Optimized Early Years For a Young Chad

Birth through post college optimization

We have a diverse readership group here. From my interactions with you we have both high school and college aged readers as well as people closing in on retirement who have older kids and even some grand kids.

This post is going to walk through some of the steps to optimize finances through your (or for your kids/grandkids) through young ages.

Once you hit your 20s, BTBull has laid out a great playbook for you:

• High-paying career

• Do enough to be a B-level employee so you leave yourself with enough free time

  • A-level employees have a marginal higher pay, but get burdened with significantly more workload

• Focus on setting up side incomes and businesses

  • Eventually those should make up for the small pay difference

• Once your side income is 2x your W2 salary you can quit and focus on scaling the successful business

That playbook is tried and true and I don’t have much to add to try to improve it. The only place I personally would differ is I am a bit more risk-adverse (likely due to finding Bull in my mid-30s after already having a high salary and a family making the grind and risk-taking needed to successfully have a business less palatable). So I still think having a safety net of a large 401k and IRA in place is nice.

But what can you do before your 20s?

If you are like most Americans you graduated college with a large negative net worth. You then spent your early working years trying to simultaneously save to get a house and pay down your debt load. And it was likely a struggle.

If this was you, then you should be incentivized to not have your children end up in the same position.

So what can you do to set up your kids for success?

If you have ever asked that question, then this post is for you.