Tess Waresmith graduated from Boston University in 2009 with no student loans, thanks to a full athletic scholarship for diving.
“I was very lucky to start my financial journey from scratch,” the 36-year-old, who lives in New England, told Business Insider.
Her first job, as an aerialist on a cruise ship, helped her start saving up. Although she was not a salaried employee, one of the main perks of the job was free room and board.
In 2014, Waresmith began what would become a nearly 10-year career in digital marketing. She eventually left corporate America in 2023 to run her financial education company, Wealth with Tess, full-time after amassing a seven-figure net worth between her various investments. BI verified her net worth and property disclosures by analyzing screenshots of accounts and property records.
The financial educator, whose mission is to help young women grow their wealth, didn’t get to where she is without a little trial and error. She shared two financial mistakes she made in her 20s that, while costly, helped her in the long run: “The mistakes taught me so much that I’m probably richer now than I would have been if I hadn’t made them.”
1. He has been carrying $45,000 in cash for years
Waresmith has always considered herself a good saver.
“What I didn’t know that I know now is that making money and saving is just the first step; if you want to create wealth, putting it to work is very powerful,” he said. After working on the cruise ship for three years, he had “at least $45,000 in cash that I didn’t need and that I could have invested, and I didn’t because I was too scared.”
Waresmith has built a business around creating digestible financial education content for women. Courtesy of Tess Waresmith
By keeping that money in a savings account for years, instead of investing it, you lost out on compound interest and potentially tens of thousands of dollars.
When you first start investing, “it may seem like it takes some time,” he said. “But once you start building wealth, whether it’s in real estate or the stock market, your efforts really start to pay off. In my opinion, there is no blueprint for getting rich overnight. But over a three- to five-year period, your life can look significantly different financially if you put intentional effort into investing.”
2. Overpaying a financial advisor
When Waresmith finally put his money to work in the stock market around 2013, he paid a financial advisor to manage his portfolio.
If she could go back, she would advise her younger self not to hire a professional and to learn to invest her money herself. It was “a big mistake,” she said. The adviser’s high fees cut into her returns, plus, “I didn’t have an active role in how my money was invested, and it was in specific types of funds that are very expensive.”
As she learned more about investing in the stock market by reading books like “MONEY Master the Game” and “The Simple Path to Wealth,” she realized that the most effective investment strategy (putting her money in low-cost index funds) was so simple she could do it herself.
He stopped working with his advisor and built his own simple portfolio consisting primarily of index funds.
Years later, in 2024, his investment strategy hasn’t changed much: “I invest most of my money in index funds, mainly because it’s a very easy way to get exposure to the entire stock market.”
