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What I would do if I was 18 now

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Re: What I would do if I was 18 now

#11

Post by linkregister »

betaby wrote: post #7

> If you save that $3k/m over 20 years and put it into Vanguard ETFs (at 7% over 20 years), you’ll be 38 and have $1.5 million in the bank! Save $6k/m, and you’ll have $3 million at 38. Yes, I said that correctly. Save $1k/m and you’ll have $500k by 38. Simply, no. No. That's not how it work. You can't find index returning 7% avg on 20 year interval. Plus that gains are taxable in many contries, sometimes heavily.

A Roth IRA (a post-tax retirement account) in the United States will permit untaxed capital gains. The maximum yearly contribution is $18,000.

The S&P 500 returns 7% average on most 20-year intervals. [1]

1. https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/ ; I tried to find a 20-year interval less than 7%, I could only find a few terminating in the last ten years. They were above 6.5%.

(not that I find most of what is in this essay plausible; that one quoted excerpt is fine)

Re: What I would do if I was 18 now

#12

Post by StudentStuff »

ianai wrote: post #3

People forget how much more free time and freedom there is at college. Yes, there are deadlines and schedules but you’re given opportunities that the usual 40 hr/wk job won’t afford. You could take student loans out to buy yourself dumb things, for sure, but you can also take student loans out for really good things, too. The rest of your life that won’t so easily be the case. I would love to have the time flexibilit…

School is a different kind of challenge from work. One provides clearly delineated tasks, coworkers and employers who are apt to help you complete said tasks in a timely manner, and pay for doing said work.

School, comparatively is $2k to $6k a quarter (depending on which public univeristy you go to in Seattle), and while some classes have vague goals, most lump everything into a handful of tests or a two dozen page paper, with 80 % of your grade riding on that. Study groups at community colleges, 2nd tier universities (say UW's satellite campuses), and even at major colleges are few and far between, with many professors discouraging them from forming.

I've proactively contacted every professor prior to taking their course since I re-entered college, and while it has definitely helped me screen some truly awful professors, what my parents describe as their college experience is nothing like what I or my friends has gone through.

If I didn't need a damn receipt to get a decent job in Seattle, I wouldn't have gone back to school. Even with a half decent Github, it seems a CompSci degree is mandatory unless your okay with throwing $40k+ in potential yearly earnings out the window for the next decade.

Re: What I would do if I was 18 now

#13

Post by tbabb »

Who are all these people who "didn't learn anything" from university? What were they spending their time doing? I learned a ton about a wide variety of fields from experts in those fields; it was extremely valuable. Did this guy just goof off the whole time?

Re: What I would do if I was 18 now

#14

Post by tapanjk »

mozumder wrote: post #10

> Happiness comes from intangibles, like experiences, relationships, activities, not stuff. Experiences don't make you happy. It's one of the mistakes millennials make. Vacations are exactly the same as buying shit - you're just buying more shit, except your buying a pre-packaged consumer-friendly vacation. Taking a vacation to south of France isn't going to make you happy. You'll be just as angsty there as you are i…

I don’t know why you are being downvoted but your note resonates with me. This I say not based on intuition but experience. Not to say experiences do not matter, but they provide more joy for someone who has found satisfaction from creativity. Enjoyable experiences are the icing on the cake of a meaningful life.

Re: What I would do if I was 18 now

#15

Post by tyrw »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #8

Demonstrates the easiest way to success. Just tell others how to be successful - live a crazy life that seems awesome and blog/write about it! Pretend you know something they don't so they stay hooked on your "personal brand". Voila!

I've always wanted to write a "how to get rich" book in which I simply describe how to write a "how to get rich" book. If done right it might actually work, and if it did you really couldn't argue with the method.

Re: What I would do if I was 18 now

#16

Post by erikpukinskis »

tbabb wrote: post #13

Who are all these people who "didn't learn anything" from university? What were they spending their time doing? I learned a ton about a wide variety of fields from experts in those fields; it was extremely valuable. Did this guy just goof off the whole time?

Ya, and when they say they never ask candidates about their education... OK, so you've never needed to hire a statistician, or a mathematician, or a lawyer, or a materials scientist... There aren't a ton of people walking around who picked that stuff up on YouTube.

A lot of people pay programmers a lot of money to brute force problems someone with a masters degree could solve in a week, and give you a correct O(n) algorithm instead of the coder's buggy O(n^3) solution.

Re: What I would do if I was 18 now

#17

Post by tyrw »

mozumder wrote: post #10

> Happiness comes from intangibles, like experiences, relationships, activities, not stuff. Experiences don't make you happy. It's one of the mistakes millennials make. Vacations are exactly the same as buying shit - you're just buying more shit, except your buying a pre-packaged consumer-friendly vacation. Taking a vacation to south of France isn't going to make you happy. You'll be just as angsty there as you are i…

I don't think there's much mileage is blanket statements of what "makes people happy". I've traveled and thoroughly enjoyed it and it made me happy, and I know people who I think honestly derive happiness from staying with the latest fashions, etc. To each their own.

Re: What I would do if I was 18 now

#18

Post by drawnwren »

tbabb wrote: post #13

Who are all these people who "didn't learn anything" from university? What were they spending their time doing? I learned a ton about a wide variety of fields from experts in those fields; it was extremely valuable. Did this guy just goof off the whole time?

Older student chiming in - it's very frequent that my friends who did graduate from university discount what they learned there. I think it's hard for people to understand that University taught them lots of things besides coursework, like how to deliver software on timelines, or how to socialize, they also discount the importance of patterns I.e. they don't remember their physics courses but they do have some ideas about how physics roughly works.

Re: What I would do if I was 18 now

#19

Post by rayalez »

tbabb wrote: post #13

Who are all these people who "didn't learn anything" from university? What were they spending their time doing? I learned a ton about a wide variety of fields from experts in those fields; it was extremely valuable. Did this guy just goof off the whole time?

I mean yeah, if you spend 5 years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars, you will learn more than in a one coding bootcamp. Like duh doi, no argument here(even though there's plenty self taught programmers who are better than the most college students).

People who say "don't go to the university" are mostly talking about the opportunity cost. Is university the best way you could spend 5 years of your young life and $30-120k? Fuck no.

If you are curious and driven - spend your money on books and video courses, and spend your time learning things that interest you. Create stuff, build portfolio, get a job or launch businesses.

You will get SO much more out of it than out of college.

More importantly - learn to think and to learn by yourself. 95% of learning will be done after the college anyways, so might as well figure out how to do this on your own, not by following teacher's instructions, preparing for quizzes, and following the inane and obviously horribly inefficient system.

Re: What I would do if I was 18 now

#20

Post by Fezzik »

linkregister wrote: post #11
betaby wrote: post #7

> If you save that $3k/m over 20 years and put it into Vanguard ETFs (at 7% over 20 years), you’ll be 38 and have $1.5 million in the bank! Save $6k/m, and you’ll have $3 million at 38. Yes, I said that correctly. Save $1k/m and you’ll have $500k by 38. Simply, no. No. That's not how it work. You can't find index returning 7% avg on 20 year interval. Plus that gains are taxable in many contries, sometimes heavily.

A Roth IRA (a post-tax retirement account) in the United States will permit untaxed capital gains. The maximum yearly contribution is $18,000. The S&P 500 returns 7% average on most 20-year intervals. [1] 1. https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/ ; I tried to find a 20-year interval less than 7%, I could only find a few terminating in the last ten years. They were above 6.5%. (not that I find most of what is in…

According to the IRS the maximim contribution to a Roth IRA is far less: $5,500.

https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-participant-employ...

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