Excellent update to your classic roadmap. Three comments I'd like to make:
1) As mentioned, your early 20s will be absolutely dreadful should you choose to work towards financial independence (and you should or you wouldn't be reading this). Doubly so if you're a guy. You'll find yourself at the bottom of every conceivable socioeconomic totem pole: money, status, dating, etc. Your peers will be blowing their entire paychecks travelling and leasing cars and homes they can't afford, and they'll make you feel like a loser if you don't do so as well.
ALL of this will eventually pass, and if you're smart you'll only go up from the bottom. Things didn't start to get better for me until I was in my late 20s but now I'm surpassing most of my peers left and right. See things through and reap the rewards later (for the autists: look up "Saturn return").
2) I recognize this isn't an option for some people and that family situations can differ quite a bit, but live with your parents for as long as you can. You'll have ZERO expenses and can put ALL of your money towards your income streams and crypto. Again, your peers and some girls will ostracize you for this, especially in your mid to late 20s, but you shouldn't give a care what they think. The very idea of not paying rent and keeping everything you earn makes most "normies" seethe like you wouldn't believe. Make sure if you do this, however, that you don't get complacent with your financial goals.
3) Regarding Hack Reactor or coding schools in general, I attended a few years ago and the program is a shell of its former self. Coding bootcamps were a good idea 4-5 years ago but they're the same as for-profit universities now. They take in an incredible amount of students, shuffle them through a mediocre series of pre-recorded lectures, and leave you to learn the rest on your own. Furthermore, they've discontinued their job fairs and offer no help with career placement. Hack Reactor was the biggest $20K mistake I've made in my life, and that's including several DeFi yield farming scams.
I did this and wouldn't recommend it because being an SDR or AE is a miserable grind and it's easy to get stuck for life in a pure sales career (not ideal long term).
This is how I would do it if I were fresh out of high school (no college). You do need the certifications below to start, however.
Both paths can be started without a degree but to progress you'll need to earn a few certifications to prove your technical knowledge. I'd recommend starting with the two Google IT Certificates and CompTIA, then begin learning AWS and/or Azure. You'll pick up Python and JavaScript along the way, which is really all you need to make and deploy most business applications.
Ex Lambda here. They got rid of their teaching assistants a while ago unless they brought them back in again. I heard people are suing on the grounds that since their fellow students taught them and they're grading themselves Lambda didn't instruct them so that's why their ISAs should be dissolved. It's been a while since I did research on camps but I thought Hack Reactor was one of the better more competitive ones to get into. It's not hard to learn how to program on your own time. You will have to struggle with a problem for weeks until you finally get it. Anybody that is on the fence about college or coding camps need to do their due dilligence.
Yes, I agree bootcamps were good years ago, I have met people that went to college for bad degrees, go to a bootcamp and get hired as a dev.
I kid you not: they said that their graduates were "so successful at finding programmer jobs" that they didn't need job fairs anymore. It certainly can't be because they're churning out 40+ unqualified JavaScript "programmers" per location every six weeks. Peak clown.
Great stuff. I'm 30, but it's good to revisit the basics every now and then to keep your foundation strong.
I agree with almost everything you said, but I'd like to challenge one belief or assumption that keeps coming up in your writings: the idea that you should focus on building wealth in your 20s and then wait to focus on health until your 30s and beyond.
I think this is based on the idea that output increases linearly in proportion to hours worked. E.g. 60 hours of work per week yield 50% more output than 40, 80 hours yield 33% more output than 60, etc.
I think that the real equation for work output is something like this: output = time spent working x energy x focused % of time.
Y'all talk about "working 60-80 hours a week with minimal sleep." If I'm right about the above equation, "minimal sleep" gives you more hours in which to work, but it can also reduce your output per hour by sapping your energy and impairing your focus.
You CAN work 60-80 hours a week and still get plenty of sleep, though, if you have no kids, no romantic partner, and no social life (which y'all would advise for someone who is trying to build wealth). That's what I'd recommend.
Other things I would add to help optimize the equation are healthy eating and meditation. Healthy eating improves energy and doesn't take much time if you just go to Chipotle, Sweetgreen, or wherever and order all vegetables and meats and no grains or dairy.
Meditation has really helped me improve my focus. You don't need to be a monk and meditate all day, but adding just a little bit to the morning can help you stay on track.
I do think that people in the wealth-building phase should engage in minimal exercise, though. A clean diet can make up for a lack of exercise, but the reverse isn't often true. 20-year-olds (myself included) are also prone to lifting like idiots and hurting themselves.
Re: improved focus, in most forms of meditation, one essentially practices being continuously aware of something, such as one's breath, a mantra, or something else.
Continuous awareness, interestingly, is NOT the same as "focus" = it feels much gentler. Other things - thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, etc. come to the front of your mind and try to make you focus on them and give up the "continuous awareness" of your chosen object of meditation. The meditator tries to resist these distractions, not actively or violently, but by simply letting them go and allowing the chosen object of continuous awareness to float back to the top of your mind.
In my experience, lack of focus = shifting your focus toward a distraction and away from what you should be doing. Refusing to focus on fleeting thoughts, over and over again for a sustained period of time, builds up the "muscle" that one uses to defeat distractions that compete for your awareness.
Re: time to benefit, I've found that meditating even once can make me feel more present, aware, and conscious for the next hour or two. Meditating regularly "strengthens the muscle" as I mentioned above and enables you to be "conscious" or "present" for longer and in the face of stronger distractions.
Re: what do I do to meditate, I typically do Transcendental Meditation, but the best kind of meditation is the kind that you actually do yourself. Download a few meditation apps, go to retreats with different disciplines, and just try stuff out. If you try 10 different types of meditation and hate 9 but do 1 for the rest of your life, then you win!
Efficiency-adjusted optimal daily dose is probably 40 min to 1 hour (similar to exercise). I've tried different combinations, even going so extreme as to splitting up into 5-minute chunks, but I think the easiest schedule for most people to follow is 20-30 min twice per day. Once first thing in the morning, and again after you finish working for the day.
In the US, one other addition if available would be to take advantage of your employer's Healthcare Savings Account (the one that rolls over, not the use-it-or-lose-it Healthcare Spending Account) to use pre-tax dollars on prescriptions, doctors visits, and co-pays.
If there is a big, known medical expense then either are OK, but sometimes the latter lets you spend money before you have actually contributed it.
28 currently work in foods e-commerce company. Was “gifted” great domain names as owner does not have time to work on them anymore as he is getting older
Holy shit lol. That guy has some great resources on his Twitter. If you see my measly question posted down below, disregard - got my answer right here.
Great - but unless you're really going to launch a brand that can involve one of these, best to just sit on them and/or sell them to the right buyer. Don't let the domain name pick the niche for you. Pick the niche that you are confident about and then get a suitable domain, doesn't matter if one these great domains don't apply.
The worst thing about college is when they convince kids from a poor background to take on the most useless degrees like communications or political science. Now they're straddled with debt, no assets, no financial support and no job prospects. I know a lot of people going down this path and man I can't imagine how bad its gonna be.
By design, most of them women, a certain % of which turn to selling their bodies for the $ they really need - google the rise of sugar daddy website, tons of college chicks
When I was in college I told a boomer professor I wanted to be an actor. She said the school has an acting department. I'm glad I never followed up. She retired about a year ago. The writing is on the wall, colleges are on the decline.
I graduated last year, in the process of receiving a promotion into first full time position. The side business / second form of income was selling herb. Business was well enough that I have enough physical cash to pay off my entire student loans. Only problem is I obviously cant just go and deposit all that money into an account without raising any flags. Any suggestions? Obviously from reading your posts I have come to learn that holding that much physical cash is an awful financial practice but its not like I could just go and deposit it into the bank.
Treating your question as the hypothetical that it must certainly be, I'll provide you a hypothetical answer which is not to be confused with actual encouragement to break any relevant laws in your locale or be intended as financial advise, etc, etc.
Pull just a hundred dollars out of your bank account to hold physically as credible walking around money. Go put medium sized (hundreds of your illicit dollars), typically around the same amount, on prepaid debit card. Not thousands! And never $10K or that triggers the Feds. Slow and steady. Find a local crypto (bitcoin) ATM. Insert card (or some will accept the bills so you don't have to go the debit card route) and transfer that USD to your DECENTRALIZED wallet. Consider buying OTC. Invest in BTC and/or ETH. Keep doing this. When next several price jumps (10% or more occurs, sell profit for USD and transfer to bank account via method of your choice (metamask wallet to linked bank account, whatever). Original money has been freshly laundered and remains in DECENTRALIZED wallet as principle plus you made profit which you then use to pay your student loans. You can claim you invested from your wages you withdrew - because it went to a DECENTRALIZED wallet they can't see original transactions. Be sure and track any sales as you'll have to report those as taxable events. Reminder: slow and steady and not large amounts and don't use up the principle, just the profits from coin value increases. Or yield farm if you want and use profits from that.
Hey Jungle, about to enter the workforce post graduation. Was wondering if it would be a good idea to allocate my 401k to company stock or just have it an index fund. Thanks
I would go for an index fund. If the company has trouble, the stock price tanks and you are out of work (or will not be getting a raise). Worst case of that was Enron.
Curious to hear anyone’s thoughts on this... do you consider a spouse’s income when talking about multiple streams? Or is it just for each person individually? Between my wife and I, we have 3 right now and I am working on my second (she has two). I appreciate any input.
Question on buying websites to fix them up - what skills would you suggest learning to do so, besides the obvious like sales copywriting and general common sense on what businesses are a good idea or not? Specifically, is there a web programming language or platform (Wordpress, etc) you recommend learning? Not asking you to do my homework for me, just maybe looking for a point in the right direction.
Excellent update to your classic roadmap. Three comments I'd like to make:
1) As mentioned, your early 20s will be absolutely dreadful should you choose to work towards financial independence (and you should or you wouldn't be reading this). Doubly so if you're a guy. You'll find yourself at the bottom of every conceivable socioeconomic totem pole: money, status, dating, etc. Your peers will be blowing their entire paychecks travelling and leasing cars and homes they can't afford, and they'll make you feel like a loser if you don't do so as well.
ALL of this will eventually pass, and if you're smart you'll only go up from the bottom. Things didn't start to get better for me until I was in my late 20s but now I'm surpassing most of my peers left and right. See things through and reap the rewards later (for the autists: look up "Saturn return").
2) I recognize this isn't an option for some people and that family situations can differ quite a bit, but live with your parents for as long as you can. You'll have ZERO expenses and can put ALL of your money towards your income streams and crypto. Again, your peers and some girls will ostracize you for this, especially in your mid to late 20s, but you shouldn't give a care what they think. The very idea of not paying rent and keeping everything you earn makes most "normies" seethe like you wouldn't believe. Make sure if you do this, however, that you don't get complacent with your financial goals.
3) Regarding Hack Reactor or coding schools in general, I attended a few years ago and the program is a shell of its former self. Coding bootcamps were a good idea 4-5 years ago but they're the same as for-profit universities now. They take in an incredible amount of students, shuffle them through a mediocre series of pre-recorded lectures, and leave you to learn the rest on your own. Furthermore, they've discontinued their job fairs and offer no help with career placement. Hack Reactor was the biggest $20K mistake I've made in my life, and that's including several DeFi yield farming scams.
Wow good to know what is the main source then if you want to be a software developer and don't want to to go some $100K university?
Two routes that I know of without a degree:
1) Enterprise SaaS sales SDR/AE -> pre-sales engineer/solutions consultant -> software developer/solutions architect
I did this and wouldn't recommend it because being an SDR or AE is a miserable grind and it's easy to get stuck for life in a pure sales career (not ideal long term).
2) IT (desktop support, helpdesk, etc.) -> Cloud/DevOps -> software developer/solutions architect
This is how I would do it if I were fresh out of high school (no college). You do need the certifications below to start, however.
Both paths can be started without a degree but to progress you'll need to earn a few certifications to prove your technical knowledge. I'd recommend starting with the two Google IT Certificates and CompTIA, then begin learning AWS and/or Azure. You'll pick up Python and JavaScript along the way, which is really all you need to make and deploy most business applications.
Ex Lambda here. They got rid of their teaching assistants a while ago unless they brought them back in again. I heard people are suing on the grounds that since their fellow students taught them and they're grading themselves Lambda didn't instruct them so that's why their ISAs should be dissolved. It's been a while since I did research on camps but I thought Hack Reactor was one of the better more competitive ones to get into. It's not hard to learn how to program on your own time. You will have to struggle with a problem for weeks until you finally get it. Anybody that is on the fence about college or coding camps need to do their due dilligence.
Yes, I agree bootcamps were good years ago, I have met people that went to college for bad degrees, go to a bootcamp and get hired as a dev.
Why’d they stop the job fairs? They realized that the market for a react/node “fullstack” noob is all dried up?
I kid you not: they said that their graduates were "so successful at finding programmer jobs" that they didn't need job fairs anymore. It certainly can't be because they're churning out 40+ unqualified JavaScript "programmers" per location every six weeks. Peak clown.
Great stuff. I'm 30, but it's good to revisit the basics every now and then to keep your foundation strong.
I agree with almost everything you said, but I'd like to challenge one belief or assumption that keeps coming up in your writings: the idea that you should focus on building wealth in your 20s and then wait to focus on health until your 30s and beyond.
I think this is based on the idea that output increases linearly in proportion to hours worked. E.g. 60 hours of work per week yield 50% more output than 40, 80 hours yield 33% more output than 60, etc.
I think that the real equation for work output is something like this: output = time spent working x energy x focused % of time.
Y'all talk about "working 60-80 hours a week with minimal sleep." If I'm right about the above equation, "minimal sleep" gives you more hours in which to work, but it can also reduce your output per hour by sapping your energy and impairing your focus.
You CAN work 60-80 hours a week and still get plenty of sleep, though, if you have no kids, no romantic partner, and no social life (which y'all would advise for someone who is trying to build wealth). That's what I'd recommend.
Other things I would add to help optimize the equation are healthy eating and meditation. Healthy eating improves energy and doesn't take much time if you just go to Chipotle, Sweetgreen, or wherever and order all vegetables and meats and no grains or dairy.
Meditation has really helped me improve my focus. You don't need to be a monk and meditate all day, but adding just a little bit to the morning can help you stay on track.
I do think that people in the wealth-building phase should engage in minimal exercise, though. A clean diet can make up for a lack of exercise, but the reverse isn't often true. 20-year-olds (myself included) are also prone to lifting like idiots and hurting themselves.
Agreed. The quality of your mind/body is the quality of your life.
Can you expand on how meditation has improved your focus? And how long did it take to get the benefits? And what do you do to meditate?
Re: improved focus, in most forms of meditation, one essentially practices being continuously aware of something, such as one's breath, a mantra, or something else.
Continuous awareness, interestingly, is NOT the same as "focus" = it feels much gentler. Other things - thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, etc. come to the front of your mind and try to make you focus on them and give up the "continuous awareness" of your chosen object of meditation. The meditator tries to resist these distractions, not actively or violently, but by simply letting them go and allowing the chosen object of continuous awareness to float back to the top of your mind.
In my experience, lack of focus = shifting your focus toward a distraction and away from what you should be doing. Refusing to focus on fleeting thoughts, over and over again for a sustained period of time, builds up the "muscle" that one uses to defeat distractions that compete for your awareness.
Re: time to benefit, I've found that meditating even once can make me feel more present, aware, and conscious for the next hour or two. Meditating regularly "strengthens the muscle" as I mentioned above and enables you to be "conscious" or "present" for longer and in the face of stronger distractions.
Re: what do I do to meditate, I typically do Transcendental Meditation, but the best kind of meditation is the kind that you actually do yourself. Download a few meditation apps, go to retreats with different disciplines, and just try stuff out. If you try 10 different types of meditation and hate 9 but do 1 for the rest of your life, then you win!
Efficiency-adjusted optimal daily dose is probably 40 min to 1 hour (similar to exercise). I've tried different combinations, even going so extreme as to splitting up into 5-minute chunks, but I think the easiest schedule for most people to follow is 20-30 min twice per day. Once first thing in the morning, and again after you finish working for the day.
Thank you for your detailed response, I will give it a try.
Thanks Bull. Well said. Been doing all of these things except the company match.
The thickheaded bighorn did it this morning. No need to avoid on principal.
Don't hate the game.... free money.
In the US, one other addition if available would be to take advantage of your employer's Healthcare Savings Account (the one that rolls over, not the use-it-or-lose-it Healthcare Spending Account) to use pre-tax dollars on prescriptions, doctors visits, and co-pays.
If there is a big, known medical expense then either are OK, but sometimes the latter lets you spend money before you have actually contributed it.
At my first sales job, the employer contributed to the HSA regardless of my own contribution. Free money.
Hey everyone.
28 currently work in foods e-commerce company. Was “gifted” great domain names as owner does not have time to work on them anymore as he is getting older
Solid domain names that could me profitable. Proteins.com, chocolates.com, cinnamon.com, etc
Question is what platform are most people using to host their websites? Shopify??
I have experienced is Prestashop, which is bigger an Europe but the websites are pretty lackluster overall
If anyone has experience in eccomerce sites would be willing to work with
Thanks
Do this:
https://twitter.com/JamesonCamp/status/1401005822055006212?s=20
Holy shit lol. That guy has some great resources on his Twitter. If you see my measly question posted down below, disregard - got my answer right here.
Great - but unless you're really going to launch a brand that can involve one of these, best to just sit on them and/or sell them to the right buyer. Don't let the domain name pick the niche for you. Pick the niche that you are confident about and then get a suitable domain, doesn't matter if one these great domains don't apply.
The worst thing about college is when they convince kids from a poor background to take on the most useless degrees like communications or political science. Now they're straddled with debt, no assets, no financial support and no job prospects. I know a lot of people going down this path and man I can't imagine how bad its gonna be.
And over 1/3 of them drop out due to not being able to finish paying for it. So loans & no degree.
Yup, colleges & banks don't care either because student loans = free money.
By design, most of them women, a certain % of which turn to selling their bodies for the $ they really need - google the rise of sugar daddy website, tons of college chicks
It’s amazing kids still go into those degrees. I thought they’re basically a wellknown meme now.
They don't even get the more diplomatic 'underwater basket-weaving degree' example.
When I was in college I told a boomer professor I wanted to be an actor. She said the school has an acting department. I'm glad I never followed up. She retired about a year ago. The writing is on the wall, colleges are on the decline.
this is one of my favourite posts
Where does one learn copywriting? I see it brought up so often- I am interested in knowing the best place to learn it
I graduated last year, in the process of receiving a promotion into first full time position. The side business / second form of income was selling herb. Business was well enough that I have enough physical cash to pay off my entire student loans. Only problem is I obviously cant just go and deposit all that money into an account without raising any flags. Any suggestions? Obviously from reading your posts I have come to learn that holding that much physical cash is an awful financial practice but its not like I could just go and deposit it into the bank.
Treating your question as the hypothetical that it must certainly be, I'll provide you a hypothetical answer which is not to be confused with actual encouragement to break any relevant laws in your locale or be intended as financial advise, etc, etc.
Pull just a hundred dollars out of your bank account to hold physically as credible walking around money. Go put medium sized (hundreds of your illicit dollars), typically around the same amount, on prepaid debit card. Not thousands! And never $10K or that triggers the Feds. Slow and steady. Find a local crypto (bitcoin) ATM. Insert card (or some will accept the bills so you don't have to go the debit card route) and transfer that USD to your DECENTRALIZED wallet. Consider buying OTC. Invest in BTC and/or ETH. Keep doing this. When next several price jumps (10% or more occurs, sell profit for USD and transfer to bank account via method of your choice (metamask wallet to linked bank account, whatever). Original money has been freshly laundered and remains in DECENTRALIZED wallet as principle plus you made profit which you then use to pay your student loans. You can claim you invested from your wages you withdrew - because it went to a DECENTRALIZED wallet they can't see original transactions. Be sure and track any sales as you'll have to report those as taxable events. Reminder: slow and steady and not large amounts and don't use up the principle, just the profits from coin value increases. Or yield farm if you want and use profits from that.
Not in college but need a copy of triangle investing and spending for max return. Can’t find them with the website down. Any link to buy?
Hey Jungle, about to enter the workforce post graduation. Was wondering if it would be a good idea to allocate my 401k to company stock or just have it an index fund. Thanks
I would go for an index fund. If the company has trouble, the stock price tanks and you are out of work (or will not be getting a raise). Worst case of that was Enron.
Curious to hear anyone’s thoughts on this... do you consider a spouse’s income when talking about multiple streams? Or is it just for each person individually? Between my wife and I, we have 3 right now and I am working on my second (she has two). I appreciate any input.
That's fine but in your case you should strive to have four, two per each person
Question on buying websites to fix them up - what skills would you suggest learning to do so, besides the obvious like sales copywriting and general common sense on what businesses are a good idea or not? Specifically, is there a web programming language or platform (Wordpress, etc) you recommend learning? Not asking you to do my homework for me, just maybe looking for a point in the right direction.
Does having my crypto portfolio generate cashflow and revenue streams, count as my second income stream?
If you're talking about DeFi - he would say no - ideally it's a second business or career separate from investments
I am not in college but would like to purchase your books. How would I go about doing that?
Same. Is there any way to purchase the books?
What do you think is a safe withdrawal rate? 2%? 3%? 4%? i’ve heard four is too high
Can’t you basically get some dividend stocks and some s&p, taxed at 15% LTCG and fairly securely hit 4%+?