I'm 30 If you're In Your 20s Watch This

So I just turned 30 a few weeks ago, but if I could go back in time and talk to my 20-year-old self, here's 20 things I'd tell them I've learned over the past decade that I wish I knew sooner. Number one, you're probably not going to get your career choice correct on the first try. So most people have to decide where they want to start their career around the age of 18 to 20, and with so many options out there and very little real-world experience to guide you, there's a pretty high chance that the company or the industry you start with is not going to be the same one you end with. For me, I jumped from insurance to health care to social media all within the first five years after graduating from college. So just try to get into something that interests you and aligns with your skills, and then work hard and take risks wherever you can. But don't put too much pressure on yourself to get your career perfect at first, because you definitely are not going to have everything figured out in your early 20s, and that's okay. Number two, take asymmetric risks, where the potential upside of those risks is going to far outweigh the potential downside. So right after I turned 26, I was just completely fed up with my normal 9-to-5 corporate job, and I had been growing this whole YouTube channel on the side. I said to myself, I want to quit my job and give this YouTube thing a shot at being the true next step in my career, but in order to do that, I had to analyze both the upside and the downside of that decision first. The upside was that I was guaranteed to be way happier, and I saw that I might also be able to actually make more money from social media than my corporate job, but the downside was that I might have to dip in my savings a bit just to pay for some living expenses, and I could always pivot and find a different job if YouTube didn't work out. I had no mortgage, no kids, and very low overhead anyway, so at that time, I saw this opportunity as a very asymmetric risk with way more upside than downside, so I went ahead and quit my job back in December of 2021, and I've been self-employed and enjoying every minute of it since. Number three, budgeting is such an essential thing to do, and it can really give you a lot of financial peace of mind. Now, some people argue that budgeting isn't something that's very realistic to keep up with as a habit, but I'd argue that with the right system like the one that I use, budgeting can be really simple and even kind of satisfying. I've tried a bunch of different budgeting methods over the years, but the one that I've really stuck with consistently is this Google Sheets file right here that my wife and I still use to this day when it comes to tracking our income versus our expenses. Using that file alongside a budgeting app like Rocket Money helped me say to myself when I was quitting my job that, okay, based on my cost of living, my burn rate basically allows me to survive for the next nine to 12 months if I make absolutely zero dollars at all from my YouTube business. Understanding that worst case scenario was weirdly sort of comforting to me because I knew my real burn rate was actually going to be much lower since I was earning some money from YouTube when I went full-time. So they say that knowledge is power and budgeting really is just going to give you so much more knowledge about your own financial situation that I think too many people unfortunately miss out on. I'll leave a link to that free budgeting template down below underneath the subscribe button if you want to go ahead and check that out as well. Plus, there's going to be a video down there explaining exactly how I budget with that template. Number four, travel as much as you can while you're young and have no regrets about it. So travel is something that I never really did that much of growing up because my family would always just do the typical Philly area thing by going down to the Jersey Shore every summer. But right after I graduated from college, my family and I went on a two-week trip outside of the U.S. for the first time to Ireland, which was amazing. So that really got me hooked on travel and I knew that I had to do more of it because I thought it was so cool seeing all these new places, meeting new people, and just seeing a different way of living. That trip was basically what got me into credit cards and points because I knew that I could then leverage the power of those points to save money on doing more travel in my 20s to help it better fit into my budget. And what I think is so cool about all the travel that I got to do over the past decade is that now I have what I call these memory dividends that are going to keep paying me as I look back on those trips for many years to come. So be responsible with traveling in your 20s and definitely do not go into debt to finance that. But also don't wait until you're 65 and retired to travel either because then you're going to miss out on creating and reliving all those memories when you were young and healthy enough to actually enjoy those trips the most. Number five, don't let fear control the way you think about credit cards. So like I said, I eventually stumbled into the world of credit cards and points in my early 20s as a way to save money on travel. And the only reason I was not using credit cards sooner is because I grew up just hearing all these negative stories about credit card debt, high interest rates, and all the bad stuff that really gets the most clicks in the news. My parents also pretty much always used cash and debit cards when I was a kid. But I remember at my first job after college, some people were saying, oh yeah, make sure that you sign up for some credit cards and loyalty programs when you're out traveling for this job. So I did my research and I quickly learned about all that I was missing out on. After that, I started working credit cards into my whole budgeting system. I took advantage of signup bonuses, spending multipliers, and other benefits. And before I knew it, I was getting free or at least heavily discounted travel. Plus my credit score was increasing as well, which really ended up being helpful recently when I was buying a house at age 29. Just don't forget the golden rule when it comes to credit cards that you need to be paying off your statement balance on time and in full by the payment due date every single month in order to avoid paying interest. So if you can manage to do that, then you should be good to go. Number six, buy every single book you get recommended. The cost of a book is normally only like 10 or 20 bucks, which really isn't that much. But the value that you might be able to get from that book in the form of an idea or a mindset shift could be worth tens of thousands of dollars or more for you over the course of your 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond. By reading books or even just listening to audiobooks about things like personal finance, self-development, business, or really anything educational, what you're going to be doing is increasing your human capital by consuming what's essentially the condensed version of decades of experience that all these authors have in their respective fields. Number seven, invest as heavily as you can into your health and fitness. So I really got into going to the gym and lifting when I was in college, and I've tried to continue that habit of working out pretty consistently throughout my 20s. And as I started to make some more money, I made sure that I was investing as much as I could back into things like gym memberships to good places and recently actually building out my own home gym. My wife and I joined Gyms Like Lifetime, where they have the nicest facilities and the nicest equipment in my area. Even though it can cost around $150 to $200 a month per person, but to us, that money was very well spent because of how good we feel after going to the gym and how much energy that really gives us throughout our week in both our jobs and our personal lives. And now that we actually have the space in this house that we bought recently, we decided to just go ahead and cut out that gym membership entirely and level up even further by building a home gym with some of the best equipment we could find. So now we made it as easy as possible to just get a good workout in whenever we want to while saving a large amount of time on commuting to the gym as well. Number eight, save for wedding expenses, including weddings for friends and family and maybe even your own. So sometime around halfway through my 20s, all of a sudden, almost everyone in my life started getting engaged, including me and my now wife, Jackie. That was really cool to see, but then we started getting all these wedding invitations, which involved traveling, hotels we got to stay in, and most importantly, wedding gifts, which are really easy to forget about as sort of this hidden expense in your 20s when your budget might already feel a little bit tight. Now, don't ever spend more on a wedding gift than you can afford, but don't let these gifts and other wedding expenses sneak up on you either. So what my wife and I like doing is we just have some money set aside over in our high-yield savings account in a separate vault account with the bank that we use. That way, we already have those gifts accounted for with the weddings that we know we're going to be attending throughout the year. So I'll go ahead and leave a link down below to the high-yield savings account that we like to use that I've talked about plenty of times before here on the channel. Number nine, going off that last point, make sure that you marry the right person. So you'll hear wealthy older people give this advice all the time, and that's because building wealth and happiness is going to be so much easier when you have somebody by your side who's highly driven like you, has similar values, similar money habits, and overall just wants to be on this crazy journey of life with you. Choosing the wrong person to marry can introduce so much stress and money issues down the road. So be very smart about who you're going to be dating in your 20s and understand what their long-term goals really are. But telling my 20-year-old self that you're going to get to meet your best friend at age 23 and then marry her at age 28 is something that younger me would have been really happy to hear because I had absolutely no idea what my relationship journey was going to look like in my 20s. And I can tell you now at age 30 that traveling the world and building a life with Jackie has been incredibly fun and rewarding. Number 10, choose your heart. So I don't know where this quote is actually from or what book this screenshot is from, but I think it's a great way to look at things. So it says, Being poor is hard. Getting rich is hard. Being overweight is hard. Getting fit is hard. Being married is hard. Being single is hard. Every choice in life is hard. So choose your heart or your heart will choose you. Basically, there's going to be a lot of difficulty and struggle with any direction you want to pursue different aspects of your life. And that kind of explains why life feels so tough at times because it's not easy to be overweight, for example, but it's also really hard to get fit and then stay fit with all the time and consistency that's required for that. So to me, your 20s is where you're going to build the foundation for all these different things in your life with wealth, family, fitness, faith, and more. And you want to try to choose the hard path that's going to make you into the best version of yourself. Number 11, learning to delay gratification is like a superpower in today's world. Everywhere you look, there's cheap, quick sources of dopamine that you can access, which are going to give you instant gratification. But if you want to reach your full potential, you have to be willing to fight back against those things and seek out things that give you delayed gratification instead. So instead of giving into your cravings for junk food that tastes good now, but maybe leaves you feeling a bit low on energy later, get into the habit of eating a good, healthy, whole food diet. And instead of doom scrolling on TikTok or Instagram, go out and pick up a self-improvement book or just work on a new side project that you're passionate about. Everything that you do in your day-to-day life should be a conscious choice that serves your long-term interests rather than your short-term impulses. Or as it was put in a good TED Talk that I'll link to down below, delayed gratification is the practice of resisting temptation for immediate rewards and instead choosing to invest time and effort into long-term goals. Number 12, avoid betting on sports no matter how normalized it's become. So gambling and especially betting on sports is a perfect example of something that really leans on giving people instant gratification to get them hooked. And I've talked about this before here on this channel, but as a guy in my 20s and now my 30s, I really do feel like an outsider by not betting on sports when most friends and other people my age do. I've definitely tried it out in the past and I can absolutely see the appeal of it because it can make watching a game feel a bit more interesting when you have some money on the line. But ultimately, the only reason that sports books and these betting apps even exist is because they know that the odds are stacked in their favor. I obviously have no control over the outcome of a football game or a basketball game and companies like DraftKings or FanDuel, they have all these algorithms and systems that basically set the odds so that they know ultimately they'll take home more money than they're paying out. So I'm not trying to sound like I'm better than anyone else out there who does bet on sports because I get it. It's fun and it can be done responsibly, but I just really don't like what it's become now. So I do hope that more people in their 20s can stay away from it. Number 13, always remember that comparison is the thief of joy. So it's really hard not to compare yourself to others these days because everywhere you look, you're going to be seeing people traveling on social media, buying nice things, or even making those cliche LinkedIn posts about how they're thrilled to share that they just got some promotion. But comparing yourself to others is a game that really has no end because there's always going to be someone out there with a more interesting job, someone who's making more money than you, or someone who seems to have more success on the surface. But the truth is that everyone has their own issues and their own struggles in life and you really can't just cherry pick one aspect of someone's life to admire when you never have the full picture. That's why as I've gotten older, I really just can't understand why some adults out there just continue obsessing over the life of a celebrity without obsessing over their own life instead. So just don't compare yourself to others because you're on your own path and you should really be appreciating where you're at today versus where you were in the past. Number 14, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So instead of only comparing yourself to or admiring successful people from a distance, try to network with those people instead. Even if you just kind of audit who you've been spending the most time with lately and who you're communicating with the most, try to take a step back and then ask yourself, is this someone who has certain values or standards that I want to have myself? I think one of the main reasons why people like moving to high energy places like New York City or San Francisco is not just because of what's in those cities but it's mostly because of the types of people who live there as well. Those places are filled with really ambitious hard-working people and so when you're surrounded by that, it's almost hard not to build a really solid network of friends and other co-workers who are going to help to propel you forward both in your career and in life. But even if you're not in a major city like me, you can still meet so many cool people and improve your network just by putting yourself out there, sending DMs, creating content, and going to conferences and other events as well. So I think too many people get caught up in trying to find the perfect time to do different things, the perfect time to start a business, or the perfect time to quit your job or buy a house or start a family. But in reality, waiting for that perfect time tends to lead to procrastination and a real cost for missed opportunities. So sometimes you just have to be okay with imperfect timing and take action today or start building momentum to make a really big decision in the near future. As someone who quit my stable job, proposed to my girlfriend, hired people for my business, bought a house, and did a bunch of other stuff in my 20s that maybe seemed a bit scary at the time, looking back now, none of those things were as bad as they seemed at first. And honestly, the thought of missing out on the opportunities that came from those decisions, that scares me a lot more. And cut mercilessly on things you don't. So this is a quote from author and fellow YouTuber Ramit Sethi that I heard from his book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich. And I just think it sums up the whole point of money at the end of the day, especially for people in their 20s who are at the start of their wealth building journey. As a finance major in college, I knew that investing early and often was going to be really important once I started making money in my career because of the power of compound interest. So I remember really getting into reading about the whole FIRE movement, which stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. But one problem I had with the strictest versions of this movement is that you basically have to cut your spending to be as low as you can. That way you have absolutely as much money as possible left over each month after living expenses to invest and again, eventually retire early. But having such a scarcity mindset like that can really feel kind of limiting when you're working towards that early retirement for years and years. So when I heard that quote from Ramit to spend extravagantly on things you love and then cut mercilessly on things you don't, it just really resonated with me and it's been a core piece of my own personal finance journey ever since. So I drive a boring, paid-off, average-looking used car because I don't care that much about cars and I really don't drive that much anyway. But I have zero regrets about spending a few thousand dollars on a home gym setup that I use every day and works better than most commercial gym equipment. So spend money on stuff that you love, but don't be pressured to buy things you don't care about. Number 17, create more friction in your life to save money and increase productivity. So companies these days have become so good at getting people to spend both their time and their attention on whatever they're selling you or whatever content they want you to consume. For example, you can literally tap a button on your phone to buy something from Amazon and it's going to show up on your doorstep within a few hours or you might open up a social media app instinctively when you're bored during the day and then all of a sudden you just get pulled into watching one piece of content after another when you really have a lot of stuff to get done. Because of this, what I've been doing lately is I've added more friction into my life to help prevent myself from spending my money and my attention so easily. So for example, I deleted the Amazon app off my phone and I just removed credit cards from my Apple wallet as well. So now I have to actually swipe my physical credit card or enter in the numbers of that card at checkout from my laptop whenever I want to buy something. I've also purchased this cool device here called The Brick which is this little magnet that I keep on my fridge and if I tap my phone to The Brick, it'll automatically block any apps that I've designated as potential time wasters. That way when I go to my home office to actually do work, if my mind goes on autopilot when I'm bored and I go to reach for a time-wasting app, I'd have to actually get up, go back to the kitchen and then tap my phone again to the fridge to use that app. Just those little bits of friction can go a long way and I'll go ahead and leave a link to that Brick device down below in the description as well if you want to check it out because it's super cheap and it's kind of cool. Number 18, have the mindset to be more of a producer and less of a consumer. Now being a producer can obviously mean producing content like I do which is ultimately how my media business generates revenue from advertisers but producing is really a broad term that's more about finding ways to actively create more value in the world for other people. Creating value for others is how you're able to make money whether you have your own business as well or if you're just selling your value creation services to a third-party business who employs you for that. So out of the 24 hours each day, try to allocate as many of those hours as possible towards producing value or improving your skills at producing value and try to decrease the number of hours that you're consuming what others have created. Number 19, get comfortable being uncomfortable. So this was a quote that I wrote down on my old whiteboard at the very beginning of 2020 when I was really trying to put myself out there more that year but then just a few weeks later, obviously the whole world shut down for pretty much the rest of 2020 so now I just kind of keep that quote written down on my old whiteboard as something funny to look back on but that quote was something I kept coming back to whenever I wanted to push myself outside of my own comfort zone especially as someone who's naturally more of an introvert. So starting a YouTube channel and putting my face and my voice out there on the internet was never something I saw myself doing back then but ultimately, discomfort and doing challenging things is what drives growth so getting comfortable being uncomfortable is one of the best pieces of advice I've followed for where I am today. Number 20, it's okay to rent instead of owning where you live. So growing up in the U.S., you probably always hear about the American dream and how homeownership is a part of that dream but honestly, after renting from age 23 until I finally just bought my first house at age 29 a few months ago, I can confidently say I have no regrets whatsoever about renting. The fact is that renting just makes a lot more sense in most markets at the moment because of where interest rates and home prices are at plus renting just offers so much more flexibility if you want to move to a new city or a new town to see if it's a good fit to eventually make that your new home. In the short term, right now, renting can also potentially leave you with a lot more cash flow to save and invest each month and it's really not until you get to owning a house for 10 plus years where buying that house could make sense more over the long term. Now again, if you want to check out that free budgeting template that my wife and I have used to help us save money and eventually reach our goal of buying a house in our 20s, then make sure to go ahead and check out this video over here on the screen next which is going to be a full tutorial on how you can download and use that template for yourself but as always, thanks so much for watching.