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Man aren’t you a ray of sunshine on a Friday night of a three day weekend. Please go pour some scotch.
Rising Star
Agree with this idea, but for all but the smallest minority of recent grads, there is not much to invest when you are throwing as much cash as you can toward enormous loan debt.
A1, us ‘09 grads have to figure this stuff out ourselves! Not many people experienced what we did. I didn’t break $14/hr until four years after graduating college and then I couldn’t break $20/hr so I went to law school.
Advice to you: research/ listen to where 20s and 30s lawyers are coming from. Your comment seems out of touch. I say this not because I’m angry or anything, just that if you’re a partner in a firm who doesn’t listen/ pay attention, and who opts for advice that’s extremely out of touch, that translates to bad leadership in contexts other than financial advice.
As a lawyer, please examine the premises upon which you base your advice. Here, you premise your advice on the assumption there’s a book out there that can encapsulate the financial issues facing lawyers in this age range. Just the fact you said to read a book is out of touch for a number of reasons. Your advice makes no indication that you are aware of the crippling 8% interest rate on student loans amounting to debt that must be balanced with the need to live and to save. Your idea that personal finance should be taught in “school” detracts from the credibility of your advice because even if we did take a class like that, it was not tailored to the individual and it was likely taught by a professor who, like you, has little understanding of the issues facing this age range and who hasn’t bothered to update his materials. And anyway, that would’ve been years ago. A lot has changed.
Ultimately, though, I think the nail on the coffin of your advice is how you say that we need to invest in ourselves and no one will help us. That’s such a strange thing to say, when the bowl thread to which you refer was filled with people providing advice from their perspectives, filled with support and encouragement. To me, it sounds like you had it hard time doing your own finances when you were starting out, but I would hope that you will realize that as a partner and leader, it’s sort of up to you to try to help ensure that the next gen lawyers don’t have to go through the same shit, now that you’ve got some authority. Again, this attitude translates to other aspects of leadership, not just out of touch financial advice.
I think OPs advice is great. I don’t think his/her advice is out of touch at all. Sure, for the vast majority of us, getting out of debt is the priority. But, after that, learning to invest wisely is incredibly important. And there are some great books on ways to get out of debt quickly as well.
We may not agree with everything said or done by past generations, but we shouldn’t just write off what they say. They were once our age and may have learned some hard life lessons that would really benefit us to hear about.
Ok boomer 🙄
100% agreed! I came out of law school with student loan and car debt, and still started investing in my 401(k) early, while paying off my mortgage. I plan to retire in my mid-50s, and early 401(k) investments and mutual funds will make that possible.
It’s funny how many people here made assumptions about me. You saw “partner” and advocating for personal responsibility and automatically assumed I was a 60 year old white man. I’m mid-30s and a minority. My family was poor and I had a lot of law school debt, which I paid off. I graduated in ‘08 and lost my job in the recession like most of my classmates. It hasn’t been a smooth ride.
Even if you were burdened with debt like I was, it may be still smarter to put money in a 401k to avoid the taxes. I’m not giving financial advice here but I’m saying that you should learn so you can make sound decisions. I started getting serious about personal finance at 29, and I wish I had started sooner or that someone gave me a nudge to look that way.
I get some of the angst here, I do but I am only posting what I wish someone told me ten years ago.
The fact that people think you sound like an old white man should be a red flag for you.
The people on the thread you are referencing were literally in the process of learning more about investing. So why make a separate, holier than thou thread directing people to the library, when you could have just pitched in on the existing thread. It’s not even like you offered a book example in your original post.
You give the same type of vague, way less than empathetic, and out of touch advice as old white men.
Rising Star
Any recommendations for a book to read? Also, haven’t been to a library in years so hopefully it’s available on Amazon.
Rising Star
Cool I’ll check it out
Library, ha
What is this library thing you’re referring to?
Man, no love for the library around here.