conferences across the country. Katie is a frequent guest on local and national radio shows to discuss her viewpoints on young professionals. Katie graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of St. Thomas. As a college freshman, she wrote an opinion column for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. During her sophomore year of college, Katie founded, edited and published a nationally recognized student journal of thought and opinion called the St. Thomas Standard. Katie also developed a comprehensive website for the newspaper so that all of the articles were available online. Katie has over six years of experience in commercial real estate. Before launching into multimedia, Katie worked for NorthMarq Real Estate Services. She chaired a National NAIOP Young Professionals Forum of rising stars in commercial real estate and traveled across the country learning about different geographic business climates and development trends. Katie also chaired the NAIOP Minnesota Developing Leaders and was recognized as NAIOP’s Volunteer of the Year in 2007.

Katie is a LEED Accredited Professional through the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). Katie balances conservation and profitability considerations when discussing sustainability. Katie has traveled abroad and she currently researches the needs and challenges that young professionals face across the globe. Katie conducts interviews of both experienced and young professionals and showcases these on her website to inspire other young people to think innovatively, whether they work within a large corporation or are interested in starting their own ventures.

To Kyle, a ‘red paperclip’ is more of a symbolic thing, an idea that you’re ready to launch. A new project about to happen. That spark of insight or inspiration. The most important thing about an idea is to do something with it. Today, Kyle lives in Montreal with his wife and does speaking engagement, photography, art projects, and “Who are These Guys?” to name a few of the projects he has embarked on.

At the age of 16, defiant and hardheaded, Eric decided to leave home and drop out of school, choosing to live on the streets of Detroit. By divine intervention at age 17, Eric met a pastor who saw him a young man with tremendous unrealized potential. As a result, their mentoring relationship was born which led Eric to complete his GED and to prepare for college. Determined not to be another statistic, Eric enrolled at Oakwood University where he began reading every thing he could get his hands on. Understanding the struggle of the streets, he realized what his purpose in life was to become, so he reached back to his fellow drug dealers and helped many of them get their GED’s, go to college and incorporate the strategies and self-improvement exercises he learned in order to assist them in developing their own life plans. In so doing, he provided them with a much-needed positive option to the life of crime and illiteracy they then led. While in college, Eric started Break The Cycle I Dare You, (BTC) a non profit youth development and special event organization that focuses on developing programs for youth who have made bad choices and most often have had family, social, and academic struggles along with the lack of a father figure in their lives. Today BTC has developed and produced many supportive community-based programs and conferences across the country. They provide youth and teachers alike with activities, self-improvement exercises and motivational strategies to help them reach their highest potential in life. Eric now serves as the Chairman of the Organization.

He obtained his Masters degree in 2005 and is currently pursuing his PhD in Education Administration at Michigan State University and serves as Senior Pastor of A Place of Change Ministries, Lansing Michigan. He also serves as a consultant at Michigan State where he has developed The Advantage Program, an undergraduate retention program targeting academically high-risk students of color. In addition to his work with the Advantage at Michigan State, he also serves as a consultant for several collegiate athletic programs across the country. In this role, he provides assistants to student-athletes having academic and social challenges as it relates to successfully transitioning from high-risk schools and communities to a collegiate environment. Eric’s representation of the merits of higher education, coupled with his knowledge of the pains of the street, inspires young people to break bad habits and reach for new levels of personal and spiritual achievement. Eric has lived a life of challenges and triumph but has found a way to break the cycle.

A Chicago native, at the age of 18, Walsh has amassed great wealth as well as created a personal brand that surpasses most seasoned marketing experts.  As CEO of iSocial Academy, Walsh has created what he calls “iHit17” which is a “17-minute Social Media Hit List”, that allows you to build and easily maintain your personal brand and Social Media network. Austin started his career by developing local bands MySpace pages in the Chicago area, bringing in 200 to 1200 attendants—all without spending a dime and using social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  After many successful events, Austin’s father’s colleagues took notice and asked him to do the same for them—create a Facebook page that not only increases their followers but also brings in revenue.  The great thing about his concept is that your followers are people who actually want to receive information from you—unlike a mailing list.

Sean is a wunderkind – with the strength and determination to succeed at whatever he does. A young entrepreneur, he was raised in rural poverty and has lifted himself to wealth in the millions through his service, import, and real estate portfolios. The intensity, commitment, and preparation that Sean demonstrates provide practical starting points for anyone who wishes to become wealthy. Though still in his late 30’s, Sean has become successful in business many times over, with accomplishments such as SBA’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and the San Francisco Bay Area’s Most Successful Under-40 Recognition. He has sufficient self-awareness and analytical abilities to clearly describe the principles and practices that have contributed to his success, so that others can follow where he has led.

Todd Babbitt grew up in the Washington, D.C. area, in an average middle-class family. He attained the majority of his wealth through real estate, and a smaller portion from the stock market. Nothing he did was complicated or beyond the understanding of an average person. Today, Todd lives the good life in Naples, Florida, with his wife and daughter. He continues to build his net worth through various investments.

Such was the case with Frank Corbin at http://jasonhartmanfoundation.org/articles/young-wealth-show/. When Frank was very young, he had a “hunger”, as he put it, to become wealthy. After moving from Ghana to New York City, he watched his mother constantly struggle to pay the bills. Frank was determined not to get into this same situation. Frank was determined to become wealthy and eliminate money as an issue in his life. As a teenager, Frank worked many different jobs. After graduating from high school, he attended DeVry Institue in Toronto – which loaded him up with student loans and other debts.

In addition to his studies at DeVry, Frank also purchased every real estate course and real estate investment book he could get his hands on. As a result, Frank became convinced that purchasing and holding real estate was the easiest and quickest way to become wealthy.

At the age of 21, Frank purchased his first property – a $241,000 home in Toronto which he picked up for no money down, received $20,000 at closing and the property ended up providing him with $900 per month of positive cash flow. One year later, Frank had attained 4 more properties and was financially free.

After 15 years of buying properties, Frank became bored. He needed a new challenge. Frank saw people struggling financially. He couldn’t understand why people weren’t doing what he was able to do so easily. So he went about creating a course, the Remic Wealth Institute, which teaches his methods for finding and investing in real estate. While putting together the courses within Remic Wealth Institute, Frank identified another need people had that he new he could satisfy – obtaining credit despite having a poor credit history. “The 8 Strategies to Highly Effective Credit” was thus born.

The Young Wealth staff makes no claims that staying under the same roof with the parents won’t mean giving up some independence – there’s a good chance it will. The obvious upside to the arrangement is it should reduce your overall living expenses. If it turns out that staying at home for a year or two after graduation is somehow just as expensive as going out on your own, don’t waste another second thinking about it However, even if they require you to toss a few bucks into the common kitty, it likely won’t be as expensive as coughing up first and last month’s rent plus a security deposit to move into your own place.

Depending on where in the world you live, it takes a chunk of several thousand dollars to even get move into an apartment or rental house. Monthly expenses such as utilities, phone, cable television, and internet service come at their own high cost and sometimes require individual deposits. The area where living with the parents has a big upside to your future financial management is it should allow you to get a flying start on saving for big ticket items like a mortgage down payment, wedding, or setting up an emergency fund.

If you decide to go this route, sit down with both parents and have a discussion about what the living conditions will be. Find out if they will require rent of some sort or maybe increased responsibility towards household chores. Will there be a curfew and, if so, can you abide by it? To avoid hard feelings, make sure everyone is perfectly clear about how much you will pay, if any, and how often you’ll need to stagger downstairs in the morning to wash dishes.

The Young Wealth Team

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Let’s define what we’re talking about. Financial management means taking the actions necessary to insure that your personal cash flow remains positive. That sounds like a good thing, right? Positive cash flow is an idea we all should be able to get behind. Most of us have experienced the opposite at some point in our lives. Maintaining positive cash flow is possible at any age but the sooner you learn it, the more likely you are to have extra cash to throw around as you get older.

Financial management is about managing risk. Risk is what can destroy your assets. Protecting them should be job number one. And wandering blithely through life waiting for the risks to wave a red flag normally doesn’t work. You’re going to need the knowledge to identify them, which comes only with education and experience. Experience – well that kind of unrolls at it’s own pace. Education is something you can accelerate on your own. When should you be in stocks? Bonds? Real estate? How can you protect assets from the tax man? These are all questions that you answer on a day-to-day basis as you go about the financial management of your growing portfolio.

We’re not big fans of turning all this over to a financial planner. That’s just adding another set of fingers to the mix and another chance for a screw-up. Manage your own finances and watch the wealth rise.

The Young Wealth Team

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