5 Money Lessons I Wish I Learned In My 20s

Five things I wish I knew about money in my 20s. If you're watching me, I'm guessing you'd like another level of wealth, abundance, joy. You'd like real success in your life. I get it. There's things I Learned in my 30s and 40s and 50s that I wish someone would have shaken me and given me in my 20s. I'm gonna give you five of them right now. Number one, stop spending on things that fade. All things fade. I don't care if you bought yourself a new car, new pair of shoes, you bought the watch you bought what? Something fancy today. You forgot about it. It fades. Success lasts a lifetime. When people say, I'm just, I'm bored, I'm going shopping. Or I see somebody who's unqualified with a really fancy watch on, in my opinion, I look at them and say they're never going to be wealthy. They're not sacrificing today so they can live abundantly tomorrow. Listen, I say this out of pure love. My brother in laws, the hardest working kids I've ever seen. I say kids, they're in their late twenties. Good human beings love being around them. They're around my children. My kids are the happiest when these two kids are around. They are hustlers. They're up at 5:00 in the morning. They started their own construction company. But I got to get on these kids. Why? Because they both want to be insanely rich, insanely successful. It's not what they're on track for. They're on track for an okay life. A life full of debt. A life full of just getting by in a nice way. Right? If you still have the nice house and the nice car, but you're just getting by and there's no extra money for investing in yourself. And I'll talk about that in a minute. Or investing in other things or investing in bigger businesses, someday buying real estate or all things you want to do. Then you just get by in life like everybody else does. As hard as they work. Pull up to my house and they're brand new amazing vehicles. And they both got thousand dollar shoes on. And one just bought a Rolex. They both bought houses, they're feeling a little. They started getting momentum, but not a penny left over. Remember, things fade. But when you sacrifice for a short period of time and you're able to invest. And I'm going to go right into number two, invest in yourself. Now I know you could put some money away in a 401k, whether you have your own business or you're working for somebody else. You could put some match the s and P500 and when you're 90 years old, it could be 2 million bucks. I get all that with inflation and all that, you never know where things are going to be. But as Warren Buffet said, when he was asked what the greatest investment is that you could do, he didn't say Geico, he didn't say Allstate, he didn't say Coca Cola. He said, the greatest investment you could make is in yourself. You see whether you have a job for someone else. You should look at that job as you're there to gain experience to so you can model proven practices. If you start a business, get a mentor and model proven practices. That's the fastest way to get from where you are to where you want to be. Find somebody who's already done what you want to do, see what they're doing and see how you can make a variation of it, how you can make it better, how you could take it to the next level and then go allocate on a monthly basis, allocate money that goes away for your next level education to get a coach, to get a mentor, to get in a mastermind, to get courses, to get trainings. People are so consumed with impressing people today and nobody really gives a crap. And most of those people won't be in your life and the things you bought will be gone. But when you invest in yourself, then you're doing something most people don't. Most people go to school, go to college, they get the education, they stop learning. Be obsessed with gaining specialized knowledge from people who've already done what you want to do and moving lightning fast. People will say, how the heck did she know? Listen, I'm going to go back to number one, stop spending. My sister in law, who is amazing as well, she walks in and I see her have a $5,000 purse. She says, I've been saving up for this for years. This is a woman. My wife's whole family are hard workers. And I'm like, what are you doing? If you do things right today, you can have 100 of those in a decade. And she goes, I don't understand. And we had this great conversation and she's a hustler and she's working on her own business with her boyfriend right now. Invest in yourself. Put money away for education, for things to get better. You got to better get better. That's Jim Rohn 101. That's number two, invest in yourself. Number three, the hard way. Is actually the easy way. Living the hard way today is actually your path to the easy way tomorrow, which ties the last two together. You see, it's nice to have all the comforts today, but will that leave you the money to really live, invest and have the wealth that you desire? In most cases not. Listen, it is easy to sit on the couch and eat takeout food and watch TV and gobble down pizza today. That's easy. It's hard when you're older and maybe you're out of overweight or you're unhealthy or you can't run around with your grandchildren. It's easy to settle for the job that you're done at 5 o' clock and say, hey, I did my work, I got my check. I'm gonna go have a couple beers or a couple glasses of wine and be done. It's easy to do today. Let the man or let the company pay. Let's do it. But it's really hard to be 55 years old and look back or 70 years old or 40 years old and go, I missed. I missed all those years of leaning into my full potential. Oh, that's way harder. It's easy to screw around today, to not take things seriously, to not learn from other people, to not invest in yourself. It's easy to do today and avoid it someday. And someday you don't ever want to get to the end of your life and your maker play you a video of the woman you could have been or the man you could have been. Live a little harder today. Say no. Even if you can afford it is. See if it's really when you cut the check, when you put down the credit card, when you give the money, is it compounding the man or the woman you want to be compounding your future revenue? Or is it just scratching an itch? That will be it. You'll be wanting to scratch it in a minute. Live a little bit harder for a decade so you can have six or seven decades of an easier life. Number four, stop doing the things you suck at. That's the biggest money gobbler of them all. We're taught in school to work on our weaknesses. It's the biggest lie in history. Find out what you're good at and get amazing at it. And as a matter of fact, have the nerve, have the courage, be bold enough to identify things that you hate doing so much or you're not good at that you actually pay someone to do it. And you work on the things that can get you money, can get you success if you know you can make 50 bucks an hour doing this and you hate mowing your lawn or doing things like that or doing your taxes and somebody will do it at $20 an hour. Work on the 50. Work on expanding your mind. Work on modeling proven practices. Work on the new copy, the new book, the new company, the new advertising. And pay someone to do all the crap that you're not good at. That's how you get a return on investment. I wish I learned that earlier. My dad was born during the Depression and my dad had this mindset of I can do it myself. Why would I pay someone? My dad never made over $40,000 a year until I retired him when I was 29 years old. I've been giving him a check every week. He's 88 years old and I still feel amazing I'm able to do it and buy him a car. My dad was the hardest worker I know. My dad is the smartest human being I know, literally. I think he aced his SATs in high school and simultaneously, he never made any money because he thought he had to do it all himself. Where I'm bad at a lot of things, but I got really good at a few. And those few things I got really good at has allowed my brands to generate over a billion dollars, starting with nothing, right? Maybe that's not your goal. I'm not saying. I'm just saying what's possible when you say no to the crap. And how could your money compound by going deeper on the things that actually move the needle. This one is common for all areas of life, but especially one I wish someone told me in my twenties about money is watch who you surround yourself with. If you surround yourself with people that think you'll be rich when you make 70 grand a year and you get to 90, you're the hero. Don't surround yourself with people that think wealth is the watch you have on or the shoes you're wearing. Maybe your Nike label is upside down and it looks really cool. Maybe you got the coolest car in the parking lot. If that's what wealth and success looks like for the group you surround yourself. Find a new group. Find a group that has quiet confidence that they know if they have a bad month, they're okay because they could have a bad year, someone could have a bad decade. Some of them could quit for life because they were smart with their money, because they didn't spend on stupid stuff, especially in the beginning. In the future, spend stupid stuff. When you have income that you're not sure what to do with, but by then you'll want to give it all away. Live the hard way today so you can live the easy way tomorrow. Invest in yourself. Model proven practices. Get somebody to do all the crappy stuff and go deep on the things that actually generate you money. And just remember, all jobs are a learning opportunity, so don't get frustrated by your job. In fact, whatever you're in, fall in love with it because it's just a stepping stone. But if your eyes are open to opportunities, you'll see things the other people you're working with don't. And lastly, just watch who you surround yourself with. And if there are people in your life that you don't want to get rid of, then just put a wall up and don't let their words in. And make sure you find a community, a group online, or friends that have that same desire of if we do it right today, we can have an infinite level of success tomorrow. That's the advice I wish someone gave me about money in my 20s.