Robert Saleh's rise with 49ers fueled by humble, authentic style
Before 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh interviewed for the Cleveland Browns' head-coaching vacancy during San Francisco's playoff bye week, several people close to him and the situation felt that Cleveland had already made up its mind to hire Vikings offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski, who interviewed with the Browns last offseason. Saleh's visit was simply part of the Browns' process of being thorough.
Many of those people close to Saleh knew how this would go, though. Once the Browns spent time with Saleh, they would be impressed. Impressed to the point where they might take a few steps back and re-think things. And that's what happened, too.
Cleveland went on to hire Stefanski, but not without Saleh getting serious consideration, according to multiple people with knowledge of the process.
It's nearly impossible, multiple people said, not to want to spend more time with Saleh after speaking with him, even once. There is something about his presence, his intellectual articulation of nearly everything he says and does, that elicits positivity and command of the situation.
"I don't like to compare, but I do talk often about the qualities that make up the good and the great, and he embodies those qualities," Niners general manager John Lynch, a 2020 Pro Football Hall of Fame finalist who played safety for defensive-minded coaches like Hall of Famer Tony Dungy, Monte Kiffin, Herm Edwards, Mike Tomlin and Lovie Smith, said last week. "He's smart, confident and humble. I think we all know we're on borrowed time with him (in San Francisco).
"We're disappointed for him that it didn't happen this year, but we're thrilled to have him. We do know he's too good of a leader, too good at what he does and too good of a person to not get another chance."
The Browns' decision to hire Stefanski filled the last remaining open head-coaching job this offseason. But don't think the 49ers aren't thrilled to have been able to retain Saleh, who didn't miss a beat in his duties to the team while prepping for and conducting his Cleveland interview. Saleh's defense went out and dismantled Stefanski's Vikings, 27-10, in the Divisional Round of the playoffs, then opened up a can on the Packers in a 37-20 NFC Championship Game victory to springboard San Francisco to this weekend's Super Bowl LIV showdown against Kansas City.
This wasn't a run of vengeance inspired by Saleh being denied. This is what the 49ers have done to get where they are. He's kept players focused, and he's kept himself low-key.
Saleh's humility is not a quality we'd imagine after witnessing a season-long highlight reel featuring the kind of energetic sideline behavior that puts the get-back coach assigned to keep Saleh off the field through the wringer. It's who Saleh is, though. The Pete Carroll-esque screams of celebration Saleh unleashes when Nick Bosa gets a sack, or when his unit makes a stop on third-and-1, have made game-day TV directors focus on Saleh constantly, but otherwise, he's just one of the guys.
"He's got a presence," 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said last week. "He looks like he's been doing push-ups since he was about 2. He's jacked. He's just this gentle giant. So well thought-out and so thorough. I joke with him that he's the type of guy where, if you get something ... I'm the type of guy to just try to put it together; he's going to read the directions completely before he even starts."
Saleh, who will turn 41 this Friday, is almost sheepish in overall demeanor. He's not loud or boastful. He constantly credits others. Still, he casts an aura of confidence that lets players and coaches know he's got this -- and he's got their backs.
Those were just some of the qualities that 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman said the Browns missed out on by not hiring Saleh. The team that does hire Saleh will get the right guy, according to Sherman, who has played under Saleh in San Francisco these past two seasons and also worked with him in Seattle from 2011 through '13, when Saleh served as the Seahawks' defensive quality control coach.
"He's taken a little bit of every coordinator he's ever been a part of, taken tidbits (schematically)," Sherman said Monday night. "He's even taken some of their coaching styles. You see some of Gus Bradley, some of Dan Quinn, some of Kris Richard, some Ken Norton. You see some of Kyle Shanahan, and that makes for a really good product.
"He's super-optimistic. He's positive. Not a lot of yelling. Not a lot of negative criticism. There is criticism. When you're wrong, you're wrong, and he'll get on you when you make a mistake, but he won't say, 'You suck.' He will say, 'I see what you saw, but we need to play this a little better.' It's honest criticism that anybody can accept."
Relatability with his players has been huge in Saleh getting buy-in. He doesn't want the credit he's getting. The players are the ones making the plays, and they should be the ones celebrated, he said. When there is a mistake, it's because he and other coaches didn't coach things up properly, he said.
Respect given; respect reciprocated.
"Think about when your kids were little, and you teach them something, and they do it," he said last week. "The pure joy you get is like nothing else. Or if they had a failure, you could feel the pain. The responsibility you felt as a parent is to find a way to help them. That's what we as coaches feel on game day. For myself, that's what I feel most. When you invest so much time in one another and see the amount of time they put in to perfect certain techniques, and you see it happen in a big moment, you can't help but let this emotion out."
The fact that Saleh says, "when your kids were little," is almost funny. He has six children between the ages of 11 months and 9 years old. They're still little.
Just as he's gained perspective in helping raise so many young children with his wife, Sanaa, he's grown as a coach, especially since he was hired by San Francisco three years ago. Saleh was a first-time defensive coordinator coming in with a first-time head coach (Shanahan) and a first-time GM (Lynch), all of whom dealt with ups and downs while trying to figure out how to get the 49ers to where they are now.
In that first season, back in 2017, Saleh inherited the worst defense in the league and made some positive strides, bumping San Francisco up to 24th in overall defense and 25th in points allowed. Still, the 49ers started 0-9 and didn't look like a real team until quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, acquired in a trade from New England, led them to five straight victories to finish the season with a 6-10 record and raised expectations.
Then, in 2018, Garoppolo tore his ACL in a Week 3 loss to Kansas City -- Sunday's Super Bowl opponent -- and was lost for the season. The defense was up and down, but, according to Saleh, didn't make enough plays in tight spots to win. The Niners regressed, finishing 4-12, while the defense carried mixed-bag rankings of 13th overall and 28th in points allowed.
Although there were issues across the board, there were questions outside of the Niners building about Saleh being the right guy to lead the defense.
"I knew we weren't going to be able to make a huge jump right away," Shanahan said. "People didn't give him enough credit for what we did right away. We made a climb the second year, we had some injuries, and things were tough. Saleh going through those two years, he was forced to do some other stuff (schematically). That helped him grow and develop."
Before the season finale against the Rams late in 2018, 49es owner Jed York, when asked, steadfastly stood by Saleh, citing Saleh's growth, the fact that players competed for him and that Shanahan and Lynch had unwavering faith. This staff was good enough, he said.
The injury-riddled roster wasn't.
The subsequent draft brought Bosa via the second overall pick and starting weakside linebacker Dre Greenlaw in Round 5. Big-money veteran additions Dee Ford (acquired in a trade with the Chiefs and signed to an extension) and Kwon Alexander (signed via free agency) made immediate impacts. The Niners finished the regular season ranked No. 2 in overall defense and No. 1 in passing defense. They've dominated defensively in the playoffs, especially getting pressures (19, fourth in the playoffs) and sacks (nine, tied for the most).
Saleh has mixed coverages, occasionally blitzed from the secondary and schemed matchups that have let players like Bosa, Ford, Arik Armstead and Fred Warner stand out.
"We're always trying to learn about ourselves, right?" Saleh asked. "When I was a quality control guy (with Seattle), I was the computer guy. I spit out as much information as I could. When (then-Jaguars head coach) Gus Bradley gave me the opportunity to be linebacker coach, I was guiding a small group of men, within our scheme, to be their personal best.
"As a coordinator, I want two things. A player wants to know that you care about his well-being. A player needs to be able to feel the investment and the care in them, not just as players. The player also needs to know that you can help them show themselves at their best and make plays on Sundays. They need to know that you know your stuff. If you give players those two things, whether you are a yeller or an introvert, they'll take to you. It's one of the great things that makes this entire organization what it is."
Saleh is not a yeller, by the way. Captain Positivity, like Seattle's Carroll, people with the Niners said.
What else has helped Saleh is working with Shanahan, who consistently challenges Saleh to come up with game plans that would cause issues for Shanahan's offense. Shanahan wanted Saleh, with whom he worked in Houston from 2006 to '09, to be his defensive coordinator originally because the scheme Seattle used under Carroll when Saleh was there was tough to consistently decipher.
In their time together in San Francisco, they've come up with points, counter-points and new points to make each other find schemes to exploit and matchups that help their players excel, Shanahan said.
"He's gotten to hear offensive perspectives, and him and I talk a lot and go back and forth a lot," Shanahan said. "Some stuff helps, and some stuff doesn't. I always wanted a guy who thought about everything and can have detailed answers. The scariest thing as an offensive coach is, if you go to your defensive coordinator and said you want them to do something, and they just do it."
There is another layer to Saleh, one that has confused some and created some uncomfortable discussions when his name surfaced in connection with head-coaching jobs this winter. That's Saleh's ethnicity.
"It's funny because a lot of people wonder what I am," Saleh said. "Am I half-white, half-black? Am I Mexican? I am Arab American. My mom and dad and grandparents are Lebanese. I am full-blooded Lebanese. I was born in a Lebanese household; I am married to a Lebanese woman. I have never shied away from it."
But he also has never worn it on his sleeve. He never thought he had to. If anyone was curious, he would tell them. If anyone made an assumption, right or wrong, about his background, the onus was on them for assuming.
Which is why there was some confusion by some people in the NFL when he showed up as a diversity candidate under the Rooney Rule. The Rooney Rule requires any team with a head-coaching or GM vacancy to interview at least one non-white candidate for the job.
According to multiple people I spoke with, inside and outside the NFL, connected to identifying coaching candidates and involved in actual coaching searches -- including those who work for teams and Saleh himself -- there was some opposition to the idea that Saleh should qualify as a diversity candidate, much of it based on assumptions. Yet, after learning more about him and his background, those with questions or doubts came around, and after widespread discussion, it was deemed that he was a diversity candidate. Saleh was puzzled that anyone would question his status as a diversity candidate, but he kept his mouth shut and went with the flow.
Saleh added that if he ever gets a head-coaching job, his staff will reflect the diverse makeup of this country. It is something that is very important to him, he said.
"I go about my business the best I can," Saleh said. "Judge me for who I am, not what my ethnicity tells me I am or what the media might portray Middle Easterners as. When you look at my background and where I am from -- Dearborn, Michigan, which has the largest Middle Eastern population outside of the Middle East -- we're Arab Americans trying to assimilate within the culture of this country while, at the same time, maintaining the values that make up Middle Easterners. In Dearborn, that includes football. That's a huge part of our lives."
A huge part of Saleh's life at the moment is figuring out how to contend with Kansas City QB Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs' explosiveness. It's not giving him much comfort.
"He's like a young Aaron Rodgers," Saleh said of Mahomes. "Their speed. Man, it's like a track team, and he can get the ball to them. We have to be good, and the key is, we have to tackle in the open field."
A side note: 49ers players have repeated this mantra and will continue to do so leading up to the Super Bowl. They're going to prop up Kansas City's strengths, downplay their own and steadily let folks talk about the Chiefs while letting their energy percolate until it's time to show and prove.
The posture, composure, talent and downright bad-ass nature of this defense is why Saleh isn't anxious. His players have stepped up all season, regardless of the challenge. They'll be ready, and not simply because of the talent or the game plan, Saleh said.
"We won shootouts, played in mudders, low-scoring games, games with lots of turnovers, every way you can imagine," Saleh said. "I don't think the success we've had happens unless you go through the learning experiences that we had the first two years here. Kyle and John were implementing this message and culture. Now, the players have taken it over, and it screams the personalities of Kyle and John."
One last thing about Saleh. Once people who know him tell you how "impressive" he is, they'll tell you that he is tight with his money. Oh, man. Everyone, in their own way, mentions how he's not coming off any coin.
Except when it comes to his pride and joy: a nine-passenger van that fits his entire family, and then some.
"Each kid has his own plush seat in the back -- and it was cheaper than the Suburban," he said, validating much of what others said with that last little remark. "There is a 30-inch TV. It has track lighting. When it arrived, I was so proud of it. Everyone was making fun of me for it, but it's the coolest thing in the world."
A tricked-out van. The coolest thing in the world. That's so Saleh, Lynch said smiling.
Impressive, right?
Follow Steve Wyche on Twitter @wyche89.
The Father in Kobe Was Always There
To hear most people tell it, Kobe Bryant waited until after his NBA career to stop being a bit of an ass. Only after he let go of his relentless drive to impose his superiority over everyone—coach, opponent, teammate, official and whoever wrote the checks—did he become, as a father and the creator of inspirational children's books, someone not just to respect but admire. The respect part came easy; how could it not for a five-time champion, top five all-time scorer and one of the league's best defenders for the better part of his 20-year career?
But thoughtful, compassionate human being? That's not a description that always immediately came to mind with The Black Mamba, the moniker that so perfectly captured his on-court mindset.
As with so many aspects of Kobe, not exposing his tender side was mostly by design.
I'm still not over the shock of hearing that he and his 13-year-old daughter Gigi died in a helicopter crash Sunday, on the short trip from their home in Costa Mesa, California, to the home of his youth basketball program, the Mamba Sports Academy just north of Los Angeles. Strange as it sounds, the mythos of Kobe makes it difficult to believe he could physically perish, just like that. Kobe wouldn't get on a helicopter destined to crash, or if he did he would somehow find a way to avert the disaster or escape it. Hadn't he proved that over and over again?
Bryant wowed NBA talent scouts in his predraft workouts despite two badly sprained ankles. He led the Lakers to the 2008 Finals with a torn ligament in his little finger. He "jumped" over a speeding Aston Martin. He tore his Achilles tendon but still hobbled to the line to make two free throws. He scored 60 points, for God's sake, in his final game after scoring more than 40 only one other time in his last three seasons. The notion that Kobe, physically, was not susceptible to the same frailty as most of us was firmly planted in all of our brains. How could it not be?
The truth is, he wasn't invincible. He was never the same after the torn Achilles. He wasn't a mentor to the young Lakers teams in his career's final years because his body couldn't handle both practice and games. He reached those 2008 Finals but then fell to the Celtics. Before that, he was part of the Lakers team that lost to the no-name Pistons in 2004. But he always came back. He always lived to fight another day, or at least pursue another dream. That's what makes him no longer being here so hard to comprehend.
As we followed his comebacks from physical challenges, we also were watching someone struggle to overcome equally major emotional setbacks.
When I first met Kobe, at Long Beach State's sunken arena, The Pyramid, it was a different time. There were no metal detectors to get into the building, just a sign saying: "No firearms allowed." There was no security guard at the locker room door, either, leaving me to walk in and find a smiling future five-time champion stuffing his shoes and old-school athletic jock into a standard high-school student backpack, clearly thrilled that he had just been wearing an NBA jersey.
First impression: Man, is he young. Followed soon by: Man, does he believe in himself. The veteran-laden Lakers team he joined had a healthy desire to keep the young up-and-comer in his place or, at the very least, make him earn his stripes. If Kobe felt everybody in this new NBA world was out to stop him, teammates included, he wasn't completely wrong. Whether it was growing up as a foreigner in Italy while his father finished his playing career, or navigating being black and affluent in Philadelphia's rough-and-tumble basketball circles, Bryant became proficient at reading auras. "I've always been aware of the positive and negative energy coming off people," he told me at the time. "I just didn't know other people did, or that there were names for it."
Our relationship evolved thanks to a spark of positive energy in the midst of a torrential negative downpour. In his second season, he shot four consecutive airballs at crunch time in a playoff game against the Utah Jazz. The criticism from every corner was unrelenting and, I thought, unfair. I ran into him outside the locker room and offered a word of encouragement. He smiled. "I'd shoot every one of them again," he said defiantly.
Vanessa and Kobe Bryant were together at a 2017 ceremony with daughters Gigi (left), Bianka (with her father) and Natalia (right). A fourth daughter, Capri, was born in June 2019.Allen Berezovsky/Getty Images
He might not have needed a kind word, but he certainly remembered it. A year later, the Lakers were in Houston to play the Rockets on a Sunday. After practice, he invited me over to his hotel to watch the NBA Saturday doubleheader on NBC. We watched nearly the entirety of both games, waiting for his sister to come back from shopping to go to dinner with him. It dawned on me that Bryant was, if not lonely, certainly not close off the court with anyone on the team. His penchant for trying to embarrass teammates in practice if he thought they were mocking him probably didn't help.
His decision, at 21, to marry an 18-year-old Vanessa Laine earned him considerable criticism from friends and outsiders alike, especially when he refused to have her sign a prenuptial agreement. "I hear you're getting married and you're still wet behind the ears," said then-coach Phil Jackson, pretending to find proof with his finger.
But Bryant, the chiseled give-no-quarter competitor, didn't feel he needed a contract with someone who offered something more valuable to him than money: faith.
"She still has that innocence," he said to me. "She isn't jaded. She still believes that anything is possible."
That was the yin and yang of Kobe: risking half of his fortune to a marriage if it went bad didn't concern him because he was, one, confident in his ability to read people (Vanessa) and, two, he could always make more money.
Yet with the Lakers, he insisted on being paid every dollar because he understood the economics of what he made the organization in particular and the league in general. The Lakers' other obligation to him was to put winning pieces around him. Bryant was tremendously philanthropic, but he wasn't about to be charitable to someone who he didn't feel needed it.
He had the usual business interests off the court, but if he invested time in a particular pursuit, it was shaped to improve him, first and foremost, as a player. He studied meditation with Deepak Chopra. He studied Eastern European weight-training techniques. He went to Europe to find out their approach to cryotherapy. His study of psychology convinced him he could find a way to mentally wound Michael Jordan if they ever played one-on-one.
Bryant, of course, nearly wrecked his relationship with Vanessa in 2003. A woman who worked at the hotel where Bryant was staying said he raped her in his room. Bryant was charged with one count of felony sexual assault that July. He held a press conference with Vanessa, admitting to adultery and saying he had consensual sex with the woman. The woman decided not to testify, and in September 2004 the charge was dropped. At that time, Bryant issued an apology that said “I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.” A civil case was settled out of court in 2005.
In his basketball world, he went through turmoil in relationships with both Shaquille O’Neal and Jackson. The common thread between his marriage and his basketball relationships is that he mended them by acknowledging his part and how he needed to grow, evolve, change. There were some relationships that ended, with agents, trainers and teammates, that he never repaired, because they no longer served a purpose in his growth. But there's a pattern if you look closely enough at the relationships that mattered most: Bryant's accomplishments on the court seemed to be consistently preceded by some resolved controversy or conflict off it. He became a better player by becoming a better person.
There's a reason I don't believe fatherhood changed Kobe as much as it allowed him to discover his true self. When he and Vanessa first got together, they had a Pomeranian named Gucci. Seeing tough, doesn't-flinch-with-a-ball-inches-from-his-face Kobe cuddle Gucci in his arms and make cooing baby noises convinced me the dog was a placeholder. He was equally animated whenever the subject of my kids came up. He exchanged selfie videos with them when they were in elementary school, joking about getting out of his "Mamba" outfit—his Lakers uniform—and into something fashionable, while counseling them to keep playing ball but even more important to do well in school.
Kobe Bryant coached at Her Time to Play, an event held at his Mamba Sports Academy in March 2019.Will Navarro/Getty Images
That he moved into writing inspirational stories for kids and young adults surprised me not a bit. Kobe was never satisfied with just tending to his own circle—if he was going to be a dad, he wanted to be one for everybody. His go-big-or-go-home mentality, on some level, pervaded everything he did—and no doubt would have done.
It is both awful and fitting that my teenage daughter, her attention to social media being more relentless than mine, first delivered the news.
Awful because my daughter felt as if she knew Kobe, even though they never physically met. Aside from the early exchange of video clips, he suggested via text that she and Gigi play one-on-one and that we arrange for their teams to be in the same tournament.
Fitting because my last meaningful conversation with Kobe was about our daughters. After I sent him a clip of a move my daughter was working on, he texted, "Looks like you should move this way and make her a mamba. I work with the girls every day for two hours. That's the plan for the next 5 YEARS."
When he wrote it, five years of coaching teenage girls seemed like a precious, but no less small, stone in the mosaic of all Bryant would ultimately accomplish in his post-playing career. I looked forward to seeing what else he planned to do. If nothing else, I expected him to be a lasting presence for the NBA as Jim Brown has been for the NFL, a legend whose greatness would still be visceral in the glint of his eye and commanding presence at various functions decades from now.
Now all I can think is: That was the plan. That was the small, precious stone. The mosaic will forever stand incomplete. Somehow, the player who willed himself through one physical setback after another, who defied what we thought he could do right to the very last day of his career, leaves us thinking of what he could have become.
Or, more accurately, who.
Ric Bucher covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @RicBucher.
Bucher hosts the podcast, Bucher & Friends, with NFL veteran Will Blackmon and former NBA center Ryan Hollins, available on iTunes
I've coached over 1,000 millennials, and these are the 4 money mistakes they're making
I grew up with a great financial education from my parents and started my first business when I was 9 years old. When I left for college, I assumed everyone else understood money as well as I did — but I was in for a huge surprise. I quickly became the go-to person for money advice among my friends.
After starting my first job in marketing and communications, I decided I was going to challenge myself to save $100,000 by age 25 and start a blog, Her First $100K.
My blog has turned into a financial- and career-education platform for millennials, and I work as a nationally recognized money speaker and coach. (I also achieved my $100,000 goal this year, a bit ahead of schedule.)
In three years of running my business, I've had the honor of working with millennials all over the country. I've now coached over 1,000 millennials on personal finance — and here's what they're not doing.
1. Millennials don't understand the importance of high-yield savings accounts
Opening a high-yield savings account is one of the easiest ways to make your money work for you. Your bank is paying you to keep your money with it. That's free money, y'all.
Sadly, a lot of millennials don't seem to know about high-yield savings accounts yet. They use the standard savings account at a local or national bank and earn about 0.09% interest, not realizing they could be earning 20 times the interest somewhere else.
High-interest-rate savings accounts offer 10 to 20 times the average interest rate of a regular savings account. Compare the online-only CIT Bank, my personal recommendation, with the average brick-and-mortar bank rate: CIT offers up to a 1.85% annual percentage yield, compared with the average bank rate of 0.09%. That's literal dollars to pennies.
Once my millennial clients open high-yield savings accounts, they usually love them right away. They know that their money is working for them, not the other way around.
2. Millennials don't know how to create a budget
Creating a budget means that you need to understand how to split your finances. And if you were never taught how to do these things — which many millennials weren't, since personal finance isn't taught in many schools — of course it won't come naturally.
I found out quickly through my Personal Finance 101 workshops that many in my audience simply hadn't been taught how to start a budget and how to track their spending to see if they're sticking to it.
I created a tool called the 3 Bucket Budget, which is a great beginner platform for learning how to categorize your finances. You break your net (post-tax) income into three categories:
Often, simply writing down your actual versus goals in each of these categories and figuring out how much money you're spending helps create a visual of your financial situation.
From there, you can make a plan to hit your savings and fun-money goals, which means you're one step closer to understanding money. After that, the rest comes together.
3. Millennials aren't checking their credit scores
Your credit score is basically your adulting GPA. In short, it scores how reliable you'll most likely be to money lenders based on several factors.
The higher your score, the more reliable you look to lenders. This results in lower interest rates and a higher likelihood that your credit application will be approved.
Unfortunately, credit-card companies can be predatory when it comes to young adults. It's not uncommon that the minute you turn 18, credit-card companies begin swooping in to offer you "spending power." Naturally, this sounds too good to be true (it is), and it can start young people off with bad spending habits, resulting in low credit scores.
A lot of my audience knows that a higher credit score is a good thing, but many don't know how scores are created and the best ways to improve them.
I help them understand that paying your bills on time and keeping a low debt-to-income ratio will help your credit score, and offer advice for how to raise low scores. I also remind them to check their credit reports regularly to be sure there are no mistakes affecting their scores.
4. Millennials aren't saving money for retirement
Being a millennial means that you were most likely affected by the Great Recession. A lot of millennials in the mid- 2010s were jobless or underemployed, or had to go back to school because they couldn't find work, resulting in more student-loan debt. As the economy has recovered, younger millennials have continued to feel the effects of the recession.
Salaries start lower than they did for earlier generations, which means a slower start to financial freedom. With high student-loan debt and lower starting salaries, many people in my generation feel discouraged about saving for retirement.
What I teach in my workshops is that it doesn't take much to start, but that starting early is essential. I opened up my first IRA in my early 20s, which was key to my success in saving $100,000 by age 25.
The power of compound interest means that the earlier you start investing, the sooner your investment starts growing and making money on your behalf. Women especially should be thinking about saving for retirement early. We face a retirement gender gap, since women tend to live longer than men and face a gender wage gap throughout our lives.
Start by checking if your employer offers a retirement plan with a match. Medium-to-large companies tend to offer this as an employee benefit. This means that if you put in 4% of your pre-tax pay in the account, your employer will match you the same 4%. It's essentially free money.
Taking money out pre-tax means that you'll never miss it and that you're paying yourself first. If you get a raise, try increasing your contribution by 1 percentage point. You most likely won't feel the impact, and you'll be paying your future self more.
Millennials get a bad rap for being lazy with their money. But the truth is we had a rough start toward financial freedom and were not given the tools to succeed.
I was one of the lucky ones who had parents who were always careful with their money. As an award-winning financial and career coach, I'm honored to help people in my generation understand their finances and take the reins of their financial freedom.
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