If You’re Not Getting Rich In Your 20s, You’re Doing it Wrong

People send me updates on things like tiny houses, urban planning breakthroughs, people who manage to blow even a double Silicon Valley salary and appear clueless about where it’s all going, and major league players like NFL Mathlete John Urschel who has been known to sleep in his Nissan Versa*. The world seems refreshed to see examples of high-wealth people living lifestyles of below-average consumption.

But one of the most interesting articles in recent memory has been making the rounds on social media this month, and it has fired up many Mustachians because it combines just enough spirited and uplifting “Fuck Yeah” insight on the good life, with a well-intentioned but horribly wrong conclusion. It’s well written and very persuasive. With 2.3 million “likes” on Facebook (up from 1.2m last time I checked), it has probably fooled thousands of financially suicidal people into thinking they are not sabotaging their own lives after all. In fact, I suspect that the article has gone viral because it tells people exactly what they want to hear: “Go ahead, be irresponsible and party on. This is the path to a better future.”

The article is called “If You Have Savings in Your 20s, You’re Doing Something Wrong.” To be fair, it appeared in Elite Daily, which is somewhat of a notorious clickbait forward-this-to-your-facebook-friends content mill** to begin with. But there are some brains behind the article and I agreed with about half of it, so it is worth properly ridiculing the conclusion right here, in order to Fix the Internet.

So the author, Lauren Martin, seems to be a young, fun-loving person living in New York City. Having recently spent a few days there doing the old “Ha ha haah, aren’t our lives so prosperous!” clinking of cocktail glasses in expensive restaurants with attractive entrepreneurial people and delicious food flying around everywhere, I have a fresh memory of the vibe of that lifestyle. It makes you feel powerful, and feeling powerful is a useful precursor to actually being powerful — gaining the power to live a happy and excellent life.

So she goes into this narrative about how she came to the city with an overly frugal mindset, worried about money and denying herself the pleasures of restaurants, clubbing and taxi rides. A wiser friend encouraged her to loosen up: “Don’t save money. Make more money.”

This leads to a series of enthusiastic verses like these:

“When you live your life around your retirement fund, you may as well retire now. You can’t make a mark on the world if you’re too cheap to live in it.

Refusing to give yourself the luxury of enjoying your money negates the whole point of making it.

Your 20s are not the time to save; they’re the time to gamble. $200 a month isn’t going to make the dent that a $60,000 pay raise will after spending all those nights out networking.”

Sounds reasonable, right? How could I take exception with any of that?

I take exception because I’ve been in exactly that place. I arrived in my 20s with just the same sparky excitement for the big city, fun nights out, rapid career advancement and living to its fullest. Most motivated young people show up with the same dreams.

The difference is how you come out of those 20s. At best, the advice above will get you some good memories, a strong career, a slightly larger waistline and weaker liver, and a negligible net worth. Better than the average fate, but a huge waste of an opportunity if you ask me.

With just a slight tweak on the money strategy, I came out with the same exhilarating decade of memories, good friends around the continent, and a beautiful and accomplished soon-to-be-wife. With the added benefits of a leathery shell of Life Battle Armor from the explosion of good-old-fashioned hard work and sacrifice, and the better part of a million dollars, which has continued to support the good life and grow to this day just before my 41st birthday.

Because here’s the thing about your 20s. They are the time to work. The very, very best time in your life to work your ass off and create an exponential snowball of money, skills, and friendships. Your brain will never be more sponge-like and inexhaustible. You will never feel more motivated and less cynical than you do now. And you will never have another decade of pre-childraising freedom in your life. For the roughly 90% of people who plan to have children at some point make note of the following two bricks of wisdom:

• No matter how much you like working right now, Shit can get Old … fast.
• Kids are way more work than you expect, accelerating the ageing of the aforementioned Shit.

These days, kids tend to happen in your 30s. If you attempt that feat with nothing but a well-networked career and a hangover, your life will suck. You need to be well back from the financial cliff, not worried about how you’ll cover the next round of bill payments if you lose your job. It works even better if you’re completely financially independent by that point.

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