A list of money and life lessons I wish I knew at 30.
At 40, these are now things I’ve validated through experience. I know them to be true.
I hope you find these useful. But more importantly, I hope you test them out and prove them for yourself too.
1. Compounding Is Underrated (Even When You Know It’s Magical)
“Did you know by working here, one day you’ll be a millionaire?” my mentor asked. I was 24 years old.
I didn’t believe him so he showed me the math. You probably know it — compounding regular savings over decades eventually leads to seven figures.
But it’s difficult. Especially in the first few years of work, when your savings and dividends feel pathetic.
I’ve made many mistakes with money, but the one thing I did right: let my retirement funds compound (mostly) untouched. Trust the math, even when it feels pointless.
One day, you’ll look at your retirement account and get a wonderful surprise.
2. Different Incentives, Different Behavior
I’ve always wondered why even smart people get scammed. Answer: it’s not about being stupid, it’s about getting manipulated. Emotions — greed, fear, loneliness.
Easy to judge how someone could be dumb enough to fall for a Nigerian prince scam. But after losing thousands of my own money at Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, I understood the meaning of “it could happen to anyone.”
Morgan Housel writes that no one is crazy. If you don’t understand someone’s behavior, it’s because you don’t understand the drivers behind them.
Scams and frauds are extreme examples of course. Same principle applies when trying to understand why your long-lost friend keeps pushing you to join their MLM. Or why your colleague keeps all their money in fixed deposits, when they could make much more in the stock market.
Different people have different objectives with their money, and that’s okay. No need to judge. Wish others the best in their journeys, but focus on yours.
3. The Biggest Factor in Making It = Making More Money
The biggest factor in financial success is making more money.
This sounds obvious, but well-intentioned financial advice can overemphasize things like budgeting, saving or investing. I obsessed about these for years before realizing I was missing the bigger picture.
Is it important to spend your money carefully? Of course. Is it important to invest wisely? Again, of course.
But growing your income will always be the biggest factor. Especially when you’re young, and not from a rich background.
Saving 20% of $100k is more powerful than saving 50% of $30k.
4. But Keeping Money Is Different From Making Money
Make more money and learn to keep it. Because they’re different skillsets.
Making money feels aggressive — playing to win. Keeping money feels defensive — playing to not lose. Things like emergency savings, insurance, and low-risk investing.
Master both aspects of the game. And understand that much of financial success is about managing your thoughts and beliefs.
Easy example: if you’re always comparing yourself to others, you’ll never feel rich. There’ll always be someone richer to compete with.
The ability to be easily satisfied is a superpower.
5. What’s the Best Investment?
Not the one with the highest returns.
Not the one with the lowest risk.
The best investment is the one with reasonable returns, but you can stick with for the longest time.
It’ll be different for everyone, but whatever you’re investing in — it shouldn’t keep you up at night. It should help you sleep better.
6. Manage Risk by Both Selection and Sizing
You can take on risk without being an idiot.
Wanna invest into something high risk? Sure, but make sure the amount is properly sized. Not too big that it’d cripple you if the markets crash.
It’s the hardest thing in the world. When your Tesla/Crypto/AI stock goes up 5x, you feel like going ALL IN.
Just remember this classic from the crypto bull run of 2021:
7. Comparisons Can Hurt You
My #1 piece of advice to younger people: Try not to compare yourself with others.
You’ll probably ignore this. Because you’re a high achiever, and high achievers tend to be competitive. Besides, comparison is ingrained in human nature.
But I’ll say it anyway to try pull you back from the extremes of comparison. You have your own journey. Your own path. If you must compare, compare yourself to younger versions of you. Focus on improvement, not fixed goals like: “I need $1,000,000 by 30.”
Many “bad” ways to spend money, but trying to impress others — driven by comparisons — is probably the worst.
8. Different Stages of Life, Different Advice
Let me tell you a story about my car. It’s a second-hand Malaysian model I bought from my sister a decade ago. Easily the crappiest car within my social circle.
It’s okay for me to drive an old car because of this mr-stingy persona I’ve built. It’s not a detriment to my success. It aligns with my values of conscious spending.
But with age, I now understand why a businessperson might wanna show up to meetings in a Mercedes.
Along the same principle, it’s easy for a rich person to tell you “money doesn’t buy happiness.” Or for a beautiful person to say “looks don’t matter.”
Understand their stage in life before taking advice from anyone.
You know those interviews where they ask successful people for advice? I’ve found that the best insights don’t come from what they do today. (Kinda silly to think you could follow Jeff Bezos’ current routine and achieve his success, right?)
The better question: “What would you do if you were just starting out?”
9. How to Really Buy Happiness
Buy time. Outsource things you hate doing, so you can spend time on your favorites.
Buy stuff that’s meaningful to you and aligned to your values. Whatever that may be — whether it’s cars, coffee or CrossFit.
Keyword: your values. Not what you think will impress other people. Same with buying experiences.
Spend lavishly on your loved ones. And remember to do your bit for charity.
10. The Middle Path Can Be Rewarding, It Just Takes Time
A lot of financial nihilism recently: “I’m never gonna have enough to retire, so might as well dump all my money into a crypto meme coin. Go BIG or go home!”
But experience has taught me that life doesn’t need to be SO dramatic:
Quit the job you hate. But you don’t have to quit tomorrow. Work out a plan.
Launch that project you’ve always wanted to. But don’t expect to get rich within a year.
Take some risks in investing. But don’t risk your emergency funds.
There’s wisdom in finding balanced approaches to life.
11. Find a Career That’s Uniquely You
Don’t regret what you do with your productive working years.
I spent my early 30s chasing early retirement because the work wasn’t very aligned with who I was.
But there’s no need to “escape” if you love what you’re doing.
No need to worry about running out of money either. I’m inspired by my dad — who at 80 years old — still runs his clinic and loves serving his patients.
Of course, even career “love” comes with ups and downs. Even in your dream job, there’ll be parts you’ll dread. But if you like most of your work — and especially if you like who you work with — that’s winning in life.
12. Money Can Distract You From What You Really Want
“Once I get <$amount of money>, I’ll do <goal>.”
Not always true.
Many times, you can get what you want without reaching the monetary goal.
Easiest example: “Once I earn $100,000, I’ll buy a big house to make my family happy.”
Well, maybe you don’t need a big house to make your family happy. Maybe your current home is enough — you just need to spend more time with them, and less time working.
Remember, money is not the goal. It’s just a tool to make your life better.
13. Money Is Not Your Most Valuable Resource
What’s more valuable than money?
Time. Health. All the money in the world doesn’t mean anything to someone dying.
Love. You can buy sex and companionship, but you’ll always be lonely without true love.
14. Appreciate the Success Factors That Have Nothing To Do With You
Is everything you have today due to your own efforts? Of course not. Other contributors:
Your parents. Your upbringing. Where and when you were born. Luck. Blessings from God. A random act of kindness from a stranger. A powerful person who took a chance on you.
Recognize your privilege. Be thankful for it. Then do the best with what you have.
This isn’t advice that’ll make you rich today. But it’ll help prevent you from becoming an asshole when you make it someday.
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Pic from Pexels: Bri Schneiter
“But growing your income will always be the biggest factor. Especially when you’re young, and not from a rich background.
Saving 20% of $100k is more powerful than saving 50% of $30k.”
Yes and no…
if you save 20% of 100k, because you “need” to live on 80k, it is (much) less powerful than 50% of 30k, knowing that you learned to live on 15k.
That is without mentioning that, if you are then able to grow your income by 50k, and maintain the same rate of saving for the 30k earner, and grow the rate to 33% for the 100k earner, you will increase your living expenses (and to some extent your feeling of abundance) by 266% in the first case, and only by 25% in the second, and still staying much behind in terms of FIRE date.
increasing your income has little limits which makes it so powerful though. Saving beyond 70% is either not possible, or not necessary, so I would agree in part with you.
Final nuance, it also depends on your capacity to increase your income. If you have some limitations, it might be easier to increase your savings and keep your expectations in check, especially given that investment of your saving can prove to be much more powerful than increasing your income.
Thanks Marc!
Appreciate you dropping by and the nuanced comment. Have learned a lot from FIRE calculations myself!