Financial advice for an 18 y/o? Basically, what would you tell yourself if a version of you was 18 and broke in 2017?

Get the cheapest degree aka community college for two years then two years at public as a backup because having a degree from a "prestigious" school doesn't mean shit for the average person

Invest in BTC

Work while in school and make sure they have a 401k plan

Index funds for security

Don't waste your money on a high end apartment

Kill yourself.

Yeah I started trading penny stocks when i was 18. Currently living off of the capital gains while in college. It's paying for college too.... and ~75% of my car that's paid off. Just a 2010 corolla.

Buy agrello.

Get a job, work hard, and stick with it for at least a year. If you aren't miserable then stay for another year and see what the advancement pipeline looks like for you. If they're good and you can still stand the work, stick with it, if not, take your resume and find something else.

Don't spend your money frivolously, especially when you don't have the money to spend. Buy off brand when you can, or don't buy at all when you don't need to. Make your own meals, don't eat out. Remember that it's cheaper to buy food in bulk, same with anything else, so try to do that if you can and plan your meals.

Find cheap sustainable entertainment for when you aren't working. It's all about stretching your dollar so consider how many hours of fun you are getting for your buck if you're buying a product or investing in a service. It's better to find something that you don't have to pay for if you can, and the best thing is to find entertainment that you can make money off of or learn a valuable skill from. Learning how to fix shit is a great bet in that regard since if you get good enough at it you can fallback on it later on in life and it will help you save money don the road.

I'm assuming your a dude, so I'll say try to disregard women for a while if you can. Instead of wasting your time and money chasing tail, try to spend it investing for the long term. As a guy your SMV will only go up for now and you can always bag that grill later on. Just remember not to wait on it forever if you want kids and you should be fine.

All really common sense stuff here. The only thing I will say that isn't nessarily common sense is that you don't absolutley need to go to college unless you're doing it for a specific career and consider that most careers don't require a degree even today, just the ones that people talk about. If you do go to school then be careful about what kind of degree your getting, make sure that you have a plan for what to do and a backup if that plan fails.

work for as much as you can, live very frugally, and cost average into btc/eth/xmr with your savings (i.e., buy every week or paycheck). don't get caught up in shitcoins unless you are really intrigued and do a lot of research/participate but even then not with a large portion of your holdings. hold offline in a paper wallet and dont leave your seed phrase lying around. go to college/university but don't get heavily in debt either go the community college to better university after a few years route or go to a state school or somewhere that gives you a good scholarship if thats an option. if you dont feel college is right for you just work (whatever is the best job you can, dont be ashamed) and try your best at it, be professional, always be on time. focus on cost averaging crypto.

1). Don't buy a nice car. Buy a shitbox. Why pay interest for the privilege of owning a depreciating asset that'll be worth much less than it's total purchase price (probably 10-20%, tops) at the end of a 5-8 year loan period?

2). Compound interest is your friend. 65 year old you will fucking LOVE 18 year old you for dropping 10k into a targeted vanguard fund and forgetting about the money.

3). Crypto is great but never be a one-basket investor (see 2).

4). Anything worth doing is worth doing well. If you're going to half-ass something, don't even bother doing it. This goes for relationships, jobs, hobbies, etc. You are what people say about you when you're not there.

5). College isn't a meme but you definitely need to have an idea of what you want to do with your degree. Engineering degrees aren't a meme, they're a pathway to a highly lucerative field. See #4.

Source: 33 year old married dude with decent life and on target to retire comfortably by 50.

Came to post this

Actual good advice, thanks man.

Join the military or get an ROTC scholarship.

Nothing fuck off
Do we need a sticky on Veeky Forums to tell every undergrad to fuck off and go to Reddit

Suck old guys cocks for extra cash and invest it. Dont touch the money no matter what. Swallow for extra gains

Have to disagree with 5, engineering is definitely a meme now. If you go engineering, it'd better be electrical engineering.

t. recent mechanical engineering grad

Prepare to get a sustainable source of income that is above your living costs. This is a job. Go into a union/shop and learn a trade or go to school and don't pick a major that isn't fucking retarded (reference the OOH for this if US). Don't plan on working for fucking McDicks for 30 years and retiring comfortably. If you take out loans for school make sure to hurl money at them when you can to pay off a quickly as possible. Alternatively, join a service if you are American and make them pay for your college. Try not to piss away your bonuses and salary on the way.

Make a budget when you get your job and first save up for 3-6 months of living expenses into savings. This is your "oh fucking shit" fund. After that use everything above your living expenses to invest. Dump most of them into a 401k if you have employer matching and try to max out the match. If you don't have this option go for a Roth IRA. Anything over the match or the limits dump into index funds.

Live below your means and save for larger purchases instead of taking out loans. Never buy a car new, buy used that is at least a year old and save 25%+. Only get 15 year fixed mortgages, do not do over 15 or go variable. Pay your credit card bills on time and track all of your accounts. Avoid debt at all costs. Diversify your investments as much as possible. Hire a professional accountant to do your taxes and have them give you a rundown on write-offs and tax breaks (I can't stress this enough you can write off most of the shit you buy for work, any junk you "donate" to goodwill, shitloads of losses you can claim, etc.)

This board has turned into cryptocurrency general though, so disregard all of this.

If you can't find a job with a ME degree you should move. The old adage is you can choose what you do, or where you live, but rarely both. Also, for any engineering job seeker work experience and internships matter. Hopefully you have both.

Also, for the love of god get car+renters/house insurance at a minimum with hopefully employer health insurance. If you are unemployed or for some reason can't get insurance through your employer get high-deductable, just make sure you are always covered.

Umbrella insurance on top of everything is fucking great as well.

buy mooncoin

Never stick your dick in anything that is worth ruining your life.

These

Also, consider skipping college and learning software dev. You can get a junior dev job without a degree, and after that it's smooth sailing. It's just one option to consider.

Nice, just bought 100k

Find some kneepads and do everything in your power to get as much Monero as possible.

use my $10k scholarship in bitcoin when it was $200. could of been a millionaire by now.

I would tell myself to: man the fuck up, ditch my parasitic friends, and stay in school.

You would've sold at $450
> "Wow if I held I could've been a millionaire by now."

How can a girl so young be so attractive?

you're so right! get in here

An important consideration most people don't recognize is the difference between looking wealthy and being wealthy. Most wealthy people are there because they consistently reinvested in themselves- and most billionaires were already rich from the moment they were born so trying to follow their lead is pointless. If you're interested in actually creating something substantial you need to consistently save money.

Right now, I work in a department where most people make between 80-100k, but a lot of them live wildly outside of their means with multiple houses, cars and a bunch of children. While I'm sure many are saving, I'm also sure that they're not nearly putting away as much as they could. A large aspect of initial wealth is willpower with a lot of "fresh rich" being eccentrics.

Other good concepts, learn stats and how moving averages work. try to trade below what you would consider to be a good indicator of actual price and trade off if it's overvalued, this is the core of algorithmic trading. Look up "statistical arbitrage" if you're interested.

Outside of that, if you want to long any stocks I recently read a good book called "the little blue book that beats the market" that uses relative valuation versus momentum and ranks a top ten or fifteen to invest in. The author claims 30% APR if you stick with it for years, but I don't know if I fully buy that. The last and most important thing is to always be working. Operating income is your best friend if you don't have a large sum to play with. Try to work until you can live off dividends, that's retirement.

>An important consideration most people don't recognize is the difference between looking wealthy and being wealthy.
pic related, this is true

I have a cousin who is a self-made millionaire and he wears a tee with shitty jeans and a baseball cap every day to his office.

There's many people with six figure salaries who wind up not making shit because they blow all their money on living in the city, having a super expensive car and trying to impress gold diggers.

HODL btc. That's it

Shit, there's many people that make well over 200k/year in their household and have a negative net worth.