The #1 biggest money mistake young men make…is simply not having a plan for their money.
This is the first and foundational problem, which leads to:
- wanting to impress others, so they spend lots of money on branded clothing, saving for fast cars and watchs
- wanting to fit in, they spend all they have to hangout at “cool” places
- etc
These are really bad money moves that young men make, which will haunt them till they’re in their 30s or even 40s, because debt can and will snowball, and if you just pay the bare minimum, it can take you years and years.
Don’t do that bros.
Instead, you have something that many of us “old ones” (I’m 40 this year) dont have, which is time. Herein, many young ones start to roll their eyes and tell me “so what?”
Man, if I could trade you all my money to get my youth back, I would. Because the truth is that time is the only thing you cant buy. You can save time by outsourcing and delegating, but you can NEVER buy time back. And that’s why I value time so much, and tell those younger than me that they have so much they can look forward to.
That special thing that young ones have that we oldies dont have is this thing called compound interest. This itself will blow so many things out of the water, not to mention living long enough to see new technologies.
Now, back to compound interest.
If you can get a standard return on investment of 7% per year, that’s mean that you can double your money in 10 years. Now lets run a case study, say that you invest $100,000 once off when you’re 20.
If you double that every 10 years, that’d mean:
- $200,000 when you’re 30
- $400,000 when you’re 40
- $800,000 when you’re 50
- $1.6M when you’re 60
- $3.2M when you’re 70
- etc
And that’s “just” a once-off $100K investment. Imagine every year you can invest $100K, and every year the amount grows – this is the superpower of the young, which is time, with a
BIGGGGG BUT (two of them)
#1 Earning more
Of course no one has $100K lying around, especially when you’re young right?
WRONG!
Go out there and freaking hustle and work. There are so many opportunities available, the catch is you have to freaking do the work.
- walk dogs
- baby sit
- tutor
- start an online business
- learn a high income skill
- etc
I could list down hundreds of examples, the crux of it is that you have to work, course correct with feedback and improve, and keep going forward in earning more and serving others.
#2 Saving and investing more
Now with the additional income, if you dont save and invest the surplus, then it’s not gonna compound and grow. You got to actively and manually take out a budget, pull out the fund, research whatever investment that works and rocks your boat, and pull the trigger.
And you keep on repeating again and again and again.
Retire earlier and richer than you thought possible
I know I threw out some bigger numbers out there, say $100K investing per year. Some people will have sparkly eyes and gleam and say “that’s what I want” – if that’s you, go out there and get it done. And let me know when you get there.
Some of you dont need so much. Some of you “just” need $50K a year. Sure, do that then. It doesnt matter to me if you’re wanting to aim for $50K, $100K or $1M – what matters to me is that you dream and you freaking do what it takes to get you closer and closer to your dreams.
Don’t just close your eyes and dream without doing, that’s just foolish dreaming. If you wanna dream, then do it right – map it out, break down the large tasks to smaller subtasks, and keep trucking on.