A true idiot, right here

[WolfeMacleod]

Ohh yeah...don't save your money, kids, cause if you do, you're doing something wrong.


If You Have Savings In Your 20s, You





I don’t have any savings, but I also don’t have any wants.

I don’t know about you, but I like to enjoy my life. I like to go out to eat, buy clothes I don’t “need” and spend money with friends on memorable nights out.

This goes back to a piece of advice a very successful friend gave me: “Don’t save money. Make more money,” he nonchalantly stated, pushing me into a taxi.

Unlike most things people tell me, this advice did not go in one ear and out the other; it stayed with me and changed the way I look at everything from my career to my savings.

Before this piece of advice, I was frantic. I was always doubting and always feeling guilty. I lived in the most exciting city in the world (also the most expensive) and had yet to experience it.

I was trying to save, which meant trying not to eat. I wasn’t going out with friends, had yet to go to a club and had never seen the inside of a taxi.

I couldn’t enjoy my life because I was too busy worrying about my bank statement. I was too busy watching my savings instead of savoring my youth.

Why did I feel so guilty about spending money on myself and my life?

When did our 20s start to feel like our 40s? When did we get weighed down with the same pressure and stresses as a woman with four kids and a second mortgage?

We don’t have kids. We’ll be renting for the foreseeable future, and we have no problem eating McDonald’s when we’re skint.

I’ve recently figured it out: This pressure, this third-party stress, is ingrained within us. It’s this looming doom our parents carved into our unconscious, only to come out anytime we make an impulse purchase or have to spend the night without Netflix.

But like most things our parents have ingrained in us, we must consciously work to push it out. Because while they may have the best intentions, they don’t always have the best insight.

They want us to save because it provides us with a safety net, but that’s exactly why we shouldn’t. Their need for us to have a safety net is just a giant metaphor for the difference between our parent’s generation and ours.

They were getting married at 20 while we’re just getting our first apartments. They were saving for kids while we still want to be kids. We’re on different schedules, different paths and totally different savings plans.

We’re taking our time growing up, refusing to be shackled by mortgages and diapers. We’re not trying to live with safety nets; we’re trying to live on the edge.
When you’re too worried about your bank statement, you’re not making your own

When you live your life around your retirement fund, you may as well retire now. You can’t make a mark on the world if you’re too cheap to live in it.

Refusing to give yourself the luxury of enjoying your money negates the whole point of making it.
When you’re saving for yourself, you’re refusing to bet on yourself

People who are saving in their 20s are people who don’t set their sights high. They’ve already dropped out of the game and settled for the minor leagues.

Your 20s are not the time to save; they’re the time to gamble. $200 a month isn’t going to make the dent that a $60,000 pay raise will after spending all those nights out networking.
When you have something to bank on, you have nothing to reach for

When you have nothing to lose, you have everything to gain.

You’d be surprised at how cautious people get with just a few thousand in the bank. This isn’t the time to safeguard — it’s the time to bet all your chips and hope to make it big.
When you live your life by numbers, you strip yourself of poetry

What memorable experience does money in the bank give you? How well-rounded can people become sitting at home, watching their limited funds gain interest?

Life is to be lived, not watched from the inside of your rent-controlled apartment.
When you die, you can’t take your money with you

When you’re acutely aware of your mortality, it makes spending money that much easier. Those who don’t plan for the future aren’t planning for their death.
When you deprive yourself, you don’t learn how to TREAT YO SELF

It’s good to be cautious and plan for unexpected events. It’s also good, however, to learn how to release and destress. Everything works out, and if you’re smart, able and had a job once, you’ll have one again.

Don’t waste your youth worrying about expenses when you should be worrying about experiences.
When you care about your 401k, your life is just “k”

When you’re 40, you’re not going to look back on your 20s and be grateful for the few thousand you saved. You’re going to be full of regret.

You’ll regret the experiences you didn’t take, the people you didn’t meet and the fun you didn’t have because you were too worried about a future that came and went.

[Tobra]

That, in a nutshell, is the problem with the US

[osidak]

wow

[WolfeMacleod]

Originally Posted by osidak

wow

Yeah, wow indeed.
I'll tell ya, back in March my GF had a mid life crisis, and moved out. Have I not been saving, I wouldn't have had enough to last until she figured out it was just a mid life crisis. Business has been pretty slow for me this summer.
She just finished moving back in last weekend. Which is good, because in another two months, I might have been kaput. It's been that slow, and several financial surprises drained things a lot faster than normal.

[strupgolf]

When that clueless kid reaches 65, he's in for a shock.

[masraum]

Party now, worry later: The worst retirement advice ever - MarketWatch

George Bernard Shaw famously remarked, “Youth is wasted on the young.” But if he was talking about Lauren Martin, he might have flat-out said it was completely and utterly lost on them.

In case you missed it, Martin is the 20-something bad girl who’s riding her 15 minutes of fame for a piece in Elite Daily that makes the case that young people should fritter their money away. Her basic premise is that her cohort has time aplenty to worry about the important stuff—marriage, kids, buying a house, etc. Now is when they should go clubbing, take another three-day weekend and drink all the Frappuccinos you want. To quote her exact words: “When you care about your 401(k), your life is just ‘k.’”

To which I say: Has anyone ever explained the concept of compounding to Ms. Martin?

Read:Why saving in your 20s is actually self-indulgent

To some extent, I understand where this young woman is coming from. In fact, I lived her life some three decades ago. (I’m now 51.) OK, maybe I didn’t go clubbing, but I spent a lot of money on taxis and take-out. Moreover, I completely ignored saving for retirement. I still remember a conversation with a manager at a bank branch near where I had my first job out of college. I had gone to open a checking account. He asked if I was also interested in opening a retirement account. Like a full-of-himself 20-something — two can play this game, Ms. Martin — I snapped back, “Do I look like I’m worried about retirement?” Needless to say, the conversation ended right there.

Jump ahead to today and I’m very much worried about retirement — precisely because I didn’t start saving in earnest until a decade or so ago. And I’m hardly alone: Most of my peers are in the same boat and talk about working until they’re at least…well, dead. (Or at least until they’re well into their 70s.) It’s reflective of a national trend.

Consider: One recent report noted that the average 401(k) balance of baby boomers is around $126,000—or a few hundred thousand short of what most financial experts suggest it should be for a comfortable retirement.

And let me be clear: I consider myself one of the lucky ones. I’ve actually amassed a fair bit in the past decade. Plus, I have a small pension from a previous job — something that most of my peers can’t count on (and something that is a complete anathema to Martin’s generation). Oh, and I have an affordable condo that’s fully paid off. I’m not saying this to brag. Just to suggest that if I have some concerns about retirement then Ms. Martin has some HUGE worries ahead of her.

Still, luck is a relative thing. Because I’m somewhat underfunded on my retirement, I don’t take huge vacations. (Some folks go to Europe. This past summer, I went to Canada.) And I’ve long given up the dream of owning a second home. I realize these are first-world problems, but the subject at hand is how to have fun. And fun, my friends, comes at a price.

But here’s the thing: Martin can have her fun and have her 401(k), too. The power of compounding is that you really don’t need a whole lot to jump-start your savings. I won’t get into the usual platitudes about how you won’t miss that daily Frappuccino, but let’s just say I’ve never been a fan of Starbucks, anyhow.

More to the point: When you’re in your 20s, you may think you’re having fun, but let me tell you: It’s sort of an amateur-hour version of fun. That first great beach vacation you take? It will only seem half as great as the next one. And then the next one after that. The same holds true for those restaurants in town. The point is that time teaches you to separate the great from the not-so-great. By the time you’re ready for retirement, you’ve really mastered the art of fun.

You’ve also learned the most invaluable lesson of all—that fun is actually living in the moment and just doing…nothing. Reading a book. Having a beer with a friend. The stuff that costs you very little — provided, of course, you can cover the necessities, like food and shelter. So, you see, Ms. Martin, I’m okay with just being ‘k.

[look 171]

Originally Posted by strupgolf

When that clueless kid reaches 65, he's in for a shock.

Much sooner then that, I would think. When all their friends starts to talk about retirement plans at about 50-55, They are going to piss that they started saving in a much later time in their lives. It seems that this is the generation are the only ones who all about work life balance. They really think they invented such thing.

[Dantilla]

Originally Posted by WolfeMacleod

...When you’re 40, you’re not going to look back on your 20s and be grateful for the few thousand you saved. You’re going to be full of regret.

By the time I was 40, I had already paid cash for my own airplane! How's that for enjoying life?

Couldn't have done that without having some cash in the bank.

This author is in for a rude awakening down the road.......

[Norm K]

Originally Posted by strupgolf

When that clueless kid reaches 65, he's in for a shock.

Perhaps this clueless kid and his ilk are onto something. Instead of twenty years of retirement at the end of their lives they're looking to enjoy the retirement game while they're still in their prime. Heck, we older guys might ultimately be glad they'll still be paying into Social Security late into their lives, keeping it solvent for those of us lucky enough to reach our late eighties or nineties.

[GH85Carrera]

Yea, with no savings how does one buy a house or nice car? The banks don't loan much to someone with zero savings and no assets.

[Hendog]

I hear where you're comin' from! We make good $ and save some but also enjoy it while we can: I could get hit by a bus tomorrow (or whatever). It's all about balance as I see.

[Don Ro]

Originally Posted by nkowi

Heck, we older guys might ultimately be glad they'll still be paying into Social Security late into their lives, keeping it solvent for those of us lucky enough to reach our late eighties or nineties.

Good point.
As long as they keep making the $$$$$ they can continue to support SS.
Continuing to buy their consumer trash keeps the economy going, as well.

[Rapewta]

What do we do?
I am a baby boomer and my folks are still alive. Wife and I worked for forty years each.
Nice pensions, social security.. and change in the bank.
My parents 89 years old are not going to live forever. My wife and I don't need what they have.

We will receive what they have. I don't need anything but it is going to be ours.
Now.. the kids.
They live like their is no future. I can't blame them but they are going to receive everything
us baby boomer made by working steady for 40 years.
Give it all to them? Why not?
What I don't understand is that my parents, Dad a WWII vet... mother, a woman that stayed at home and raised us kids are leaving soon and giving me and my brother and sister their ****.
Me and my wife are 65 and not going to be around a whole lot longer... Do we just give the kids
everything?
I got no problem with it but in my life, I never asked the government or my parents for
one cent.
Neither did my folks. They were self made just like me. It is different now.
Youngsters waiting for the windfall. Don't really know.

Now it looks like the new generation is going to get some big windfalls.

[VillaRicaGA911]

What a idiot, guess another one I can add to the list that will still be telling me that I have not paid my fair share because this person and people of the same mind set will be cooking the french fries at age 65 while I pull up to the drive through on my way to whatever vacation spot I am going to for a week (or 2) of doing nothing. Yes great advice don't save anything, enjoy life now and just worry about making more money. I wonder how many rich people did or are doing exactly that? Still this poor idiot will be scratching head wondering how the rich keep getting richer. Let me save them some time, the rich got that way by continuing to do the same things that got them to rich. The poor? Oh that is a simple answer, you can see them everyday at your local quick mart doing exactly what got and keeps them poor purchasing lottery tickets, smokes, junk food, and putting gas in a car that they can not in anyway afford maybe even with rims that are 5 times the value of the car.

[sc_rufctr]

The article was naive at best. Reality bites everyone eventually.

I'm 50 and all I think about is my retirement. That doesn't mean I don't have fun. The things I do for fun now I never even considered when I was 20 something.
For instance I participate in lawn bowling. Believe me it's fun and I get to meet a lot of single ladies around my age. Some of them are very fit as well.
And it doesn't cost a lot of money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowls

Also Charity work has become important to me and again something I never considered in my youth.

NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR HEALTH. And there's no mention of that in the article.

[Hugh R]

Money gives you freedom. I have my "eff you" money should I get disgusted and want to quit work. I also don't worry about being laid off anymore. Vacations used to be dirt camping, thirty years later, its taking the big ass RV out, or a trip on a plane.

[afterburn 549]

Some of this I see in in everyday life. I am in my 60s .
At 17 I was on my own, in the military .
Yes there was LOTS of us.
The draft was on and lots of 18 year olds were with me too.
Today 17's year old is a mere babe in swaddling cloth . From the cradle to the grave they are trained to have their hand out .They are taught they deserve this and that and someone some how will take care of them.
When this new generation of grasshoppers discover he has zero for savings, no retirement plan and no social security,he might wake up from his childhood.
At least he will have his long lived youth campaign to look back on...........Now he will be a liability.

[aigel]

Haha - 60k pay raise from the people you networked with in your 20s. Right. My college drinking buddies haven't come through, I am afraid!

The main issue I have with this is that you can save some money and still have a lot of fun. You do NOT have to take taxis to go out. You can have friends over and cook for them, throw a party etc. etc. - plenty of ways of getting laid and having fun without spending your hard earned. It actually seemed easier to have a good time back then without money than it is now.

I do have some sympathy for wanting to enjoy your youth, but again, it doesn't mean you can't save some money.

G

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by afterburn 549

Some of this I see in in everyday life. I am in my 60s .
At 17 I was on my own, in the military .
Yes there was LOTS of us.
The draft was on and lots of 18 year olds were with me too.
Today 17's year old is a mere babe in swaddling cloth . From the cradle to the grave they are trained to have their hand out .They are taught they deserve this and that and someone some how will take care of them.
When this new generation of grasshoppers discover he has zero for savings, no retirement plan and no social security,he might wake up from his childhood.
At least he will have his long lived youth campaign to look back on...........Now he will be a liability.

I've seen this in my own children and have no idea what to do about it. I thought I had said and done all the right things when I was raising them.
It seems they weren't listening.

[onewhippedpuppy]

That is all sorts of full of ignorance and naive. Wow.