Millennial Angst – Burning Money

What can I say?  I’m a millennial who feels behind on saving for retirement.  I didn’t really start learning about the basics of money until I was in the Army in my late 20’s paying off debt.  It wasn’t until I was in my early 30’s that I learned the power of a dollar-for-dollar budget.  Then it was in my mid to late 30’s that I began to really understand the power of compound interest in saving for the future.  It would have been nice to learn these things when I was in high school instead of learning AP Calculus but it is what it is.

Ironically, as I learned more about money, I’ve allowed myself to be anxious about whether I’ll be able to retire one day as I currently work as a security guard and don’t have a high income to make up for a decade of not saving in my 20’s.   Other than writing and YouTube, nothing seems to stick as far as other potential career options.  In response to this anxiety I once got into learning how to day trade stocks.  I figured maybe I could learn this skill and ultimately make up for the time I had lost not saving.  I paid about $6,000 dollars for a course on the topic.  That was dumb.  I wouldn’t call it a scam but with enough research I could’ve learned the information for free.  I liked learning about the stock market but I didn’t like the feeling of being glued to a computer screen or the up and down emotions of making $100 dollars one day and then losing $100 the next.  Day trading wasn’t for me and I didn’t need to pay $6,000 (or any money for that matter) to find out.

When I was pursuing motivational speaking for income I was struggling with finding regular paying speaking opportunities.  So, again, I paid about $8,000 for two different courses by two reputable speakers (at least in my opinion).  Again, information that could have been found for free with enough digging.  In this situation I thought it better to learn from other speakers who I respected and I had so much trouble trying to come up with a reliable system to find speaking opportunities.  I had been paid $1,500 several times at this point to speak for less than an hour.  I knew that $1,500 was the bottom of the price range for what many professional speakers were getting so I knew it could be a lucrative endeavor and a way to catch up on my savings.  Plus, I’m sooooo good at it!  What’s $8,000 one time to ultimately end up making $5,000, 20-30 times in a year?! During the pandemic, speakers were making that same money doing zoom presentations!  I worked hard and put the systems to use and after several hundred emails to various organizations I got one phone call that led to nothing.  I still get more opportunities (speaking or otherwise) by putting out content online and letting people find me.  Don’t need to pay $8,000 for that.

I wouldn’t say I got scammed in any of these situations.  They just didn’t produce the results I was looking for.  Maybe I didn’t work the systems hard enough or long enough?  With both situations I realized that the strategies produced a lifestyle that I didn’t want:  The trading had me glued to a laptop while my emotions went up and down.  The emphasis on speaking for money took the joy out of communicating my story.

I think at the end of the day I let anxiety about my financial future cause me to look for an easy answer in the present.  Day Trading and Speaking can be very lucrative in the long run but one must be willing to work at them for long periods of time.  You can’t pay your way to success in either.  The beauty and the curse of the modern era is that you learn lots of things online for free by putting in effort and running experiments against that knowledge.  Just make sure those experiments are low cost ($0-$250) because there’s also a lot of B.S. on the internet.  No need to spend thousands of dollars to figure out that you’re not interested (sounds a lot like my college experience).