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.
Curious as to the Jungle's thoughts on a just recently 21 year old who just started grad school to get into a growing (and profitable) field in medicine. Unfortunately chose this path prior to discovering BTB. Would you all do the 2 more years and get into it, go back to regular university and get into M&A, or forego it all together. Looking for opinions.
There was another post from a person who was finishing becoming a surgeon who was asking something similar. There were some good responses with regards to spinning up second streams of income.
Personally, I think we are witnessing a crises in confidence in "Experts", and if you have a way to both fill that void and monetize it, you could do well.
My personal bias: but the things I've heard from Gov/Experts in the past year- "you don't need masks", "it came from a wet market", "there is no inflation", "mostly peaceful protests", "ivermectin doesn't work", "12 years until global climate change apocalypses (I've actually heard this many times)", I'm sure there are many more.
I'm not trying to get political on a blog about money/crypto (but it seems talking about anything of importance always devolves into that), but these are the things I have observed.
+1 on second income stream. Learn sales/copywriting. MCAT or grad school prep is another option addition to the usual ones. One science-related job to learn sales is to work as sales rep for companies like Fisher/VWR/BioRad/etc. Can do that with the masters, maybe even without if you can sell it.
What degree are you pursuing? Two years sounds like a masters, which is either to credential you for a particular health career, or to help you get into med school/PhD. If the former, the credential will give you a backup career while you build out a second income stream. If the latter, you need to figure out what you're going to do long-term ASAP. As others have said, ROI (for $US tokens) on MD or PhD is lower than other routes. Paralegal/patent law/research commercialization is another route some take with a science background, though having a JD pays higher there. You may also be able to do the MS in one year instead, or take a "non-thesis" option if your university offers it, and if you're not going PhD route. Then you have the credential.
One of my favorite cases against going the PhD route is when I went back to school to code (Lambda) there was a student who beat out a PhD in an interview because the PhD said he wasn't going to code.
The non PhD candidate got the government contractor job. I know when I have kids I'm telling them to put money on the table for their families. Do not care about being called a Dr or having a masters. Some of the kids I train for programming (yes actual kids 10-14 age range) will be able to beat out PhDs in a couple years in the job market. I like to say coding, sales, niche subject matter. Pick 2, ideally 3.
You're still young as a early 20s. Just by reading BTB's post you're not under the delusion of college = automatic success.
Gonna sound like a NGMI story but am going into physiotherapy. Started a landscaping business at 16 with my friend and we've grown that up to have 2 employees now. Love physio/kin as well as owning/running a business so pre-BTB figured my own practice was a match made in heaven.
In Canada it's only a 2 years master's for physio as opposed to 3 in US. Fell for the whole "pursue your passion" tale until I realized rather late that it isn't particularly good ROI on the education.
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%+?
Curious as to the Jungle's thoughts on a just recently 21 year old who just started grad school to get into a growing (and profitable) field in medicine. Unfortunately chose this path prior to discovering BTB. Would you all do the 2 more years and get into it, go back to regular university and get into M&A, or forego it all together. Looking for opinions.
Medical device sales?
There was another post from a person who was finishing becoming a surgeon who was asking something similar. There were some good responses with regards to spinning up second streams of income.
Personally, I think we are witnessing a crises in confidence in "Experts", and if you have a way to both fill that void and monetize it, you could do well.
What makes you say we are seeing a crisis in confidence in experts? I don't disagree but just curious, plz expand
My personal bias: but the things I've heard from Gov/Experts in the past year- "you don't need masks", "it came from a wet market", "there is no inflation", "mostly peaceful protests", "ivermectin doesn't work", "12 years until global climate change apocalypses (I've actually heard this many times)", I'm sure there are many more.
I'm not trying to get political on a blog about money/crypto (but it seems talking about anything of importance always devolves into that), but these are the things I have observed.
Agreed.
The field is profitable now, sure.
How profitable will the field be when you graduate now?
See if you can get a 2nd stream of income going up while in grad school.
+1 on second income stream. Learn sales/copywriting. MCAT or grad school prep is another option addition to the usual ones. One science-related job to learn sales is to work as sales rep for companies like Fisher/VWR/BioRad/etc. Can do that with the masters, maybe even without if you can sell it.
What degree are you pursuing? Two years sounds like a masters, which is either to credential you for a particular health career, or to help you get into med school/PhD. If the former, the credential will give you a backup career while you build out a second income stream. If the latter, you need to figure out what you're going to do long-term ASAP. As others have said, ROI (for $US tokens) on MD or PhD is lower than other routes. Paralegal/patent law/research commercialization is another route some take with a science background, though having a JD pays higher there. You may also be able to do the MS in one year instead, or take a "non-thesis" option if your university offers it, and if you're not going PhD route. Then you have the credential.
One of my favorite cases against going the PhD route is when I went back to school to code (Lambda) there was a student who beat out a PhD in an interview because the PhD said he wasn't going to code.
The non PhD candidate got the government contractor job. I know when I have kids I'm telling them to put money on the table for their families. Do not care about being called a Dr or having a masters. Some of the kids I train for programming (yes actual kids 10-14 age range) will be able to beat out PhDs in a couple years in the job market. I like to say coding, sales, niche subject matter. Pick 2, ideally 3.
You're still young as a early 20s. Just by reading BTB's post you're not under the delusion of college = automatic success.
My favorite is that after 8 yrs minimum (if MD add in 3 of residency making $40k a year), you finally start making money.
And the ave MD only makes $200k at that point.
Way to get rich is by opening own practice. so it is being a business owner that makes you the money.
Been writing about this recently.
I remember going to the doctor when I was about 17 and remembering how sad the MD looked. I mean this sincerely, I'm glad the man achieved his goals.
But at what cost? Going to school for 12+ more years? Paying off hundreds of thousands in student loans? Your wife leaving you?
Hey please share your substack, I'll check it out.
Gonna sound like a NGMI story but am going into physiotherapy. Started a landscaping business at 16 with my friend and we've grown that up to have 2 employees now. Love physio/kin as well as owning/running a business so pre-BTB figured my own practice was a match made in heaven.
In Canada it's only a 2 years master's for physio as opposed to 3 in US. Fell for the whole "pursue your passion" tale until I realized rather late that it isn't particularly good ROI on the education.