I think we stopped highlighting how magical our twenties are. This single decade can have the biggest impact on your success and happiness, yet the most important aspects of these things have become completely optional.
Adolescence has been extended, and with some good reasons. The world is a bit more complicated and much more expensive than it had been in the last few decades. Even early millennials were able to dodge some of the unique challenges Gen Z faces today, and Gen Alpha is approaching. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that some things are just easier if you get to work on them earlier.
We seem to have adopted “Fail Fast” as a motto in many of the wrong places, but this mentality was built for your twenties. You possess more time, energy, flexibility, creativity, and drive all at once between 22 and 28 than you likely will for the rest of your life, yet many people squander this period of hyper-growth and stunt their own development.
Most of your future is built on the foundation you lay in your early adult years. We are told that there is always time, and there is, to an extent, but things get harder to start the older you get, and even harder if you have to redo some things.
So here are 5 things that, while difficult, are much easier to capitalize on in your twenties than if you wait.
Discovering Yourself
This one sounds cliché, like something you do when your parents allow you to finally get a lock on your bedroom door. While, sure, that can definitely be a part of it, I guess, but it is certainly more important to discover who you really are and who you want to be.
Discovering yourself doesn’t happen in your bedroom, alone, but still in someone else’s care. Discovering yourself happens when you are truly on your own and with no one to answer to but yourself. Removing the safety nets means you need to focus on not falling, and to do so, you need to develop your own strategies without all your coaches present. There are real things at stake here; it feels like life or death, and that is a great feeling to overcome.
I see a whole generation of parents (or two) that seem to have completely forgotten this step. Birds push their young from the nest, forcing them to fly or fall, because they know that there is otherwise little incentive to do so when they have everything they need delivered to them in the comfort of their home. They have food, shelter, and protection all given to them. The kids could easily continue on like this forever, but the parents see that the window to develop independence naturally is small. If they want their offspring to be successful and have any hopes of reclaiming their own nest and life back, the kid has to learn to fly… Now! The inhospitable nature of home that is created by parents when they are constantly trying to push their kid out of the nest simultaneously creates a necessity for freedom and space that can only be achieved by leaving.
It isn’t just the parent’s responsibility. You need to create your own motivation to go. Life won’t be as comfortable, but neither is the first day of workouts. Building muscles from zero is hard and painful, but the strength and all the side effects built from pushing through reps are worth it to the point that you eventually learn to love the process. Few people go to the gym for the pain; they go for the results. That is what you are looking for in your independence: Results.
Once you are on your own, you will realize things you did against your preference and even well-being just to survive in someone else’s environment. All the rules and annoyances that go along with not owning your space have a way of suppressing how you present yourself to the world. Being on your own helps develop taste, preference, and priorities and helps you create your own rules that work for who you are and what brings out the best in you. You may never find these things if you are living inside systems built by and for other people.
You can tell when people have failed to learn how to be alone. They come into relationships differently, have a hard time defining what they want and saying what they need; even setting boundaries can be difficult because they have never had to outline their own system. They only know how to integrate into someone else’s template and not build their own.
You will change over time. Who you are in your twenties shouldn’t be who you are at forty and so on. You should be growing, learning, and changing as a result. It takes experience, though. It takes risk, effort, success, and failure. The kind of experience you don’t get with supervision. This is how you learn who you are.
If you wait to begin this endeavor of self-exploration and getting to know your adult self, you certainly will, but you will already have a more substantial idea of who you are. Without exercising and forming your own opinions, decoupling them from others’ opinions gets extremely difficult. You will wake up one day, not knowing the person in the mirror, revamping your wardrobe because your look doesn’t match who you want to be. Worst of all, you could regret all the decisions you made, with great sacrifice, for other people. That is when you have the quarter-life crisis, the divorce, the haphazard career reset, or a constant, nagging anxiety and discontent of never feeling like you are in control of your life, and all the fallout that comes with those. You can course correct, but you will likely be rewriting your source code that has set in over years of routine and coping.
They say our brain is not fully formed until our mid-twenties. Capitalizing on that last bit of development by devoting it to getting to truly know yourself is critical to pointing you in the right direction, and equipping yourself with the tools necessary to meet life head-on will save a lot of hard work and therapy to rewrite your story after years of delegating the formation of your own personality.
Developing Budgeting/Saving Habits
I will spare you the numbers on starting to save for retirement in your teens versus your thirties. It is factual and a great strategy to start early, but it completely misses most of the important parts of saving in your early adult years. In your twenties, what you save is not as important as learning how to save.
How you think about money as your adult life starts to take shape can make or break your chances of being financially secure for a long time to come. Your relationship with money, spending, and saving is strongly related to habits that were set long before you realize that you don’t want to work forever, and a funded retirement at some point is ideal.
Saving money never starts with a transfer into a savings or investment account. It starts with having money left over after bills are paid. It starts with being motivated enough to cook instead of eating out most of the time, because it costs less. It is reinforced when you choose not to take on a new payment or subscription, and it is justified when an emergency happens and you have the money to manage it on hand. Those are lifestyle choices, not purchase choices.
Your twenties will likely be the most difficult period in your life to budget. Everything is new. First real jobs, first real bills, and the first time you feel real pressure to demonstrate monetary success of your own all make for a difficult environment to manage money. You are at a point where you need more, want more, and have more than at any other point in your life. You are likely working harder than you ever have and want to feel like it is worth it. Curbing your spending feels especially oppressive when you work 50 hours for $60k per year, live in a crappy apartment, drive a crappy car, and see all your friends going out and buying nice things. It doesn’t seem fair. You look at what others have and can’t seem to figure out the math behind it all. Spending money helps ease that momentary despair. It does.
It is momentary, though — if you do it right. Establishing strong budgeting skills at this time is as powerful as compounding interest for your success. Finding out how to live on less than you are bringing in, developing frugal taste, being diligent (if not militant) about saving, and setting up your money to work as much for your future self as your current self is challenging and not at all glamorous, until you experience the peace of stability when your peers are fraying at the financial edges.
Just like you can set up these good habits, you can set up bad ones as well; maybe even easier. There is a certain level of excitement that comes with living out of an empty bank account. You enjoy more things. A hard day can be met with an impulse purchase, your commute can be more luxurious, and your entertainment can be top-tier. You can be the envy of your peers as long as you don’t disclose what is behind the scenes. It is like wearing gala attire and uncomfortable, tattered underwear.
Worse, these are things that you won’t remember. Someone, somewhere, will have on their tombstone “Life was tough, but the coffee was great.” You won’t miss the impulse purchases or the clutter they produce. You may miss the vacation, but you probably won’t regret a 3-star hotel over a 5-star.
What you will regret is the stress of a running credit card balance, the realization of interest you paid for financing more than you needed to, or the feeling that you cannot do the big things in life that you want to do because of the lack of funds on hand. Buying a house, relocating to somewhere that fits you better, starting a family, starting a business, or retiring all hinge on how you feel financially. Having spending habits that don’t allow for those things to happen can not only stall out your overall success, but will actively serve as a source of major long-term regrets.
Building these habits early is much easier at the start of your adult life than adjusting and rebuilding how you operate after some of the harm from bad money habits has set in and started to do damage. Realizing that you have lived bigger than you can afford and scaling back is painful and can feel humiliating. There is always time to adjust, but wouldn’t it be nice not to have to and feel like you are shrinking into a less comfortable way of living?
Starting A Career
Let’s start by defining what a career is. A career is an intentional progression with an occupation. In your career, you will learn and gain expertise, becoming uniquely effective in an industry. A career shows consistency and progression. You should have room to take on more responsibility, add additional value, and earn more as a result. No matter what your field is, there are careers and jobs. Careers require degrees or certifications, nor do those things guarantee you won’t just have a job. The requirement is just some intentionality and consistency.
The number of adults going back to college is on the decline, but so is job tenure. The average person today is expected to change careers 3 times in their working life and have about 12 jobs. I would venture to say that number will sharply rise in coming years for a myriad of reasons. While studies show that changing jobs every 2–3 years will yield higher pay, it doesn’t factor in the experience needed to demand higher wages. Changing jobs every 2–3 years is one thing, but if you are changing industries and line of work regularly, you end up missing out on developing certain skills and expertise.
Showing dedication in your first career jobs can set you apart. Showing growth from intern to manager, or just the ability to stay with a company for 5 years, will show a level of grit and determination that few will have. It takes 10,000 hours to master something; that is 5 years of working a full-time job. Even if you master nothing but learning how to hold down a job, you have something to show for it. Having that on your resume opens doors, but it also lets you feel comfortable in a role. You will find what you are good at, what you like doing, and develop some expertise as well as confidence. Taking short-term stints early shows the exact opposite: flippancy, breadth over depth, and casts doubt on your ability to be depended on.
Something more common for people in their twenties is extending college. Pushing a 4-year degree to 6 or more can cause a lag that will follow a career for years to come. There are unique reasons for everyone who does this: money, focus, time, aptitude, or even the job market. Regardless, that delay can put you behind peers fighting for the same job in an already tough market. Taking a gap year before and/or after college can feel needed, but think of it this way. Education is like a job on a resume. Employers historically hate gaps in resumes. Signalling that you cannot complete education in a standard amount of time or having gaps before and after raises questions about work ethic, stress management, and competency. It’s not personal; it is systematic.
Finding that career as early on as possible and settling in is about more than earning money; it is showing the system that you can play the game. In fashion, there is a concept that newcomers are encouraged to take to heart: “You need to learn the rules so you can break them well.” I’m not encouraging indefinite corporate servitude, but it is the default. Companies are not great at training new employees, but they will give you experience. Experience is the currency. Learn how business is done and where you fit in. From there, you can move more freely through the system. However, if you are just taking jobs and not stringing them together for a holistic career picture, you can struggle to find work you don’t hate, limit your earning potential, and put yourself at higher risk of instability around work long term.
Again, you can drag out the timeline before you start a career, go back to school, or change directions multiple times and be just fine, but it does get harder as you get older. Not just harder to take the steps, but harder to take a step back. As life gains momentum, needs increase and energy decreases. In your twenties, you can work the long hours with fewer repercussions. You can be laser-focused on work before too much more starts to demand your attention. You can take the hard parts of the learning curve in stride, because you are more flexible at this phase than ever.
Finding a Partner
Finding a partner these days is tough at any age; let’s not sugarcoat that. However, as I see more people drift into their late 30s while trying to find someone to pair off with, I see one major barrier that consistently gets in the way (Here’s a whole piece on it). That barrier isn’t availability, compatibility, desire, attraction, or any of the clickbaity reasons you will see by googling “Why are marriage rates declining?” That one reason is lack of room.
As you get older, especially if you remain single through most of your life, which a lot of people are, you grow around that detail. You develop routines, preferences, and entire systems that keep your life going. Those systems are built for one and repeated for years. Your side of the bed, how you clean, sleep routines, budgeting habits, etc. It is a delicate ecosystem that does not do well with lots of interference. The other person has just as many quirks and equal amounts of intolerance for change. This is why I have seen so many couples who nailed the honeymoon phase, crash and burn on cohabitation.
When you are in your twenties, you are flexible, probably already used to roommates, and still hold the capacity to follow someone else’s house rules. You aren’t too far away from living at home and likely don’t have your solo-living feet firmly under you. Introducing someone else into your life at this point and integrating each other is relatively easy. Waiting a decade to do this feels like a complete attack on your very personhood. All of a sudden, you have someone else to consider in almost every decision that you could make on a whim before. Scheduling, groceries, decorating- all have to incorporate another fully independent person now with their own set of neuroses.
Furthermore, you have some dreams to consider. When we are in our teens and twenties, we have crazy dreams. It is great to have such creative ambition. We know they are crazy, though. So when some of them fall away, we are ok with it. We find new dreams to chase as we adapt to real life. As we move through our thirties, we have made some big bets on some of those dreams. Saving for the backpacking trip across Europe or a 10-year plan to relocate to some tropical island. Maybe it is doing the work to start a business or make partner, and the years of 70-hour workweeks to make it happen. We now have to find someone who will go along with them and has compatible ambitions. After all, you can’t change course now. You have too much invested. No, life couldn’t wait for you to find someone to build dreams with; you had to come up with those on your own. Coming up with dreams with someone is infinitely easier than finding someone to make your dreams a reality.
Lastly, there is the need. When you cross into your thirties, you have to ask with seriousness, “Do I actually need a partner?” If you have built a stable life that you are content with, what will someone else add to your life? That isn’t an illogical question after some time. When you are in your twenties, romance hits different. You can more easily see building a life with someone, because yours is still being built. Once you hit all the milestones alone, being in a relationship can seem like an unnecessary challenge. Even for the good parts of it, you have learned to live without them. That logical feeling amplifies all the previous reasons. You become the riskiest kind of partner organically: the kind that doesn’t actually need anyone.
People are still dating, cohabiting, and getting married well into their thirties. In their defense, they have a higher rate of long-term success. Still, the numbers are shrinking. Single households make up almost half of the adult population as the average age of marriage climbs. It is getting harder to pair off, and it continues to get harder as we get older. There is always hope when it comes to finding love, but young love will always come easier. Finding someone is only one side of the relationship dilemma. Staying together is one of life’s greatest challenges at any age.
Having Kids
Having children has, for some reason, become an extremely divisive topic. Whether you are for having kids or against it doesn’t really matter in the face of the fact that having kids when you are younger is objectively easier, at least biologically speaking.
First-time parents are getting older, and teenage pregnancies in the US are falling. I researched and wrote a good deal on this in my book, “Life of Compounding Interest: Investing Toward a Good Life as an Average Person,” in a section where I talk about some good reasons to be wary of Sex, Drugs, and Rock N’ Roll. These rates mean some positive things for parents and kids, but there are some difficulties lying under the surface.
Fertility rates are falling across the population. IVF and other advancements help, but they are addressing an issue with difficulty conceiving, especially in an aging cohort. I am infinitely glad that this kind of treatment is available and the positive effects it has. Still, it is very hard on people wanting to have children. It is an emotional rollercoaster and an expensive one at that. If not covered by insurance (which it isn’t always), it can cost between $15,000 and $50,000. Staring at the possibility of that bill, if you want children, it stands to reason to start trying before the noticeable decline in fertility that starts around 30 for men and women.
Then there are a few perks that you can’t buy that you can take advantage of when it comes to being a younger parent, like higher energy, longer life expectancies together, and better support groups. I won’t dismiss the monetary impact of having kids, though I do believe it is a bit misleading. This is one key reason given for waiting to have kids. It is a personal choice and very valid, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
Simply looking at the expenses that flow directly to children, yes, they are expensive. With daycare and a lot of other common expenses baked in, you can expect a kid to cost $250,000 — $400,000. Sounds terrifying if you put it like that. However, a standard 2-person household spends about $16,000 per year on groceries and entertainment; spread out over the same 17-year period, that comes to $272,000.
I am sorry, but a kid or two does not need a completely separate grocery bill and will not double your current spend once they are out of diapers and before about 15. The entertainment costs are a “choose your adventure” scenario. I can tell you that once you have children, your ideas and investment into entertainment change wildly. Rather than paying $100+ for a round of golf and all the gear to go with it, you will likely opt for zoo membership or a park trip. The day of shopping will lose its allure when you know you are just getting juice spilled on it. Where your money goes shifts as you redefine fun. It isn’t a net addition.
You can spend as much money on a kid as you want. You can also live frugally and provide an equal level of happiness in childhood, stemming from different types of experiences. I will get a lot of flak for this from any naysayer, but daycare isn’t a requirement. If the average salary is around $65,000 per year and daycare is going to cost you $20,000+, if you have a 2 income household, it may make sense to shift someone to stay at home and work part-time for the first 5 years of the child’s life. Every situation is uniquely challenging. However, with a little creativity, it can work. Children cost money, yes. They do not have to be financially crippling. That is a choice that stems from a lack of creativity… twenty-somethings are often more creative and resourceful than their older counterparts, too.
Having children when you are well into your thirties comes with a certain degree of imposing your current taste onto the situation. If you are prone to buying the nicer gadgets, ready and willing to spend extra for a certain look, or just a bit neurotic, you will bring those tendencies into your parenting experience. In your twenties, you have a real opportunity to set your needs differently. You stand a better chance of being happy with the budget versions and less interested in trends. When you are younger, with less experience, and funds to throw at the challenge, you may be left scratching your head at the $700 stroller next to the $100 one and why the leather padded seat and custom color even exist, because you have a job to do, not an image to keep up. You are a young parent, just trying to get by, and you act like it. Children amplify our best and worst traits; if spending is one of yours, you will undoubtedly spend much more on a child.
A message that I wish more young people received when it comes to becoming a parent is that it is a phase of life, and not as long as it seems. In a lifespan of 80-ish years, a kid needs you for about 8, wants you for about 12, and wants nothing to do with you much after 15. By 18, if you did your job, they leave. Having a kid in your twenties means they are out before 50, with a decade left to work before a normal retirement age. Move that into your thirties, and college will be aligning with a standard retirement age. Retirement is hard on people. Becoming an empty nester is hard. Aligning those with all the expenses that come with them at the same time is going to be driving many in the millennial generation to hang onto careers as long as, or longer than, the Boomers we love to complain about.
If you want kids or don’t, you are entitled to pursue that dream. If you think kids are affordable or expensive, you can make that statement a reality. If you think having kids is hard or easy or better when you are younger or older, you are right. Your family is an extremely personal choice, as is how you manage it, but completely discounting being a parent or a young parent as an inferior experience is neither helpful nor accurate. Becoming a parent is closely tied to finances, but it should not be a financial decision.
You are never ready to become a parent. For me, given a choice, I would choose the time and energy route over the feeling of being financially secure any day, because when do you actually feel financially secure? There are single people making $200,000 a year and barely getting by, while there are some families making $85,000 and loving every minute of it. You can always make more money, but the chance to have the energy to play with your kids every day has an age limit. I have watched my kids spend time with great-grandparents and can only hope I get to meet great-grandkids. Those are things that you do not have any real control over, and the only way to steer the odds in your favor is to start early.
The Common Thread
The key with every one of these items is intentionality. Identifying what you want and making it happen. You can have a great career, stable financials, and an amazing family life, but none of those will happen by accident. You set the trajectory, and you do the things necessary to achieve your goals.
Just like the cliché of starting your savings journey early, these things compound more with longer timelines. There are always strategies to achieve your goals in shorter timelines, but it requires much more effort and resources. The best time to start was sooner; the second best time is now.
Young people have a chance to delay the transition to adulthood; many are taking it. In many ways, it is logical and even preferable, but not necessarily better. Wait too long to pursue your dreams, and they will pass you by. They say youth is wasted on the young. Don’t prove them right. Plan your journey, act intentionally, and seize your twenties. They may not be the best years of your life, but they will definitely define what those best years look like.
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