What I'd Tell My 22-Year-Old Self About Money
I started my career on Wall Street thinking I understood money. I didn't. Here's what took me a decade to learn.
When I started my first job in finance, I thought I had a head start on everyone else when it came to money. I had a finance degree. I was working in equity research. I was literally analyzing companies for a living. Building financial models, reading balance sheets, studying how businesses create and destroy value.
If anyone should have had their personal finances figured out, it was me.
I didn’t. Not even close.
Not because I was reckless. I wasn’t drowning in debt or living paycheck to paycheck. I was doing the surface-level things right. Like contributing to my 401(k), not carrying credit card balances, saving some amount every month. But I had no system, no philosophy, and no real clarity about what I was building toward.
I was managing my money on vibes. Educated vibes, for sure. But vibes.
It took me the better part of a decade, and a lot of experiences I couldn’t have anticipated, to develop a financial philosophy that actually works. Not just financially, but psychologically. A way of relating to money that produces both wealth and peace of mind, which turn out to be two very different things.
Here’s what I wish I could go back and tell my 22-year-old self on her first day.
Your salary is not your wealth.
This was the hardest lesson and the one that took the longest to learn.
When I started on Wall Street, I was surrounded by people who earned a lot of money and had very little to show for it. Not because they were stupid, but because they were caught in a trap that’s almost impossible to see from the inside: the more you earn, the more you spend, and the gap between income and wealth stays exactly the same width.
I watched analysts upgrade their apartment with every bonus. I watched vice presidents lease cars they didn’t need to impress people who didn’t care. I watched senior people who’d earned seven figures over their careers and were still anxious about money because their lifestyle had expanded to consume everything.
The lesson took years to sink in: your salary determines your potential. Your spending determines your reality. The gap between the two is what becomes wealth.
I’d tell my younger self to define that gap early and protect it fiercely. Not by deprivation. By design. Set the automatic transfers on day one, before your lifestyle has a chance to expand to fill the income. The money you never see is the money that makes you free.
Comparison will cost you more than any bad investment.
Wall Street runs on comparison. Your bonus relative to the person at the next desk. Your title relative to your classmates. Your apartment, your vacations, and your wardrobe are all silently measured against everyone around you.
I didn’t realize how deeply this was affecting my financial decisions until I left. The pressure to match what people around me were spending was constant and invisible. It never felt like pressure, it felt like “normal.” Of course you go to that restaurant. Of course you buy those shoes. Everyone does.
Comparison is the most expensive financial force in existence. It’s not a line item on any budget. It doesn’t show up on any statement. But it’s the reason most high earners feel broke despite having every mathematical advantage. Their spending isn’t driven by what they need or even what they want. It’s driven by what they see other people doing.
I’d tell my younger self: your only financial competition is the version of you that’s 10 years older. Not your coworkers. Not your college friends. Not the people on Instagram. Every dollar you spend to keep up with someone else’s lifestyle is a dollar that will never compound for your freedom.
You don’t need to be smart about money. You need to be consistent.
I spent my early career believing that financial success came from being sophisticated. This meant finding the right stocks, timing the market, and having clever strategies that other people didn’t know about. I was literally paid to be clever about financial analysis.
Here’s the humbling truth: cleverness is almost irrelevant to personal wealth building. The people I’ve watched build the most wealth over time aren’t the ones with the best stock picks or the smartest strategies. They’re the ones who did the simple, boring thing (i.e., saving and investing consistently) and never stopped.
I eventually built this into my own life as a non-negotiable habit: two transfers per month into my investment account, every single month, without exception. The amount varies. The habit doesn’t. I’ve done this for years. It’s the most important financial decision I’ve ever made, and it requires approximately zero cleverness.
I’d tell my younger self: stop trying to be smart about money and start being consistent. Set up the system on your first day. Let it run. Don’t touch it. The system does the work. Your job is to not interfere.
Nobody at work cares about your financial future. That’s your job.
This sounds harsh, but it’s not cynical.
Your employer offers you a salary, benefits, and maybe a 401(k) match. That’s the deal. They are not responsible for making sure you build wealth, reach financial independence, or have enough to retire comfortably. That’s entirely on you.
I watched talented people coast for years without ever looking beyond their next paycheck. They assumed that a good salary and a vague sense of “I’m saving enough” would work out. They never ran the numbers. They never calculated what they’d actually need. They never asked whether their trajectory was leading somewhere specific or just... forward.
I’d tell my younger self: run the numbers now. Not in a paranoid way, but in a clear-eyed way. What do you earn? What do you keep? What does your net worth need to be for you to have options? What trajectory are you on? If you don’t know the answers, you’re flying blind, and a good salary doesn’t change that.
The goal isn’t wealth. The goal is options.
For the first several years of my career, I saved and invested because that’s what responsible people do. I had no specific target and no real vision for what the money was for. It was just... accumulating. Which is better than not accumulating, but it lacked intention.
The shift happened when I reframed the goal. I wasn’t building wealth for the sake of a big number. I was building optionality. More specifically, the ability to make life decisions based on what I wanted rather than what I could afford.
Optionality means being able to leave a job that’s making you miserable without panicking about rent. It means being able to take a risk on something new because you have a runway. It means negotiating from a position of strength in every area where financial pressure distorts decision-making.
Once I started thinking about money as optionality rather than accumulation, everything got clearer. The savings weren’t sacrifice. They were the purchase price of future freedom. Every automated transfer was buying me options I couldn’t see yet but would eventually need.
I’d tell my younger self: start thinking about money as freedom, not as a score. The number in your account is not the point. What that number allows you to do, or not do, is the point.
Your financial system should be boring.
I have a Google spreadsheet where I track my net worth once a month. It takes about 15 minutes. I update the numbers on the first of the month, look at the trendline, and close the tab.
I don’t use budgeting apps. I don’t track individual purchases. I don’t categorize my spending or review where every dollar went. I set my automatic transfers at the beginning of the year based on a simple annual review, and then I live my life.
This system has produced better results than any sophisticated strategy I ever tried or observed professionally. Not because it’s optimized, but because it’s sustainable. It runs whether I’m paying attention or not. It doesn’t require motivation, discipline, or willpower on any given day. It’s a machine that I built once and maintain annually.
I’d tell my younger self: build the boring system now. Annual budget review. Automatic transfers. Monthly net worth check. That’s it. Everything else is noise that makes you feel productive without actually making you wealthier.
It’s okay to not know what you’re building toward.
This is the one I wish someone had told me most.
At 22, I didn’t know what I wanted my life to look like at 32. I didn’t know what career I’d be in, where I’d live, or what would matter to me. And the pressure to have a specific financial goal — retire at 45, hit a certain number, achieve “FIRE” — felt paralyzing because I couldn’t attach my savings to a concrete vision.
Here’s what I’ve learned: you don’t need a specific destination to build a financial foundation. The foundation is valuable regardless of where you end up. Cash reserves, investment accounts, low fixed costs, and no consumer debt aren’t strategies for a specific life plan. They’re strategies for any life plan. They’re what give you the freedom to figure it out as you go.
I’d tell my younger self: you don’t need to know what you want yet. You just need to make sure that when you figure it out, money isn’t the thing standing in the way. Build the system. Trust the process. The clarity comes later. And when it does, you’ll be glad the money was already there.
The decade passes anyway.
The last thing I’d tell myself is the simplest: the next 10 years are going to pass whether you build a financial system or not.
If you build one — even a simple one, even an imperfect one — you’ll arrive at 32 with options you can’t currently imagine. With a net worth that gives you confidence. With the quiet knowledge that your life isn’t financially fragile.
If you don’t, you’ll arrive at 32 having earned a lot of money and wondering where it all went.
The decade passes anyway. Make it count.
Two books I wish I’d read at 22: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel — it would have saved me years of learning the hard way that financial success is about behavior, not knowledge. And Atomic Habits by James Clear — because the twice-a-month transfer habit that quietly built my portfolio started with understanding that systems beat willpower every time.
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