Financial Mistakes we made in our 20s

I didn’t have much financial education until I started educating myself in my early 30s. Looking back, I made some pretty stupid decisions that, if I had been smarter, would have added easily 7 figures to our current net worth.

Not investing. This is the biggest one. I kept my extra money in a checking account for most of my 20s. My lifestyle motto was as long as there was more money coming in than going out then I was doing good. In retrospect, I do think this is a fine mindset for your first few earning years because you’re not earning that much yet and enjoying your 20s is important. But at some point it’s time to start setting up the compounding snowball. To be clear I was maxing out my 401k. I just wish I had used the MBD 401k and put my extra cash into index funds.

Buying a condo. A condo is almost never a good investment for a young upwardly mobile couple. We outgrew ours in 5 years and due to the transaction costs and market dynamics we got hammered. If we had rented during that time instead we would have easily been a few hundred $K better off. When we bought the condo we simply didn’t know any better, and the generations above us are so pro-home ownership that we assumed buying anything must be the right decision.

Not negotiating my salary enough and knowing my value. I was criminally underpaid for much of my career because I come from a non-standard background in my field and thought I was just lucky to be there. I ended up working super hard to prove my worth for much less than my peers were making. Fast forward to my latest job search, I have turned this aspect of my life around. During offer negotiation I was able to use a counter offer from a top-tier company to boost my initial offer by around 30%. What it took was going through the job search and interview meat grinder a few times to truly comprehend my value in the job market.

This is not financial advice.