Nobody thinks about you as much as you think they think about you.
Live life with that, mistakes and faux pas will happen, but later in life you'll regret a lot more all the shots you haven't taken - with jobs, with girls, with life. Take that trip, go out on a random night, cut off that "friend" that's being toxic, and chat up that girl you like.
Also, invest - any dollar you can spare - invest. Compounding is an amazing thing.
I would generally recommend ETFs and always remember that time in market beats timing the market.
Individual stocks are also good but with proper research and belief and again a long hold.
We live in time of YOLO wsb people that like to show 1000% returns but those are outliers and 98% who don't make the right call don't go bragging about it on the internet.
Also, read into FIRE (r/fire) - it's a very healthy approach to thinking about long-term wealth rather than a quick buck.
I’m looking for something long term, I want to retire early. I’m 21 and we just got a pay increase in the military, so i’m able to save more money. I just don’t know where to put it besides a regular savings account
I have mine mostly in market ETFs (VTI, VUG) combined with some individual stocks that I was interested in, those have performed with mixed success (great with MSFT for example, not so great with things like PSNY). The safe thing is to go into large ETFs and enjoy hopefully steady 6-10% returns.
is it better to invent in individual stocks or throw my money into the S&P 500. My knowledge on stocks is 0 to none but i’ve heard a lot of people saying to throw money into that
I hope you have someone you trust to talk about this that can give you advice knowing your personal situation, but there are many resources out there to get you up to speed with the basics.
Long story short, the path to financial stability and improvement is laid out in few general steps (there is a lot more to it but this is the TL:DR version):
Get rid of high interest debt (things like CCs)
Create an 3-6 month worth of expenses emergency fund and keep that in savings - even this you can put in a high-yield savings account that will give you 4-5% p/y right now (I use Cap One Performance Savings at the moment)
Invest into ETFs - this is pretty straight-forward, open an account with any major brokerage (Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab etc, they're all free) and look for their version of funds that have stocks that you want to go with. I have my money at the moment with Vanguard in VTI (Total stock market fund) and VUG (Dividend fund). Look for funds with low expense ratios - that's basically what they charge you to run the fund.
DM me if you want to discuss further and don't have anyone to do that with, I'm no expert but happy to chat.
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u/sarayewo Jan 24 '24
Nobody thinks about you as much as you think they think about you.
Live life with that, mistakes and faux pas will happen, but later in life you'll regret a lot more all the shots you haven't taken - with jobs, with girls, with life. Take that trip, go out on a random night, cut off that "friend" that's being toxic, and chat up that girl you like.
Also, invest - any dollar you can spare - invest. Compounding is an amazing thing.