How I Will Be Rich

I was reading another financial blog earlier today called Young and Broke. It is another favorite of mine and I stumbled upon a crazy little fact. I am 24 years old and it said the average person of that age has accumulated a total net worth of $400! I thought to myself, “Wow, that seems suprisingly low”. I went to the handy little calculator that her blog provided at cnn.com and sure enough I came up with the same result.

I have come to realize that this probably is true. People that are in my age group are most likely just getting out of college and they all of the sudden have to begin paying off student loans. They are forced to find a “real” job and slowly but surely, their parents are starting to cut them off. They now have to pay rent, their own food and clothes, car insurance, health insurance, car payments and so on. Luckily, I did not have any student loans. The people that did, it is time to start budgeting. Here is a nifty little calculator that will help you figure out your net worth. I just starting using it and will keep it updated every month. (It is a good thing when your net worth gets bigger each month)

I also stumbled across something else today that I find insane… This guy’s advice
He is the nephew of Jim Cramer and apparently a writter for thestreet.com. Wonder how that happend…? I am a fan of Jim Cramer and his investment advice but man, thestreet.com is really lowering their standards. Anyway, this guy does not help the twenty-somethings little predicament… He has articles with names like “Need Emergency Cash, Use Mom and Dad”, “An iPhone: The Best $600 You’ll Ever Waste”, “The iPhone Equals Babe Magnet”, “Young Ones, Go Forth and Speculate (Save the responsible investing stuff for when you’re older.)” and of course my favorite, “Don’t let all the reasons to save distract you from all the reasons to spend.” Does this sound like good advice to anyone? Did you know that if you put aside $4000 a year at a rate of 10% it will be worth nearly 2 million at age 65… That number is more than cut in half if you start at age 35 (It will be around $750,000 or so). So if you can manage to set aside about $77 a week without spending it and get it in to a good IRA with some good long term investments, you will be in pretty good shape.

Just stay away from this guy’s advice for anything other than comedy relief…

-M

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