A lot of the advice we get at 18 can sound obvious, trite and generic. You can only hear platitudes like “stay humble and work hard,” or “find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” so many times before you start tuning out the adults.The subject of the conversation today is about advice we wish we had known after graduating high school. We try to cut through the platitudes and get to the real, practical information that would have been so useful to us at 18.We also risk dating ourselves, since we acknowledge the existence of the word “bae.” To those listening to the show in the far future, hello future listeners, “bae” is a term that couples used to refer to each other. It showed up in the mid 2010’s and as far as I know in mid 2018, no one says “bae” anymore.As an update for today, I wanted to do a shout-out to Tony who’s now graduating this summer. Tony, continue to stay curious and never stop learning. Explore new ways of doing things but at the same time never compromise on your principles. Being an adult is difficult and progress is never going to be a straight line. You will find some things easy. You will plateau and have difficulty with other things. Progress might be slow at times, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not worth it. Working through the tough stuff is what’s going to make you stronger.Hannah and I are very proud of what you’ve accomplished and we’re looking forward to seeing what you’re going to do next!Everything we talked about was based on a blog entry I wrote a few years ago. A link to the article, along with links to all the other references we made will be listed on the show notes.And as a correction to what I said about compound interest, the 700% return that I claimed was based on a compound rate of 10% over 20 years. That doesn’t take inflation into account, and most mutual funds will go up and down and nothing will stay a consistent 10% every single year for 20 years.Lastly, because I was curious, I back-tested the returns I would have made had I hypothetically not bought an N64 and had invested $500 dollars into a generic fund in 1997. That $500 would have turned into $1500 dollars if you calculate for dividends, inflation, etc. etc. A lot less than a 700% return, but still a respectable triple. And with that, thanks for listening, and as always, stay intelligent!External Links:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/ https://www.cnn.com/2014/12/22/us/marshmallow-test/index.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlcqWQVVuU http://mikerowe.com/2015/06/wheremagbaltimore/ https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Elevator_Mechanic/Hourly_Rate/a4d10557/Portland-OR https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/comments/620x42/image_not_all_those_who_wander_are_lost/?st=jhn46v4f&sh=b70910fbhttp://intelligentmillennials.redlilynw.com/blog/personal-finance/104-high-school-graduation-advice-elevator-mechanic-old-n64-relieved-soul-crushing-student-loan-debt-didnt/