14 Money Mistakes to AVOID in Your 20's

There are 14 massive money mistakes that people make in their 20s that you do not want to repeat. And this is one of those don't buy an iPhone, buy an Android bullshit. Like if you make these mistakes early, you will have to pay for them for years. But the good thing is, is that you can avoid them very easily. Number one, underspending on education and overspending on status. When you're in your 20s, you probably aren't ballin. And the amount of people on Instagram I see with their check mark that they bought in front of a Lambo that they whatever, like we all get it, they're full of shit. We understand the people who matter are not impressed. If I were a $200,000 watch, all the buddies that I have don't give a shit. The guys who are ahead of you, they want to see you eating shit, living poor, learning and hustling you, driving around in your new roles or bends or whatever. And you're maxing out all of your expenditures so you can flex to other 20 year olds is stupid. Now you should take that same money and plow all of that into your own ability to earn more money. And that's what somebody who's ahead of you is going to look back and give you that status and respect for. Like you can get status in your 20s from people who are ahead of you if you're doing the right stuff. If you show that you're on the wrong pat, they automatically think, they're like he doesn't get it or she doesn't get it. They'll never associate with you until you understand the lesson. Number two, taking jobs to earn rather than to learn. And this is one of the biggest ones. We had a thousand people who applied for a YouTube editor so for editing videos like this. So we offered somebody very good pay and the guy said, I want an extra $3,000 a year. Missing the fucking plot. What he didn't understand was that he was in a season of learning, not a season of earning. He might be able to go somewhere else and 30%, not even 3,000, 30% higher. The people who are going to pay that premium are paying the premium for everything you know, and have nothing to add to you. If you're taking your jobs right now in order to earn, it's not the right season. You're trying to cash in early. The earning potential of you getting extra $10,000 a year or $25,000 a year in your 20s is so inconsequential on the long time horizon of the skills that you should be learning right now. Three is that you save money. That is a mistake. Hear me out. You want to save money in your 20s, but not actually save it. You want to not spend it or blow it on shit and you want to put it into a separate account. But that money you want to invest, not dollar cost averaging, S and P or whatever it is, you can do that by all means. It's a great way to like have some money later. But if you want to become filthy rich, which is hopefully, you know what Mozy Nation is here to do, you want to invest that money into you and your earning capacity right now. You make so little that the money doesn't matter. So like if you save $500 a month, save $1,000 a month, you can put that into the calculator and look what it's going to be in 70 years. And one, it doesn't factor in inflation. So when people see that they're going to be worth $4 million, $4 million in 60 years is also worth like a million dollars today. Think about how much more you'll get back if you spend $10,000 this year and then you double your earning capacity or you triple your earning capacity. Instead of saving money to invest in assets, invest in the number one asset, which is you, and increasing your earning potential. Number four, decide how much you're going to invest first before you spend money. Prioritization comes from taking it's literally prior. It comes first, right? It's that you take the money off the top and you say, this money has been prioritized for my learning, my education, and then left that you can spend all that money, that account, you can let it stockpile up and then you see something that you want to learn and then deploy the capital. Not what do I have left at the end of the month, can I afford it? You've got this big pile of gold over here that every month you plan to. And then when you, when you see the opportunity, you make the decision, you pull the trigger. Number five, automate the investing. And you want to manualize the spending. You want to lubricate how easy it is for you to invest in yourself. And you want to make it harder to spend on shit that never comes back to you. Dave Ramsey talks about people having cash rather than credit cards. You actually feel pain when you buy things in cash compared to using credit cards. The harder it is to buy something, the less you buy. Like the only one that even hits your account is the money that you're allowed to spend. The Other money you've already allocated out to the other things like give you a rent account maybe. And then you've got your personal investing account, sma, you've got your food and your car money, whatever. Number six, don't go shopping. Let's be real, you don't need another set of sneakers. The idea that someone says I'm going to go shopping, like they have no agenda, it just means like I'm going to waste money today. Stick with the list that you already have pre approved in terms of your budget. This is my list, these are my groceries, this is whatever. And if it's not on the list, you don't buy it. It's a simple habit, but that will pay dividends for the rest of your life. Number seven, get takeout, don't cook your food. Very contrarian. I know as soon as you make more than $15 an hour, it makes more sense for you to work that day, get the takeout food and get the time back. It makes more sense financially. Most people can, like if you're not being a weirdo, you can eat out for 10 bucks ish a meal and you eat out twice a day, it's 20 bucks a day, $600 a month. Maybe if you went to the grocery store, be what? 100 bucks a week versus $150 a week is the net. $50 a week? Can you not make that up for the meal prep? Going to the grocery store, cutting, cooking, cleaning, you're saving the pennies rather than investing in the mega millions, which is you. Number eight. People live with the wrong people. They have terrible roommates who break things, who go out drinking, who are late on rent. Like these are all things that will distract you from the thing you're trying to do. That's like level one, worst type of roommate. Above that, you've got people who are responsible, et cetera, but they don't have the same goals as you. They will speak over you, their limiting beliefs, and they will oftentimes not actually root for you. And they will kind of undercut you when you're on this path, which is different than them. And the thing is, in the beginning, what becomes success looks like failure. You're learning, you're not earning. They're already pulling their earning trigger. They're bragging on the fact that makes 70 grand a year, whatever, you have a different goal. And so never listen to people who have smaller goals for your life than you do. Making sure that you're living with a type of people who are trying to do the same thing as you are in your life will encourage one another. And you guys are kind of like in the game together. That's what will shape the way you see the world. I do think it's worth living with multiple people in your 20s because one, your 20s can be lonely, but two, it's also just a lot cheaper. I lived in a house with seven people in California and I was able to only pay 400 bucks a month in like a nice area. Which leads to number nine, your micro community matters a lot. I would overpay for convenience in terms of being close to stuff, close to the highway so I can get on and off and right to places I need to close to a gym and close to cheap places to eat. If I can do those things, and ideally if I can walk to them, I save time and gas. I get outside. If you live in the middle of nowhere and it takes you 25 minutes to get the gym and 25 minutes to go back, there's all this time that gets eaten up. I'm willing to pay a premium to save all of the ancillary costs that would go with living somewhere less convenient, less safe. I would live with more people in a better area than fewer people in a shitty area. Number 10, you model the wrong season of life. Sometimes younger guys will look at what I'm doing. They're like, oh, I'm going to do what Alex is doing. The thing is like, you don't have the track record and reputation is built on two things. It's built on what you've done and what you say you're going to do, and having both of them come true. The thing that builds the reputation is not modeling what I'm doing now, but modeling what I did before. You want to make sure that you model the right aspect of someone's life at the right time. Flying private doesn't make you rich. It means you spend a lot of money. Sequence matters. Number 11, measure money in how long it took you to earn it. Let's say you make 20 bucks an hour. If you want to go buy a shirt for 100 bucks, you have to think to yourself, okay, I make $20 an hour, 20% payroll tax. I'm actually going to have to work six hours to buy that $100 shirt with tax, whatever. So if someone said, I want you to work all day and I'll give you this shirt, would I do it? Probably not. I worked at Smoothie king as a 15 years old, $7.25 an hour, a six hour shift right. So I was making 43 bucks. People would go next door, I remember noticing this, and they would spend 15 bucks on lunch. I was like, so you have $36 after taxes for coming to work today and 15 of that is you going to lunch next door. So you're working six hours for 20 bucks. Number 12, get competitive with money around what you're saving, not what you're making. So I told you this is a season of learning, not season of earning. To know what you're going to learn, you have to budget towards your investment. Rather than thinking, I'm making $5,000 a month and spending $5,000 a month, meaning I'm profiting personally, zero. Say I'm saving $2,500 this month to invest in me. I've had people who I know have been making hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars a year and have nothing. They blew everything. And so make your pr, your personal records around what you're able to put into that bank account every month. Number 13, check your account every single morning. Until I started doing it, I stayed poor. I didn't want to look at my bank account because it would hurt my feelings. Seriously. I just, I would look at it and I would just feel poor. But that's okay. You have to confront reality in order to change. Man, money's pouring out of this thing left and right. Once I got a pulse on it, I knew Tuesdays when I paid this, Thursdays is when I paid for this. It's a habit that once you learn it, it's hard to forget. And I promise you, just like losing weight, if you get someone to measure the weight every day, get someone to measure the bank account every day, it'll improve. Number 14, when is it okay to spend money? If there's one thing that I probably could have done better is I could have spent money on one time experiences. And what I mean by that is not going to the club and popping bottles, going to Europe and doing, you know, sleeping in hostels for three months. That's a cool experience that you're not going to be able to do when you're 40, you're just not going to do it. So there are times of our lives that are optimal for certain types of experiences and those windows close. And so if there are experiences that you can only do in your 20s, I wholeheartedly support them. But you want them to be things that when you're 80, you're proud. Giving yourself permission to spend on an experience in a limited fashion. You don't want to drain your entire investment account. Right? You want to go see the Grand Canyon for three days, go to the Grand Canyon. If there's some things that are a little unique to you, I think these are the times that you can do that, and it's worth spending the time and the money to do it, even if it's not financially makes sense, because at the end of the day, you're going to die. It's not going to matter anyways.