1. Invest $500 per month in the S&P 500 index per month. JUST shut up and DO IT!! The numbers do not lie https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com...llocation1_1=100&total1=100&total2=0&total3=0 2. Get you a high paying job that will put you above $100K by the time you are 32 years old 3. Go to step 1 and increase to $1000. 4. Do a damn good job at step 2. 5. Save you up $10K and trade the markets if you want to. 6. By the time you are 50 years old, you are close to $2million, retire from work if you like. Women lie, Men lie, but the numbers never lie. Simple and Done.
I still think this is too little. You're depending on working as a pleb till 50 earning pretty shit money. Plebs get murdered. https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/top-highest-paying-jobs/ Most of these jobs have 6-8 years of schooling. Live at home, finish it in 6, start putting aside $50K/year from the age of 25. You can do a very simple spreadsheet of all the trade offs and all of them would have you earning more than $100K before 32.
I'm a pleb too. I think what triggered it for me was seeing an old guy get fired when I was around 20. Fuck that shit.
The formula is simple - it works. I has allowed me to ditch my corp job in my mid 30's & live my life exactly how I want to. * Stay out of debt - and I mean all debt including a mortgage or student loan. * Put 25-50% of your gross income consistently into the market - avg in. * Invest wisely - like companies that dominate a disruptive technology. It's not how much you make that matters nearly as much as how much you are able to save/invest. There are many people with 6 digit jobs with no real net worth, just a pile of rising debts.
I agree that it doesn't matter how much you make, but the percentage you put towards savings. That is what will allow you to maintain quality of life. Good call.
age 25: scrape together enough $ to buy a single family dump of a house and move in. Fix it up, rent it out and move on to the next fixer upper, repeat process every year. By age 40 you will have a nice portfolio of 15 income producing properties which will come in handy when the corporate world is ready to spit you out.
But our education system never teaches our youths how to save. Our society is geared towards consumptions, with lots of must haves that destroy their finance when young.
I would tell my 18yo self, who would be living in 1977, to first of all, Live poor by choice NOW, save and invest all that money you are making instead of blowing it on babes, booze, drugs, clothes, cars, and good times. All the money you are blowing could grow to significant wealth by the time you are 60. Which is how old you will be when you are me, talking to you, which I am doing now and you will be doing 42 years from now. When they invent mutual funds, go in big. Meanwhile invest in stocks stocks stocks. Mix it up. Mega cap, mid, small cap. Buy and hold until you have time to learn how to trade. Another thing you will hear about in a few years are IRAs and especially 401Ks. The tax breaks will give you a huge advantage. NO MATTER WHAT, always put the max in there, every year, no excuses, at least for the first 30 years. The first ten years will matter the most. No, you don't have your whole life ahead of you. You don't have plenty of time to get your shit together. Do it NOW, or feel the pain later. Yes, you are going to live past 40. In fact, you will probably live past 80, and you will want to have some money to make being an old guy a cool thing instead of a real drag. Don't invest in BetaMax or 8 track. In fact, give vinyl a miss too. Ditto Laser Disc. When a company called Blockbuster Video comes out, buy and hold, but sell as soon as you start hearing about a thing called streaming video. Pay your income taxes. Some bitch will rat you out in 1985 if you don't. You aren't working off the books. You just THINK you are. Invest in Amazon and Facebook and Google and other crazy sounding dot com stuff. It will all go tits up for a while but you can sell the first time you see across the board declines, and wait it out. Your first marriage will really suck. But that's okay cause it will save you from marrying ************** *******. Trust me, she would be the worser of two evils. In a few years you will have a kid who will grow up just like you except he will be lazier and even more irresponsible. Get over it. The 63 Chevy truck? Don't sell it. In fact, get a half dozen more while they are cheap. You are really gonna miss that truck some day. Just for fun, stick a 350 from a wrecked corvette in one of them. You can do the swap in a day with only a couple of very minor changes. Put a few sacks of sand in the bed for weight and it will run like a whipped monkey. Oh, in a few years you will pick up a Nova, same year and put a v8 in it, too. Don't let the bitch drive it, ever. Don't ask what bitch... you will know who I am talking about when the time comes. The Saints will win the Super Bowl in 2010 so bet bank, boat, and baby on it. Get a computer. Every year, get the latest and greatest. Learn to program. Don't get too wild about Visual this and Visual that, when it comes out. It will be too limiting. In 1991 an operating system called Linux will create a lot of opportunity to use a programming language called ANSI C and later, C++. Learn that. Give Assembly a miss. Learn BASIC in its various iterations because later on a language called PYTHON will bear a striking resemblance and will be very useful. When online stock trading becomes a thing, jump in with both feet while the money is still easy. I was gonna tell you about Bruce Jenner but I will just let that be a surprise.