How to Build Wealth in Your 20s (Without Ruining Your Life)

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21:26Andrew Sather:Yeah, and I think that honestly leads perfectly into the first one, which is just paying attention to your money, being aware that you were putting in that$150 a month and where that money was going, but also the fact of all those other quote-unquote bad decisions, where all the money for those bad decisions were going, just being aware of that is a huge step, and that's also a lot more than a lot of people out there do. A lot of people don't pay attention either because they don't want to. They don't want to put the energy into it. They're scared of what they might see. Whatever it is, it stops them from even paying any attention to it.

21:59Andrew Sather:But paying attention to your money to some degree, for me, it's going to be a lot more of a mindset shift than immediate tangible changes. It will definitely have long-term tangible changes, but up front, just because you open your bank account doesn't mean 200 more bucks show up or something like that. But because you open your bank account and know what's in there, now the next purchasing decision you make is going to be based on that info and knowledge and will be much more informed than if you hadn't looked. You know, it's kind of like a basic way to look at it. And a more complex way to look at it, of course, is a budget, having some kind of a budget set up to see where money's going.

22:34Andrew Sather:And the fact that you have that spreadsheet and can look at it and get an overall view of where everything's going, that's just a higher level view of that. And just a very quick, shameless plug, we do have a budgeting spreadsheet available online for free. If you want to go pick it up at einvestingforbeginners.com slash budget. That's a great first step, just a simple spreadsheet to lay out that kind of stuff. But paying attention to your money to some degree, whether it's using a budget, whether it's using a sticky note. I know Andrew likes to handwrite that kind of stuff on a notebook or whatever, old school.

23:05Andrew Sather:He's no longer in his 20s, that's why. It allows you to have your money and plan for purchases. You can pay attention to things like credit card balances, which if you use your credit card just as a spending limit for yourself and just rack up stuff on there. That's likely because you weren't paying attention to it up front or else you would have seen those numbers racking up and you would have been scared and wanted to make changes. But if you just kind of stuff that in the closet somewhere, it's really, really easy to rack up high, high values. And for me, being a little bit more kind of, I'm not always goal-oriented, but definitely when it comes to finances and securing a future and securing my whys of why I want to build wealth, having financial goals is pretty dang big for me, even if it's not specific numbers.

23:49Andrew Sather:and if I don't know where I'm at now or where I'm heading or at what rate I'm heading in what direction, then I'm not going to be able to achieve those goals. So I have to pay attention to my money to some degree for that. Do you agree with this kind of mindset for your 20s, Andrew? Oh yeah.

24:07Evan Raidt:It's amazing how having that visual, the big picture overview can tell you a lot. And I like what you said about for people, it's hard to get there because we don't want to see it. We don't want to know. So we just stick our head in the sand. And that works until you have to pull your head out of the sand, and then it's not pretty. So definitely paying attention as much as you can is going to help a lot.

24:42Andrew Sather:Yeah, it kind of reminds me, definitely not that I think diet culture is the best thing in the world, but kind of comparing it to dieting to some degree, it's very easy to eat a bunch of calories if you don't know what's in it, you're blind to it. It's so easy to just eat whatever you want and rack up calories. But if all you do is just look at the number of calories something has, even if that doesn't immediately stop you from eating that thing or whatever, it informs you of it and you can make future decisions about what you eat based on knowing what you had just eaten or were going to eat. And that allows you to make better decisions about your diet than if you just didn't even know what was going on.

25:18Andrew Sather:And just something that simple can make all the difference.

25:23Evan Raidt:Well, I don't know if you knew, but if you're in the South, calories from Cheerwine don't count. Only when you're in the South. Oh, really? Okay, okay.

25:31Andrew Sather:Well, that's good to know. I love Cheerwine. I freaking love Cheerwine. I haven't had it in a little while now, but I absolutely love it. I had that first in North Carolina, so there you go. Nice.

25:41Evan Raidt:I had a feeling. I had a feeling.

25:44Andrew Sather:That I had taste of some kind. Anyways, moving on to the second point. In your 20s, just focusing on compounding. I know we already kind of touched on compounding quite a lot, but focusing on compounding and not taking the next steps too early. Especially, I always touch back to social media and the kind of mindset it puts in young people's heads because it's so pervasive in every part of young people's culture is social media and seeing other people online doing certain things and having certain outcomes. And when it comes to finances, it's always really, really flashy to see a 23-year-old just graduated college.

26:23Andrew Sather:They bought this million-dollar house. They've got this huge place. They've got a fancy car. They moved to a more expensive area. whatever it is they're just living this crazy life and they hardly ever if ever show you that the background of what's really going on with their finances or anything like that because that's not fun or sexy to talk about you know who wants to hear about a new mercedes and then they start working you through a spreadsheet of how much it costs them and how much they're making that video wouldn't do very well and that's why i don't make those kinds of youtube videos but it's very easy to get sucked into those kinds of mindsets so for me instead of focusing on pushing for those next steps over everything else.

26:58Andrew Sather:It's just focusing on building wealth and compounding around building wealth. Now, of course, we did relatively recently purchase a home, so we did take one of those big next steps, but that was with a lot of planning ahead of time, but also a lot of serious decision-making to make sure that it's a sustainable choice, not just buying a house because that's what you're supposed to do and that's what would be cool to do, but buying a house because we feel like it's the right financial and also just life decision move for us at this time and it's something that we can safely make instead of again just feeling like that's what you're supposed to do um and and these these kinds of moves maybe not an expensive car but something like an expensive house can be a a powerful financial move for sure it can it can jump start your financial future and add like kind of another layer of compounding for you but jumping in too early to that new layer of compounding is going to do a lot more harm than you might think it will.

27:58Andrew Sather:It'll suck you into a lot more financial sinkhole, a much larger financial sinkhole than you might think it will if you don't do the math ahead of time. All right, moving on to the next one. It's more about mindsets, but changing your habits has a much greater effect than changing your income. Again, if we talk about what's flashy, it's much flashier to go get a job that's going to pay you twice as much or pay you half again as much or whatever. That's really flashy, that's really exciting, and that's what's going to get the clicks and make you feel like you're making progress in your life. But really, if you scope out and look at the long-term graph of your wealth or look at your financial success or something like that, building habits up front to take care of you in the future is going to have a much greater impact.

28:42Andrew Sather:Just because you earn more doesn't mean you save more, doesn't mean you make better financial decisions. It's a lot easier than you think to save$100 now, earn twice as much, and still end up saving$100 because that's what you're used to doing. You're used to not pushing for your savings or anything like that. And so when you earn a bunch more, now you just feel like you have a bunch more to spend and live off of not to actually save and build that long-term wealth or make sustainable financial decisions. But if you take care of that lower income that you have now, if you lower sort of the income ceiling that you can live off of now, then as that income increases, it's going to be easy enough to just live off of what you've been used to living off of.

29:23Andrew Sather:Increase that a little bit, but also increase your savings a good bit and take care of your financial future. It's very easy to get accustomed to the wrong habits at this point in life, and that can go for anything. But in terms of finances, get accustomed to the wrong habits with whatever situation you're in now. I guarantee you will keep those exact same negative habits in the future, regardless of what your income is regardless of where you live, you're still going to have those same habits and they're still not going to take care of you. Yeah.

29:55Evan Raidt:Yeah. Habits are so key. Other than budgeting and saving, are there any other habits that come to mind that are important to kind of build that foundation?

30:09Andrew Sather:Yeah, I would say another habit that comes to mind is what you do with that savings. Of course, saving is the most important first step. having money put away that you're not going to spend anytime soon is the most important first thing you can do. But to really, really leverage that compounding and leverage that long-term faster and faster growth of your wealth, where you put those savings is very important. So I know we have some episodes kind of breaking down places you can put your savings, but for example, if it's a shorter term amount of savings, maybe we're talking very soon from now all the way to two or three years, putting it in something like a high-yield savings account is going to allow the money to grow at a significant rate.

30:48Andrew Sather:We're talking like four to 5%. So not the fastest rate that you could get elsewhere, but it's going to be completely guaranteed and you can pull out that money whenever you want. So if you know you're going to be using that money within two years, then just get that guaranteed rate for a while and then pull it out when you need. If we're talking about longer than that, then having it invested is by far the most powerful thing that you can do. For some people, that could be investing in real estate. For a lot more people, and what I would recommend to the vast majority of people, would be investing in the stock market in as easy a way as possible.

31:20Andrew Sather:We're not talking about having to go pick stocks and that sort of stuff unless you want to, but if you just want an easy route to build your wealth at a significant rate, just investing in the overall market, a stock like VOO, for example, it's a Vanguard index that just tracks the performance of the overall market. If you invest in that, in something like Take a Roth IRA, so it's tax-free, or a 401k, again, trying to track the overall market in a 401k, then that'll grow even more quickly and have even more tax benefits to it. But having your money in some way or another put into the stock market, invested in the stock market, is going to allow it to grow to, on average, historically, like 10%, 10.5%.

31:59Andrew Sather:And that 10%, 10.5 % adds up really, really freaking quickly, especially if you keep adding to it and keep increasing that savings rate over time.

32:10Evan Raidt:Yeah, I love that. I wonder if there's something psychologically too to seeing a little bit of income when you put something in. So if it's a savings account, at least you can see that interest hitting your account. Or if you're in VOO and you get the quarterly dividend from the ETF, that can feel like great progress. And it is great progress. And that might help you continue to keep pushing.

32:35Andrew Sather:Yeah, you know, it was something that I actually did for a while that I frankly stopped doing after a while because I didn't really see long-term benefits for the effort that I was putting in. But I would definitely recommend everybody does it for some period of time, which is just tracking those dividends. And that's not as complex or bad as it might sound to do, but it's as simple as opening a brokerage account, looking at the history of the account, and you can pretty much always just filter by dividend payouts. and so you can just get a tally of dividend payouts by date by stock and i just tracked those in the spreadsheet for a little bit i think i did it for i maybe did it for a couple months but i even think just doing it for one month could be very very powerful although some dividends pay out quarterly or or sub-annually so um so you might miss some of the tracking some of the dividends that you'll actually be getting but doing that i thought was really really powerful because I was really happy with the total numbers that I was seeing and surprised with how significant they were.

33:35Andrew Sather:It wasn't thousands and thousands a month, of course, but it was enough money that, like you said, it's a little piece of side income that's coming in that if you don't look at it, you can forget about or not even realize it's there. But that's just more money stacking on top of your growth. So if you were in 10 % on something, but also theoretically earning a 2 % dividend, that's another 2 % income that you basically just made. Ideally, you just continue to reinvest those and feed the compounding snowball as much as possible. But if you do that and don't pay attention to it, you can forget that it's even happening.

34:09Andrew Sather:And doing that for a couple months really opened my eyes to the fact that they were coming in and how powerful they were and even seeing their growth over time. Because I also touched back on it like a year or so later and seeing those values noticeably higher than they were previously was, again, very motivating. Oh, I kept investing, kept saving, kept putting money into this account. And now that cash that I was earning before is even more. And I know that a year from now, it'll be even more. And 10 years from now, it'll be a heck of a lot more. And that was very, very motivating for me.

34:40Evan Raidt:Didn't you post it online too?

34:43Andrew Sather:Yes, I did actually. I posted progress updates for a while periodically. Yeah, I did do that.

34:50Evan Raidt:But you had Apple and I can't remember what other stocks you had in there.

34:55Andrew Sather:Oh, man. It was a few. I know I had Coca-Cola. I had Apple, Coca-Cola.

35:02Andrew Sather:It was mostly blue chip stocks. Microsoft. I think I might have had Google, but I'm not certain about that one. It might be interesting to look back at those numbers, actually, again.

35:15Evan Raidt:Those are all really good picks, by the way. I don't know. Coca-Cola. Surprisingly, Coca-Cola has been on a tear. I don't understand why. Yeah, that's cool. It's cool to see that you weren't a stock picking expert, but you still picked some names that were good. And I'm sure you look back, those are going to be some great returns in addition to everything else that has returned for you. But so powerful. I think that's a great example of doing that well. So yeah, good recommendation.

35:49Andrew Sather:Yeah, a little shout out to those picks. Well, not those specific picks, but leading into those picks was from the Investing for Beginners podcast at the time. Oh. Listening to the podcast fed me into learning about investing and heading towards those decisions. So good thing that you like your own investing mindsets. That's funny. Beautiful. So another powerful thing that you can do in your 20s is something, and I've seen this term online, I don't remember where, but building career capital. So instead of just thinking about financial capital, building up wealth to spend on things or whatever, is building capital in your career.

36:28Andrew Sather:Because for a lot of us, for the vast majority of us, having some kind of a semi-steady career or a group of skill sets, however you want to look at it, is going to be the most consistent and stable and often successful way to advance your wealth and life in the long run. and focusing on that career capital instead of necessarily raw financial numbers can also be very very powerful so for example if you say you know i could save 200 bucks this month or i could spend that 200 bucks getting a certification learning a new skill you know taking advantage of this opportunity to it to advance my career or make connections or something like that spending money and time on those kinds of skills will compound even a lot more in the long run than just raw numbers.

37:14Andrew Sather:I mean, even earning a single skill could earn you thousands more on your income at your next job just because you have a single skill that maybe took you an afternoon to learn the basics of, whatever it might be. Crazy things like that happen, but focusing on those skills and relationships and connections and building those connections with people that trust and respect you and respect your abilities are going to give you a lot more opportunities in the long run than just having money in a savings account per se. Of course, it is important to have money in a savings account, but if all you have is that money in the savings account to show for it in the long run, then nobody's ever going to hire you because you've got$10 ,000 in a savings account.

37:52Andrew Sather:They don't give a crap. They give a crap that you know how to earn them$10 ,000, and therefore they want to pay you for that.

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40:12Evan Raidt:Whatnot.com slash sell. Yeah, I'm curious if you're aware of any of those kinds of skills, certifications that people can pursue. I know Google has, I think for coding, I think they have different courses you can take and they have a Google certification. But I'd be curious if you're aware of any other resources like that.

40:37Andrew Sather:The only specific ones that I would be aware of is because I'm in the engineering space. There's definitely a lot of engineering certifications that you can get. engineering is one of the few fields that does tend to care about a degree, but they don't always care about a degree, which we'll be talking about degrees in a second, but they don't care, nearly care as much if you have certifications in maybe something like coding, if you want to head towards electrical engineering side of things, computer engineering side of things. If you have certifications for certain languages, like you said, even maybe a Google certification could help you with that kind of a direction.

41:13Andrew Sather:But also having 3D modeling certifications and some of the common softwares out there, even basic certifications, can just show some competency and ability to learn different systems. And having that ability is what they care about most. And lastly, there's also a lot of analysis software out there. Stuff like stress analysis software, earning certifications in those stress analysis softwares, again, is going to show that you have a competency to, or an ability to gain competency in different skills and different abilities. And that's really the biggest thing that certifications do for you. A lot of companies aren't looking to pluck you out of a basket, set you down, and immediately have you earn them a ton of money.

41:54Andrew Sather:They want to pluck you out of a basket knowing that they can teach you what they need to teach you and make you a perfect fit for that role and then, quote-unquote, start just earning them a ton of money after that. So showing that you can learn and can do different things is the most important thing you can do. So look at whatever career you're looking to get into and just get certifications for a bunch of the different major aspects of that field. And that's going to look really, really good. Yeah, that's really interesting. That's cool. All right. Lastly here, and it's a big question, we have had an entire episode about this, but college or not for your 20s?

42:37Andrew Sather:Again, a lot of people will say that you shouldn't go to college because you should just go take risks and explore and experiment with a ton of stuff, and going to college is going to hold you down for a good bit of time, and so it's not worth doing. or a lot of people are going to say college is the only route to a stable long-term to long-term financial success and experience and all that. What side of the fence do you land on with this, Andrew?

43:03Evan Raidt:Does it surprise you that I straddle the fence?

43:06Andrew Sather:Not in the slightest, not a little bit.

43:11Evan Raidt:Look, like STEM, if you want to work in STEM, I don't know how you get around getting a degree for that stuff. And I know when I was in my engineering days, if you wanted to pursue a certain role at the companies I was at, you had to have a master's or a PhD. I did not, so I was not on the same rung of the ladder, but that's okay. It wasn't necessarily something I had set out for, so it worked out for me. So STEM, I think you need a degree. The other stuff though, maybe I'm a little more on the get out there and figure things out. If you want to be a small business owner or launch a startup and throw yourself into something that's high risk, high reward, I don't know how much a degree would help you, but you shouldn't just discard all of that stuff.

44:11Evan Raidt:this just pops to mind and I don't know why it popped in my head the other day, but if you watch the movie about Steve Jobs, I don't know how accurate it was, but I know like... With Ashton Kutcher? Yes. Yeah. There you go. Have you seen it?

44:26Andrew Sather:Yeah, I have seen it. Yeah.

44:27Evan Raidt:Yeah. So there's a scene in that movie where he's studying some degree and then he crashes a calligraphy course. And I thought that was really interesting. that I, at least I always think of Steve Jobs as like really tech, like tech, tech, tech. And obviously he had really great taste as well. That's something that made Apple so popular in the early days. But it's interesting to me that he looked at college as like, what can I learn that can help me push my goals? And so he understood that like, there's a lot of nuance to calligraphy and there's ways to do it really tastefully that are based on stuff you can learn in a classroom.

45:09Evan Raidt:So he took that part of his college education and that's done really well for the company. So I don't know if that answers your question. How do you lean on this fence when it comes to college?

45:22Andrew Sather:Yeah, I agree with you pretty strongly. And it also resonates with me because the way that, in hindsight, the way that I look back on college is it was really a big certification for me. There were definitely skills that I learned, especially in the engineering field, math-related field, that I take with me and make it a lot easier to understand certain concepts or have a baseline foundation of knowledge for things that otherwise I'd be learning from scratch. But all of those I could learn from scratch, especially nowadays, I could genuinely have learned every single thing I learned in college from YouTube or from being on a job and And because they're doing stress analysis at this company, they teach me what stress analysis is, what stress is, all the basics of it.

46:11Andrew Sather:They teach me on the job. That would have gotten me to the exact same point after a few months of learning, several months of learning or something like that. but having college was just a big certification to prove hey i can work my ass off to achieve this and to learn all of these different kinds of skills and pass all these different tests and succeed in all these different classes because i proved i can do that you're a lot more more likely to trust that i can learn whatever i need to at this job so i definitely think it's it's very powerful as a certification in that way because even if i jump to another field they're going to look at my degree and say, okay, he knows how to work and learn.

46:48Andrew Sather:So we trust that he can work and learn whatever we need him to work on and learn. And if I didn't have that, then I wouldn't have as much behind me to prove that. But I would not agree with the mindset of college that I honestly had going into it, which was if I go to college, it's going to teach me everything I need to know for this career. It's going to prepare me to be a good engineer, to be a good artist, to be a good writer, whatever it is, I definitely don't think that that's true. I mean, I constantly get, not in a mean way, but I constantly get laughed at of what I didn't learn in college because they feel like, how did you get a bachelor's in mechanical engineering and you don't know this?

47:30Andrew Sather:And it's like, I never had a class on it. If I didn't have a class on it, I don't know what the heck you're talking about. That happens more often than you would think. But again, they say, okay, well, we know he graduated college and did a good job at it. And so we trust that this thing he's never freaking heard of, he can learn and keep up with in the long run. But this all leads me to say that if you instead spend your time, maybe you quickly shadow or gain experience from somebody who's in the field, not to necessarily get you all the way there just from doing that, but to understand what the heck do people actually do in this field and what do they care about and what do I need to know.

48:09Andrew Sather:and then you just take that quick info and again, go get a bunch of certifications and learning and experience in those skill sets, in that software, in that hands-on experience, in some personal projects based on those concepts, whatever it is, you gain that experience, then that will prove that you have all the skills that they need you to have and all the competencies that they need you to have and that you can learn those competencies at a decent rate. And I feel like that would, from an employer's point of view, that would achieve a very similar end goal to just having a degree. And so it kind of depends on the direction you want to head.

48:46Andrew Sather:And also I agree with, like you said, if you're not heading into a STEM field and the skills that you could have are kind of less tangible and less structured, I guess you could say not that it obviously doesn't take skill, but those skills are a little bit more soft skills and a little bit harder to describe or get a certification in quote unquote, then it's not quite as useful for you because they're going to look and say, well, everything you learned, cool, you learned some basics, but this doesn't really prove anything, and the readers aren't going to care that you have a college degree. They're going to care that the book is good or entertaining or educational or whatever it is.

49:22Andrew Sather:That's going to be a lot more important than just your degree that you're trying to prove to an employer.

49:28Evan Raidt:Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense what you're saying, and I share a similar experience of the things I learned in college as an engineer. It's like, okay, I'm starting brand new from scratch and learning the way that this company does it, which is the way the industry does it, and it's just not taught in school. So it did feel, I don't know, for you, for me, it felt a little bit of a waste, but to your point, it is a good badge of honor to say, hey, this guy can do hard things. And that gives you a lot of credibility.

50:09Andrew Sather:Yeah. And to look at it from the financial aspect too, I'm definitely very privileged and happy that basically because of my performance in high school, I was able to graduate college without any debt. And that's also a very, very different situation than a lot of people out there. So for me, for a situation like mine or similar to mine, I would say that going to college was worthwhile Because if you can leave it without anything, you know, holding you back because of doing it at all, then you got all that experience, four years worth of experience for, obviously I'm not going to say for free because it definitely took effort, but it doesn't, you're not left with anything tying you back after that.

50:50Andrew Sather:if however you were to say okay i've got nobody to help me i've got no scholarships whatever it is i'm going to pay my entire way through it and go into you know a potential mountain of debt afterwards i think that skews that that equation a lot more because you could again go out and get some of those certifications some of that experience to head you in a very similar direction it's probably never going to be quite as comprehensive or quite as impressive on a resume but still get a lot of the way there for a lot, a lot, magnitudes less money and achieve a similar end goal and then gain experience to make up for that in the long run, that's a lot more worth it than putting yourself in a financial hole that you're having to dig yourself out of from the start.

51:34Andrew Sather:Because again, in your 20s, before all that debt compounds more and more over time, in your 20s, you're going to be earning less money than you're ever going to going forwards until retirement. And you're also going to be starting off with even more debt and a bigger hole to crawl your way out of up front. That's setting yourself up for a lot of financial trouble.

51:57Evan Raidt:Yeah, that makes sense. So, dude, you've been doing it right since high school. Been trying. Been trying. You've been out of the womb, Nick. I got this.

52:07Andrew Sather:Out of the womb with an investing account.

52:10Evan Raidt:I mean that's happening now for kids it's kind of cool I'm going to talk to my tax person for my son

52:18Andrew Sather:that'll be interesting that's beautiful that's the best financial start anybody could possibly have maybe I should start

52:26Evan Raidt:have them listening to you

52:27Andrew Sather:there we go you just start putting headphones on the belly and that's basically the same thing

52:34Evan Raidt:I should I haven't had any right episodes 24-7 I am doing him a disservice because I'm not doing that for him right now

52:42Andrew Sather:I know he's going to be behind when he's 34 years old he's going to look back on this and be like god dang it if I had just been listening to this podcast sooner alright beautiful I really appreciate Andrew fantastic episode today as always and I hope some people learn some things and again a lot of these concepts even though they're focused on your 20s apply outside of your 20s just as all life related financial related concepts always do and if you're past your 20s at this point, trust me, that does not mean that it's too late to make changes like this and to have very, very similar effects.

53:16Andrew Sather:Of course, it's always time that you're never going to get back, but also another five years from now, that five years would also be time that you couldn't get back and compounding you couldn't get habits, you couldn't build, whatever it is. So the most important thing is that you either start now or already have started now. That is all you have control over and that's all that's worth putting time or stress over. The past isn't anything you can change and it's not worth stressing about. But I'd love to hear, when did you start paying attention to your finances? How did you treat your 20s? Did you see your 20s as a time to experiment and take risks, big risks for big rewards in the long run?

53:52Andrew Sather:Or did you take your 20s to kind of make these long-term habits and focus on that side of the fence? Let me know either through a comment or an email at evan at einvestingforbigners.com. As always, love to hear from everybody. And remember, financial freedom is built one smart move at a time. Keep it simple. Keep it steady. And at any rate, I'll see you next time. Peace. The information contained is for general information and educational purposes only. It is not intended for a substitute for legal, commercial, and or financial advice from a licensed professional.

54:23Evan Raidt:Review our full disclaimer at einvestingforbeginners.com.

55:01Evan Raidt:We'll see you next time. Available at participating locations only.

55:33Evan Raidt:laundry to us. Rinse. It's time to be great.