My daughter started her second semester of pre-med last week. She's already freaking out about calculus. I worry about her for a lot of reasons (don't all parents) and one of them is her inability to put away money for the future. Or even think about it. It's nowhere on her radar.

But that's the rap about millennials in 2014. No money to put away. They're living with their parents. How can they worry about saving for retirement when there aren't enough jobs to go around already? With Social Security set to run dry when it's their turn, how does Generation Y even have a chance?

I remember getting a job with Institutional Investor as an associate editor straight out of journalism school when I was 24. The first thing I did – after starting a checking account (I already had a savings account thanks to my parents) – was research mutual funds. Within a month, I had made my first investment, a Dreyfus triple tax-free muni bond fund. I figured it was a good way to get started. The fund served me well, trebling my investment before I cashed out 17 years later and providing me with current income.