Those of us who write and talk about money for a living do our financial work together. But that is not always the case.
Invest early, even if it’s scary
If the stock market scares you, nationally syndicated Washington Post columnist Michelle Singletary can relate. Singletary says he avoided investing for many years because, at his first job out of college, an older coworker who was nearing retirement age warned him that stocks were too risky.
Singletary later realized that someone in his 20s had decades to break out of the swings of the stock market and could take too much risk with his investments.
Singletary says the lesson I learned was to look at my personal situation and invest based on my timeline and goals.
can repay student loan debt
Darian Woods, a reporter and producer for The Indicator from the Planet Money podcast, says he no longer remembers exactly how much he borrowed from the University of California, Berkeley to do a master’s in public policy, just that his balance was in the thousands of dollars. until he graduated.
The debt was huge. Woods wished he could reassure his worried young self that the loans were a solid investment in his future. Woods, a New Zealand native, took a job as an analyst for his country’s Treasury Department and was able to pay off the loan in a year.
Woods says that debt was not as albatross as I’d feared.
Savings, Spending, Earning: All These Are Important
Paco de Leon, author of the book Finance for the People: Getting a Grip on Your Finance, has two pieces of advice for your younger self. The first is to save, no matter what. Saving on a small income may seem pointless, but the amount you save is far less important than the savings habit you develop, she says.
Second piece of advice: deal with your pain.
De Leon graduated with a degree in finance and a minor in economics. But a head full of knowledge about the concepts of money was no match for De Leon’s deep-rooted scarcity mentality and deep sense of inferiority. De Leon says she didn’t earn enough for years because she wasn’t sure of her own worth and bought expensive things she couldn’t afford, hoping to gain recognition from others. She wishes her younger self had spent time in self-reflection and therapy to work through her psychological issues.
Work on healing your pain, so you don’t create more unnecessary problems for yourself, De Leon says.
don’t work your life
Tess Vigeland is the host and senior producer of The Wall Street Journal’s As We Work podcast. She, too, has both practical and philosophical advice for her younger self.
Practical: Never carry a credit card balance if you can help it
I put myself in deep debt in my early and mid-20s, says Vigeland, because I was living life like my parents’ bank account, when in fact I only had a tiny fraction of it.
Philosopher: Develop interests outside your job
Vigeland loved his work in public radio until he did. In 2012, she abruptly quit her job as the host of American Public Media’s Marketplace Money, a personal finance show, with no clue about what she wanted to do next.
Part of that journey became a book, Leap: Leaving a Job with No Plan B to Find the Career and Life You Really Want. But Vigeland says life after public radio would have been easier if her work hadn’t been such a big part of her identity.
Vigeland says you love doing something outside of what you do. It will help if you decide to make the leap to another career or go back to school, you won’t get bogged down in just one idea of who you are and what you can do.
and my two cents
Most of us can look back at our younger selves and see how mature we have become over time. But somehow we feel that our growth has stopped. Whether we are just starting our careers or are long retired, the so-called end of history illusion assures us that not much will change from the person we are today.
If I had known about this psychological quirk, I might have been less worried about figuring it all out and making the perfect career and money move. Who I am and what I want will not remain the same. I tell my younger self that the important thing is to do the best I can today, and to take care of myself tomorrow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvyaDCMSPM
(Spoiler alert: it all works.)
read the breaking news And today’s fresh news Here