What I Wish I Knew About Life And Money When I Was 21

At age 21, I’d finished college and moved thousands of miles away from home to start my life with my newlywed husband in a new country. Looking back on my twenties, it’s easy to realize that I knew nothing about life let alone managing money. Being a young immigrant with English is my third language, I had a very hard time finding a job. I finally had my first job as a cashier at a nearby Chinese restaurant. I worked Mondays through Fridays from 4 am – 2 pm at $5 an hour doing everything from answering phones, taking orders to washing dishes.

It didn’t take me long to realize how the heck I would survive happily and financially trading my time and energy with little money. All the money I made got spent all to the last penny. And it still wasn’t enough to make a living. There must be a better way.

At age 22, right after I quit my second job (to pursue graduate degrees). I had to learn some tough lessons about life and money. Mostly through my own stupidity by trusting someone who is untrustworthy.

If I could go back to my twenty-one-year-old self, these are things I would make sure I knew.

10 things I wish I knew about life and money before entering adulthood

1. Don’t waste words on people who deserve your silence. Sometimes the most amazing things you can say is nothing at all. I was wasting my time and energy to try to fix things that cannot be fixed. Maybe it’s not always about trying to fix something broken but it’s about starting over and creating something new and better.
2. You have a choice about what to do with every penny that has come into your life. We all know the buying power of money. But only a few people realize that money itself can make more money. Once you spend it, it’s gone forever. It’s your choice. You can spend it or save it or invest it to make more money tomorrow.
3. Life is a marathon and so is doing anything in life. Don’t get discouraged at how hard or how long it takes to become successful. Work at it ethically. Figure out the problems and find solutions.
4. Time is the friend of money. A power of compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. And the compound interest takes time to compound! The sooner you can start investing the better. So don’t miss your boat! Learn to invest early on. The only way to make sure your money grows is to put some of your income in long-term assets like low-cost index funds. And you don’t need a financial advisor to do it for you. No one cares about your money besides YOU.
5. We are taught that the only way to have success is to go to college and get a good stable job. Entrepreneurship is too risky. Being an employee for 40 years, living paycheck to paycheck, and hoping for social security benefits and pension seem far riskier. I should have started entrepreneurship at 25, not 35. When you are young, you have more time, more energy, fewer family obligations, taking entrepreneurship at a young age seems wiser.
6. Retirement comes up faster than you think. When you are in your 20’s, it seems so far ahead to think about your 40’s let alone your retirement. Retirement is a real thing. By the time you’ve realized that you are behind, it’s already too late. Start planning for your retirement as soon as you receive your first paycheck.
7. Learn to leverage real estate to get ahead. We bought our first home when we were 26. It was a single-family home with acreage. We spent most of our time (and money) in the yard maintaining it. With little knowledge about real estate, we didn’t even think about other choices we could have made. Instead of buying a single-family home we could have bought a duplex. So we could rent out the other unit and have someone else pay our mortgage.
8. Life choices are not always about the money but you should always be clear about the money choice you make.
9. If your spouse cannot be responsible with the finances, then he or she doesn’t deserve to have control over them if you have any hope of building wealth as a family. If you are good financially, step up and be the leader.
10. Wealth isn’t the result of income. It’s the result of building investments that create a passive stream of income that can support you and your family throughout your life.

I hope you will be treated unfairly so that you will come to know the value of justice.

I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty.

I hope you will be lonely so that you don’t take friends for granted.

I wish you bad luck so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that

                    your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either.

When you lose, I hope your opponent will gloat over your failure.

It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship.

I hope you will be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others

and

I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion.

– Chief Justice John Roberts

Is there anything you could have done differently when it comes to life and/or money?

What are some tips you could share?