How to set yourself up financially

TL;DR: Find a good trade, get good at it, work well and don’t fuck it up.

I was broke at one point in my life. “I don’t know how we’ll pay the bills this month” broke, “I can’t afford a soda” broke or “I can’t pay to fix my car’s wheel” broke.

It’s not fun. It affects every facet of your life negatively. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say it’s the biggest problem that people face. It even goes on to destroy relationships between friends, spouses & family members.

Which is why…

you gotta fix your money

I’m not saying get rich. I’m just saying put yourself in a position where you’ll never be broke.

I’m not saying you need to be able to afford a new Mercedes. A 5 year old Volkswagen in working order is more than okay.

You don’t need to fly business class, but doing a few small trips a year is fun.

And you don’t need millions in ETFs. But you need enough to know that if a common problem were to happen tomorrow, you could face it just fine.

For example, if a market crash happened tomorrow, you lost your job and nobody was hiring… could you last for at least 3 months from just savings? Do you know for a fact that at some point you’d find a job that’s still going to keep you at least in the middle class?

If not, you’re probably not set financially just yet.

how to do it

The step by step is rather simple. There are many ways to skin a cat and many ways under the sun to make money.

From what I’ve seen so far in my life, the simplest, easiest, most straightforward one is to be good at a valuable skill and to offer your work in exchange for money. I.e.: a good job.

As I’m writing this, a good job is that of a software engineer.

You get paid more than the average person, in fact significantly more if you do some geo-arbitrage (job in expensive country, live in cheap country).

It can be done remotely and mostly async (work whenever, wherever). You’re respected and it can be fun too (you build cool shit).

You can break into software engineering without college in less than 2 years if you really want to (I did it). And it’s also a career that’s probably not going to go to shit in the next 5-10 years.

You can’t ask for a lot more than this. When you read this though, software engineering may not be as shiny as it is now and that’s fine. Find the best option that’s on your table and run with it.

All you need to do is spend a few years to get good at it and to meet people in the industry. Be likeable, be serious and have integrity. Things will work out.

but I don’t like the options

Dumbass… Passion and “like” for a career is a dumb way to choose a career. I’m not saying pick something that you hate. But be aware that 1. you will like something more after you get results and 2. no matter how much you like something it will eventually get boring after doing it for work for a number of years.

I disliked coding when I started doing it professionally in Oct 2019. It was very hard. And I’m starting to deal with some boredom now in my life, after 5 years of software engineering. It’s fine. I still love my life and it’s mostly due to, guess what, software engineering.

This amazing career has made it possible for me to live an amazing lifestyle. And to be confident that I’ll probably never be broke broke again. I even ran the numbers on saving for retirement and the truth is unless I fuck something up I’ll be fine.

don’t fuck it up

My last piece of advice is to not fuck it up…

• don’t die
• don’t go to jail
• try not to marry or make kids with the wrong person
• don’t spend 110% of your income
• stay healthy

These might sound like obvious things to do, but I almost fucked up the first 2 at 18 by driving like a moron. It’s easy to fuck things up if you don’t pay attention in life. Don’t fuck it up.

end

Find a good trade, get good at it, work well and don’t fuck it up. That’s it. Dad loves you, bye!