Do you live to work or work to live?
Many college graduates ask themselves that question too late in life once they start to realize that being lured by a juicy paycheck just wonât cut it.
Doing something and not getting paid for it is the most common way of living for most of us until we hit age 16 or so. Then we decide that it would be cool to buy our own candy, not be reliant on a piggy bank or our parents and be independent so we jump straight into the cycle of making money.
We have nothing to loose working a few summers as a lifeguard and after all feel we must accomplish more than our parents did to keep the family legacy alive and impress them!
Typically during the pre-teen years till 16, if you do have a job itâs most likely paycheck-to-paycheck or a seasonal one since you have school for the rest of the year. You donât have enough to keep yourself afloat yet to any kid earning $70 a day seems like a lot so you start diligently saving or as most do, end up spending it all since you believe your time is infinite and you can make it back ASAP.
Then when you head back to school in the fall and you tell all your close buds how much you made over summer vacation, youâve already changed your money mindset forever.
For the worst.
You turn into a workaholic addicted to business.
Now donât get me wrong, teaching kids how to spend fake money and how to handle it in Pre-K or advising them to take on a summer job in middle school is the most important skill in all of life that of course isnât taught in the education system. But as much as that can be a good thing, it can easily turn into an addiction.
Itâs the same thing with earning too much. Itâs 10x easier to spend than save and the more you make, the more you want to buy and in fact have to work to keep up with your dangerous inflated lifestyle.
That led kids like me into a rabbit hole early on in our careers.
The 20 Year Dilemma
I was fortunate enough to grow up in a wealthy, affluent neighborhood in NY where I had access to the best education, internships, networks and environment because my family who fled from Soviet control of Poland were determined to make a better living.
My parents were able to land top-tier jobs on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley by following the unbeaten path, learning and meeting as many people as they could. They had the 24/7 work-ethic mentality and nothing stopped them. I quickly inherited it and to this day canât stop working!
Unlike most residents in the town growing up, we didnât get a country club membership, I didnât play the fancy sports of lacrosse and golf or hire tutors to get me into Ivys. Instead I worked all I could fortunately not because I needed to make ends meet rather I felt that working was the only thing left besides school and camp. I worked because it was fun to take my mind off of things, especially in the summer and meet new people because at the end of the day, itâs not about what you know, but who you know.
My first gig was as a tennis coach for an affluent golf club where membership cost roughly $50k as a base fee and then $10k each year. The closest I got into a club like that was at the YMCA for $50 a month, $600 a year. My parents have always adopted the stealth wealth frugal minimalist lifestyle that has allowed us to feel grateful for what we have, focus on what matters such as people and memories, gain real connections besides with those who just chase after us for our wealth, focus on investments and on ourselves and most importantly find a way to let money work for us, not the other way around when most residents are spending 80% of their after-tax-income.
Growing up in a household with this âgo-get-itâ mentality, I naturally felt accustomed to working all I could. It didnât even feel like work especially since it was 1000x more fun than school, I got free food, met fun people and also happened to get paid. Something I didnât even need to do until I graduated college.
I can admit after my tennis job I started to get carried away with working. After that first summer, I started tackling on other random gigs. I tutored English to Chinese kids at midnight M-F, walked dogs for Park Avenue residents on the weekends, delivered food to venues and weddings on holidays and frankly didnât have a life as a teen. I wasted my precious years of living it up.
At the time, I sure was having fun or else I wouldâve quit it. My parents were happy that I was learning the responsibilities of working but my close-mindedness and poor decisions lead me to feel drastically burnout and disappointed with where I had come although I had scaled my net worth to more than I could imagine, maxed out my Roth IRA and got a free scholarship to college.
Everything looked perfect from the bank account but work got the best of me.
Pure Hustle
The problem with working when youâre young as a student is that you are waisting your precious energy on doing menial tasks. Most of the jobs you can get as a teen are useless and renting out your time.
The jobs I obtained ranged from teaching tennis to modeling, babysitting to walking dogs which didnât teach me anything. Yet, minimum wage jobs will make you special. Read here what I mean. Obviously with time, you naturally become more knowledgeable but I felt I was getting dumber.
I didnât take advantage of tutors, textbooks or sports and instead was solely focused on building the bank account to take out the next credit card with max rewards to eventually do nothing. I had no particular interest in going on a luxury vacation or taking out a mortgage on a property at 16 because it wasnât the right time for me and I grew up not enjoying spending money.
If I could go back and be a teen again I would want to learn more on my own and do less work. I relied too heavily on the education system to prepare me for life. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that now I would be a financial literacy advocate and blogger teaching a skill I had no clue about a few years ago, let a lone a few months ago once I quit the mentality of working for every dollar and my time and instead focus on learning and experimenting in my twenties.
Tricky Balance
For students, their largest expense is education and with rising tuition, real estate, gas, etc., wages arenât correlated and in fact staying stagnant, especially for the lower to middle class. Thatâs another incentive for those who arenât invested to hop into the shareholder class ASAP. Good news- itâs free.
All you have to do is open a brokerage account from a retail trading app to institutional brokerage house like Fidelity or Vanguard and pitch in a few dollars. The amount is up to you, no complaining and that will help skyrocket your returns and pay for college. If you only have $6, thanks to fractional shares even if the stock costs $100, you can take 6% of it and only pay what you can. Never buy margin! You donât have to be an accredited investor with a certain net worth and AUM anymore and with free-commision trading, thereâs no reason you cannot contribute to your net worth. After all, the net worth crisis is easier to fight than income.
I was too lucky and had no trouble paying for college. Not only my parents magically knew what a 529C was when they moved to the states and opened one the moment I was born, I happened to get in at the right time and right place to receive a full 4 year scholarship at NYU.
You can read more about it here.
But for millions of students, that isnât an option. There are more students from the top 1% at top-tier schools than those from the bottom 99% simply due to the cost which always holds us back from anything we want to do in life.
Thankfully as colleges are now abandoning, although a little late, the standardized tests and increasing financial aid, more students have a better chance, unless schools continue to discriminate against Asian Americans or those of color which defeats the whole purpose of a âfairâ college system.
Yet, even besides the testing requirements and IQ wizardry metrics, at the end of the day, no matter where you end up, itâs what you put in that counts. You get out what you put in and no matter if you go to a community college or Harvard, you will learn economics the same way. Sure professors and students are different everywhere and they will have different aspirations, but the material will be identical. Donât be fooled by that.
Stick to what you know and what you can gain out of any experience which starts with investing in yourself, something I didnât focus on. Higher income will come after you do so.
If youâre stuck in the middle of needing to pay for college yet wanting to find time to study, figure out your worst case-scenario because that will keep you afloat and allow you to enjoy your time at school to make the best out of it. Clearly, I didnât realize how fast 2 years would go by.
But make sure not to get too comfortable or listen to everything because most of it isnât necessary in the real world plus people love to pretend they know everything. Remember to learn on your own, something I didnât think was necessary after attending a so-called, âeliteâ high school.
Benefits of No-Pay Time
Everyone has a life outside fo work and if you donât think you do, then you love your job too much.
Donât get me wrong, itâs vital to love what you do because if you donât, you are truly waisting years off of your life. After all, we spend more time with our work colleagues than our regular family, especially in coastal cities that pay more, so itâs important to establish a healthy relationship with work.
No job is glamorous 24/7 no matter how lovely the job requirements may seem but what needs to be found is balance.
Moderation is key in everything. It goes back to the basic principles in life. Too much ice cream will make you fat. Thereâs nothing wrong with being fat until you are unhealthy and thatâs bad. Obesity can increase your chances for mortality, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc. you name it just from a little extra carbs and sugar overtime. Thatâs a no-no.
Same thing with working. Itâs the equivalent of eating too much sugar. We all have an energy system in our bodies and once it gets depleted, we cannot work more efficiently and become drained which leads to burnout that we cannot escape from. We dig a deeper hole for ourselves and suffer from all the damage we did by not taking strategic breaks, eating well, resting, reducing screen time and taking a break from earning.
Earning is a wonderful feeling, especially passive income and by no means, donât shut it off especially since it is your life line but make sure to let it flow by itself. If youâre putting in more hours than you started, then thatâs not passive.
Once youâve set it up, leave it be. There will always be FOMO and the âwhat-ifâs; and you could be working forever, but that doesnât mean you should.
The benefits of taking a break are endless. To keep your creative juices flowing, mental sanity and boost productivity in your area of expertise, a break is your best investment.
Itâs disappointing that taking 3 weeks off in America PER YEAR not consecutively is looked down upon. And if you donât believe me just look at Europe. They might not be as advanced as we are in the U.S., but they sure are happier, healthier, live longer and have better lives according to fulfillment.
At the end of your life you wonât regret making less, youâll regret the lost memories and not taking advantage of your 1 shot at life.
Europeans typically work M-T, for 8 hrs a day max, take long (2â3) lunch breaks, no work on the weekends and prioritize socializing. With added benefits such as childcare, healthcare and free education, despite the extra taxes, no one minds because they are fully supported by the government. If they get in a sticky situation such as unemployed, cannot support a child or go homeless, which rarely happens since the wealth gap isnât as drastic as in the states where everyone fends for themselves, the government is always there as a backup.
Focus your attention on you. When will it be normal to confidently say, âIâm out of office?â
If youâre financial savvy and play, sleep, eat and go on vacation while still making money, you are above 63% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck who have to put in manual labor and be physically present at work to get paid.
But no matter how much you make, at the end of the day, it all comes down to how much you keep.
If youâre super savvy and in the top 15% of Americans earning more than 100k, thatâs even more of a reason to establish several passive income sources, preferably 5â10 because after living in a high cost state since thatâs where all the high cost jobs are, having kids, eating out, living, vacations, child-care, health insurance, property taxes, marginal-tax rate you could be left with nothing! Earning 100k in a coastal city such as in NY, LA or SF is living on the edge!
But life is more than work and that salary magically disappears faster than we know it.
Working till death to boost your inheritance package is pointless. Let your grandkids learn about the balance of working and learning. Theyâll appreciate it more plus wonât have to worry about paying those atrocious taxes on the estate plans and dividing the assets.
Cures
As someone who has been working since middle school, itâs been almost impossible for me to get out of the mentality to stop working and trading money like time.
Although thereâs nothing bad with treating your time since it is your most precious asset, I feel Iâve wasted a lot of my summers, Friday/Saturday nights not having fun.
Fixing minimum wage will only lead people to get laid off more as companies can only pay a certain amount of workers top dollar. Yet everyone needs to be able to have a flexible, reliable job and not have to work 5 jobs to stay afloat so in order to do that they need to get invested.
Thatâs the best shot to living freely financially and mentally. Relying on an earned income isnât realistic anyway. The more you make from your employer, the more you get taxed and feel you have to work more to supply everything to your family and end up never seeing them again. Itâs a vicious cycle that never stops thatâs why the rich build wealth through investments not W2 income by building their own businesses and taking stock in the market.
With your own business, which can include a blog to a croc re-selling shop on Ebay, doesnât have to be a billion dollar tech giant, anything that is considered running an operation, it doesnât even need to make money, just provide some service/product to customers, will allow you to find that zen.
Thereâs never zen at the start of something new and it wonât always be that way but surely 28.2% of self-employed Americans, 44 million workers feel it pays off eventually. This is the true gig economy. More and more Americans are becoming contractors, working on their own time, for themselves and receiving the benefits without giving it up to the government.
Although working for a company has massive perks including: healthcare, retirement plans, paid time off, connections, referrals, bonuses, etc. when you donât work for an employer or large company, your medical ailments start magically vanishing. Read here what they entail. You get better quality sleep, less spasms or restless leg syndrome, you think clearer and can end up making more more if you are strategic and do 1 thing well on your own time.
That has lead me to find time on my own with my blog and startup endeavors. I didnât make anything for the first few months but since Iâm a student, that was the beauty of it. Start when youâre young because you have absolutely nothing to loose besides lessons lost and getting ahead.
I have found my new passion in financial literacy not teaching tennis or tutoring and thereâs nothing I look forward to more, especially when Iâm exhausted or want to feel better.
Finding a balance between learning and earning is a gradual process and doesnât have a destination. It doesnât come naturally and you need to find what works best for you. Iâm still figuring it out and trying to squeeze every last moment of college I can until Iâll be working full-time.