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This, so much. Not to undermine their success, but people tend to skip where their success come from, besides brightness. I mean, you can be as bright as possible, but of course if your parents are the first one investing on you (investing cash, I mean) then everything it's a lot easier. This happens at various levels of course. I recently had a conversation with an ex-colleague that had just left the company and was considering moving abroad. He said he had some money saved and I was shocked to hear how much he had saved. When I came back home, feeling quite miserable I must admit, I ran the numbers and understood the where the difference in his savings and mine came from: put simply, I had to move from another region of my nation to where I currently live and work, while he's just from here. The difference merely came from not being forced to pay a rent every month and on top of that, saving more money on others things he just didn't have to pay. There's nothing bad about that per se of course, I just felt a bit bitter because I understood that no matter how good or hard I work, that's a privilege gap I will probably never fill. Privilege is something many people don't realise, and don't realise how big of an impact it makes. |
"Just finished university, $100k to invest, what should I do?"
Wait, how does someone who just finished university have $100,000 in the bank? That's a milestone I proudly hit after several years in the workforce with a good job and living very frugally.
Of course, it's people whose parents paid 100% of their expenses (tuition and living) through university, so every penny they earned from internships, co-ops or scholarships went straight into the bank.
Now ask yourself how much easier it is to start a risky company when the first thing greeting you after finishing school is a 6-figure bank balance not $1000+/month of loan repayments.