Hello from a relatively young person

[feli]

Hello,

I've been hesitating in making this post because honestly I'm a tad intimidated by the people on this forum. Nonetheless, I'm gonna try to learn and be a part of this community.

I'm an 18 year old who's about to head off to college and I've just finished reading the ERE book. I've gotta say, no other book I've read has managed to open up my mind to new possibilities like ERE has. I've also been reading "A Guide to the Good Life" and I'm planning on starting "Man, Economy, and State". I just want to say that I'm really thankful that this community exists and I intend to read every book on Jacob's "list of financial freedom books".

As for my finances, I opened my first bank account a few weeks ago and it's got a little more than 500 dollars. Once I get settled in at college I'm planning on getting a part-time job and will be striving to saving as much of my income as humanly possible.

[prognastat]

Welcome to the forums, and congrats on finding FIRE/ERE so early. Being so early it's likely you haven't made the big mistakes others make early in their adult life and have a clean slate to start with which is great.

[RealPerson]

Welcome! You are so lucky to have an open mind to ERE concepts at age 18. I gave the ERE book to my kids at age 18 and they did not want to open it. So, congrats. You are way ahead of the curve.

[2Birds1Stone]

I would focus on learning skills and gaining experience while securing a high paying job. A PT job might be a good thing, but don't spend all of your time chasing a minimum wage when the ROI on investing in yourself in other ways might blow that out of the water down the line.

[ThisDinosaur]

Welcome, feli.

Are you planning on taking out any student loans? Reading ERE before starting college puts you light years ahead of your classmates already. US colleges are full of brilliant overachievers who never think about Compound Interest when filling out their Financial Aid paperwork.

[feli]

@2Birds1Stone

Thanks for the advice. I've started self-studying accounting (I'm reading a book on reading financial statements), however, besides that I'm not really sure what other skills I should try to develop. I would greatly appreciate suggestions. As for the PT job, after reading ERE and other FIRE related accounts I'm honestly just eager to take any kind of action that can get me started on my journey. So the cash flow from a min-wage job, small as it may be, is very appealing to me at the moment.

I feel I should also mention that I'm studying computer science in a fairly prestigious program.

@ThisDinosaur

Thankfully my financial-aid covers all my tuition costs so I won't be taking out any student loans. In fact, after reading way too many posts online about people's struggles with debt I think I've come to develop a phobia of owing other people money.

[prognastat]

Thankfully my financial-aid covers all my tuition costs so I won't be taking out any student loans. In fact, after reading way too many posts online about people's struggles with debt I think I've come to develop a phobia of owing other people money.

That's great, the big things I would focus on is getting through college without any debt at all. If you have living costs to worry about make sure your PT work covers those, but also make sure it doesn't interfere with class.

If you manage to get through college without debt and possibly even a little of savings you are set up for being able to financially independent at a very young age.

[Jason]

I wish someone told me at age 18 "Listen asshole. I have one word for you. 300K. There will always be girls and drugs and books and Amsterdam. Whatever. The world is an assembly line of that shit. It will never stop producing stuff to blow your money on. But there's not an assembly line of money to blow your money on. So right now, start saving and investing like your like depended on accumulating 300K. Your friends? Well, they are actually bigger assholes than you are and in twenty years they will be dead or have forgotten about you. And when you get to $300K, you will have an employee for the rest of your life who will make money for you while you do what you want to do. Which is most likely not blowing it because you worked so hard to get to 300K.

And never be intimated by people. Unless they are members of organized crime. Those people you should be intimidated by and that will help you stay alive in the event that you end up in the back room of a strip club filled with them because you played grab ass with the wrong girl. I had a friend that happened to.

[fell-like-rain]

Hello, and welcome! Nice to have more young folks here to balance out the old grumps . I'll just offer a different perspective, which is "don't drink the savings kool-aid too hard". Many of the best life decisions I've made have been poor choices from an ERE point of view. Some things are worth more than money.

[wolf]

Welcome! Try to use your age to live a fulfilling life right from the start.

[mcs2269]

While you're in school, there are two types of time wasting jobs you may want to consider. Consider the library need-based aid job where you just sit there and get paid to do your homework. Also consider tutoring in CS, physics or math as these jobs can bring in $30-$100 per hour in my experience, also dependent on location. Otherwise, get work experience that will transition you into a high paying job, like @2Birds1Stone said.

Become an RA if you have to pay for housing. Also, you can either work at a food bank or work for a cafeteria to get free food. When I wasn't working at a cafeteria, I'd simply walk into my school's dining halls and take food. Nobody really cared.

[mcs2269]

If you don't need to do the above, just find something you enjoy doing.

[mcs2269]

Attend all the events the school has to offer, as they usually have free gear, swag, and food. I went to plenty of events where whole racks of ribs and lobsters were being thrown away. Colleges are so wasteful and there is a lot of state and private money moving through these places. Don't feel bad about cleaning up a bit.

[mcs2269]

As soon as you get a job on campus, you'll find other ways to find free things just by meeting administrative staff and others. Also, with jobs like being an RA or TA, sometimes you're given a budget to spend on your students. So you have a lot of flexibility wrt who gets what and how.

[mcs2269]

keep in mind that with the FAFSA, your parents income from two years prior will determine aid given to you by the school, assuming you haven't covered it in scholarships and grants. If your parents start making more money, you will have to pay more. Same goes with wealth. If you can legally separate yourself from your parents, have them hide their wealth or transition it to an older sibling, you will qualify for more aid. If you find yourself having to pay for housing and you don't want to spend time working as an RA or something, you could have your parents take action now and in a year or two you could getting funding for that, sometimes even over and above your expenses.

Also remember, that everything to do with a financial aid office is disputable. You can appeal almost any decision they make after you're at the university and performing well.

[mcs2269]

Also, no matter what happens grade-wise with you and CS, don't leave the major unless it is for a true passion. I don't know one computer science friend who took a job for less than $90K. Signing bonuses for them were around 10k to 15k just to take an offer.

[mcs2269]

Also, universities are always saying they have a money problem and they'll ask you to "give back" before you even graduate. Never forget, the university does not pay taxes. When you make a payment on their behalf, everything is tax-exempt. Also, the professors are making a shit ton of money and the university president's salary compensation is at least a million dollars. They also usually provide free housing for all their professors.

tl;dr - there is no shortage of money. They're not lying so much as they really don't see how crazy they sound.

[feli]

@mcs2269

Wow. Thank you so much for taking the time to write all that out. I will definitely keep all your advice in mind.

In fact, I think I'll start posting in the journal section to share my journey with you guys.

[mcs2269]

No problem. I was at work and clearly this was more interesting.

I think the big take-away for you now should be that 1) realize that your time is limited(AKA you are going to die) and is therefore your most valuable asset and 2) you want to maximize time spent on activities and people you find interesting and minimize time spent on tedious work. Maximize free time and don't make your life harder than it has to be. It's that simple. If you keep this in mind and look around you you'll realize that most people are are on auto-pilot the majority of their lives.

Going into college I respected the institution of academia mainly because I come from an academic family. I was convinced I wanted to go to graduate school for physics. And I still do want to simply because physics is a stabilizer for me. But I've since lost most respect for academic research because I learned it had more to do with politics and funding than learning. My PI spent all his time going around shaking hands and securing funding and little time thinking. Plus graduate school income in the form of the "tuition" they cover is now taxable income in addition to the income they pay you up front, so it wouldn't make sense to go to grad school.

Things might be different for CS right now simply because they can't find many people willing to leave industry. So the academic field is likely much less political than many other disciplines.

On the topic of politics: When I was looking for jobs I had a choice whether to go into traditional engineering jobs or software jobs. My heart told me to go into renewable energy and sustainability jobs, but of course these are more limited in scope than software jobs. I had to "network" to get the engineering jobs and the offers I got were about 2/3 the offers I got for software jobs. I ended up taking a job where they contacted me because they need people so badly, there was no networking, no bull-shit. And it pays much more. And frankly, the job is much easier. My company needs people so badly that I, as an employee, have a lot of power over them. I quite simply quit work when I need to, within reason, and they can't really do anything about it. Throw in the fact that my total living expenses are less than 20% of my after tax and deductions income, and quite frankly I feel tremendously free.

When employees are able to save a lot of money, they realize they don't need to work very long. And so they don't. And when employees have that kind of leverage, it actually drives up the cost of labor to the company, I think. That's what I'm noticing around here.

[mcs2269]

Also, you'll hear a lot of people say in college that you're going to work the rest of your life, and therefore you should find a job you like. Understand that this is bull-shit. You won't have to work the rest of your life. That said, you should still find a job you're passionate about, but that shouldn't be priority number one coming out of college. And it is unlikely that you're going to find it as a first job anyways.

Hope this wasn't tmi.