Some families pass down debt, some pass down values. You get to decide which one you start passing.

What gets handed down includes a lot more than furniture. Habits with money, whether a house talks about it or goes silent, whether asking for help is normal, all of that transfers quietly and none of it was your choice. Wherever you started is not a verdict on you or on your family, who were mostly doing what they could with what they had. The part that belongs to you is what continues from here.

Learn one concrete thing this month that nobody taught you: how interest works, what a budget looks like, how to ask what a job pays.