First of all congratulations, you reached a stage where insecurity is king and your main focuses are getting laid and partying, but you’re also going to have to find a job if you want to buy a car, beer or drugs.
You’re 13 you don’t really know what lies ahead, but you’re still kind of anxious to get older so you can get a license and eventually a job because Mom and Dad can’t afford all of that and your dinner, so wise up, the freedom of childhood is fleeting.
In 7th grade I was 12 and was instructed to write a letter to my future self 5 years down the road and when I graduated high school I’d receive it in the mail. I wish I remembered how that worked, it was a cool project. Anyway, I do remember how exciting it was to read it when I was 17 graduating high school. I was telling myself that I better be still skating and be sponsored or something like that and then I’d be disappointed if I had stopped.
I didn’t stop skating and I was sponsored at the time by Supra, Krew and Foundation. It felt like I was achieving my dream, but it’s a shame that you can’t do the opposite, write to your past self, though impossible, it would be tremendously useful. So instead of trying to break the space time continuum laws I’ll just write to you, the young teenage kid who would give a shit about their finances enough to read a blog about it.
Let’s call money what it really is, a freedom score. The higher the score, the more freedom you have. Once you understand this you’ll want a high score.
Let’s break this down in 4 steps:
Step 1
Save 10% or more of your income every pay period.
If you get paid $200 a week save $20 or more if you can, and don’t spend it. You’re at the very beginning of your journey to own assets that will make you rich, but let’s really talk about what being rich means. Being rich means having enough money coming in every month to cover all of your expenses and the freedom of never going into work again. There’s a few ways for you to get there, but the most easy to understand is buying a house, and though you’re young and buying a house seems so far out right now, every penny you save will make it that much easier to get one, and that much sooner to freedom.
If you’ve played Monopoly then you understand the value of houses. When someone lands on the property, or wants to rent a room in your house or the entire thing, the more money goes into your pocket. The median household cost in America is about $300,000, you need anywhere between 10% – 30% to get the house, so at least $30,000 to cover all these costs that you can’t even think of, you’d believe they were just making them up. As soon as you get a house though you can start renting, the more rooms or the more houses you have, the more money you will have to cover the cost of the monthly mortgage plus funny money. I’m sure you can imagine the domino effect, easy pickings if you got the down payment.
Step 2
Make high risk, high reward investments.
When you’re young you can afford to throw a few hundred dollars at some risky investments because the potential of return on those investments is really high. For example, a few years ago Tesla (TSLA) was considered a risky investment because it was new tech, could it have failed? Sure, but did those who threw some money at it in those early years cash out big? Yes. Another example was Netflix, that too shot up over the years. My point is, when you’re younger you can afford to take a risk with some investments that might tank because you have time to recover what you lose. My advice though is to invest in things you use, like if you have an iPhone, invest in Apple. If you have Netflix invest in that, or if you really want a Tesla but can’t afford one, buy a share. If you want to play it safe with your investment portfolio then maybe buy stocks that pay out dividends. You can run a quick Google search on stocks that pay you money to hold them, one of these is Coca Cola. These ‘blue chip’ stocks as they call them, are usually companies that have been around for like 100 years like Johnson & Johnson, they are relatively ‘safe’ investments that we think will continue to appreciate over time.
You might be wondering how you’re going to afford to invest and save at the same time with your low income job. Well, if you have to choose between saving and investing what feels more comfortable to you? You won’t go wrong saving, and you can lose it all if you invest in shitty companies or if the economy collapses.
Investing is an art, saving is a discipline.
Do one or the other or do both. This is your choice, but since I’m talking to my teenage self, I would say do both, if you have to save 5% of your weekly pay and invest 5% do that, but more is better.
Another high risk high reward investment is in crypto currency. If I didn’t mention that in this blog article I’d be keeping you in the dark. This sector of digital finance is revolutionary and can potentially make you a millionaire by the time you’re 20. People are comparing crypto related investments to the dot com bubble of the late 1990’s – 2000’s. The people who were early to buy domains made millions, just like the people who invested early into Bitcoin and held onto it made millions, and it’s not too late still, because mass adoption has not happened yet. I will go into different crypto projects in another blog post, but this blog wouldn’t be complete without mentioning crypto. My advice though is to dollar cost average in. That means every week or every month buy $5 – $10 of Bitcoin, you won’t regret it.
Download Voyager app to buy Crypto and get $25 free Bitcoin with this link.
Step 3
Put out quality content on social media.
Create a YouTube channel telling people about the things you know about. If you’re into skating, think of some content you can post that other people would be into. The idea here is build an audience that cares about what content you produce. It may seem like no one cares at first, but if you’re doing it consistently for a few years you’ll be surprised at how many people follow you and you’ll be surprised at how much money you could be making because of that. YouTube pays you if you have enough subscribers and if you have enough followers on any channel you’ll find ways to get paid by promoting product or getting sponsorship or what not. This is a long game to play before you see reward, but if you need a constructive hobby, I suggest building out a channel with consistent content, you never know.
Step 4
Learn a useful skill that can’t be replaced by robots or A.I.
It’s important to remember that whatever you’re passionate about learning is going to be your career ultimately. If you’re like me and really into graphic design you’ll make as many things as you can in Photoshop and learn along the way doing so, but whether you’re into computer services like design, development, or programming or carpentry or plumbing or what have you, and you focus on being great at it, you’ll be well prepared for getting a high paying job.
Obviously, there are some other things you can get into to make a buck as a teenager, but you also have to save time for just being a teenager and don’t stress about the economy collapsing and putting all your money into gold, silver or bitcoin to save yourself from hyperinflation and the collapse of the dollar. Go make plenty of bad choices so you know how to make good choices in the future, you’re still a kid and you should be reckless, but try to understand this system like you would a video game.
Money is a freedom score, the more you have the more time you will have in the future to go out and be reckless again, because let’s face it, you’re childhood is stripped from you to work 8 hours a day to pay taxes to the man, no other real important reason.
You are on a human farm and just like a cow get’s milked, you’re being milked for the money you make.
Save money, invest, create and learn forever, you’ll be thankful you do when you’re 30. If you have any questions leave a comment below or reach out to me on Instagram @kyleknob.
