The 3 Things I Would’ve Told My Post-Grad Self

I turn 27 this year. At the time of this writing, I have around $260,000 in assets across various investment accounts. I don’t own a home; I rent one. I’m getting married in a courthouse in three weeks from today, and man – the last five years since I graduated have taught me a lot.

All things considered, I feel pretty good about where I’ve ended up (so far).

That said, there are a few things I wish I could go back in time and tell my 21-year-old self, intercepting her on her way to the Louis Vuitton store after getting her first full-time job offer. Oh, to be young and obsessed with white leather handbags.

This post is intended for the post-graduate person just starting out in corporate America (or elsewhere) and determined to get off on the right foot. Please enjoy the self-ridicule along the way.

1. A full-time salary doesn’t give you license to spend like a Kardashian, especially since it’s only $52,000.

At the time, a starting salary of $52,000 made my head spin.

In fact, it spun so fast that the gravitational force carried me right to Northpark Mall and up to the Louis Vuitton counter.

Since I had never had a real job before (only making $12 per hour as an intern), $52,000 felt like winning the lottery. I was a grown-ass woman with an INCOME, right?! I deserved to go out to lunch every day, shop every Saturday, and brunch every Sunday, right?

Wrong.

Oh, so very wrong.

I wish I had had some respect for how little $52,000 really is – not that it’s a low salary; it’s perfectly respectable. But to me, it might as well have been $252,000.

I didn’t understand that only $43,000 would be coming home with me, after taxes.

I didn’t understand that $10,764 of it every year would be going toward the roof over my head, leaving me about $32,000 per year to spend.

$32,000 sounds like a lot less money than $52,000, huh, KG?

More than anything, I didn’t understand how important it was to recognize the power of my age:

When you’re 21 years old with your first full-time income, you’re a little bit like a plane leaving Los Angeles heading for New York (if Los Angeles is your 20s and early working years, and New York is your 50s and represents early retirement).

The smallest, seemingly insignificant changes can impact the trajectory of your entire life.

If you turn the nose of a plane leaving Los Angeles just a few feet to the right, you end up in Washington, D.C., not New York City.

That’s 225 miles away – all because you turned the nose a couple feet at the start.

That’s what being 21 is like.

I wish I could’ve told myself, “Hey, KG, I know you’re all excited about climbing the corporate ladder in 5-inch Louboutins now, but give it a few years – you’ll realize what’s really important to you, and that it’s not being a corporate overlord. When that time comes, you’re going to wish you hadn’t spent every dollar you made – because, by the way, it’s not enough to support the Real Housewives of Orange County lifestyle you’re living.”

I would’ve said, “Just because there’s money leftover in the checking account at the end of a long weekend doesn’t mean you’ve got a successful financial plan.”

Hell, I didn’t have a plan at all. My plan was to rack up charges on the Discover card all month, then hope by the time that the bill came due there’d be enough money in checking to cover it (there always was, by the grace of God, but it came close sometimes).

2. Just because you’re contributing more than your friends to your 401(k) doesn’t mean you’re contributing enough.

So much of the first year of my working life was just comparing my income and decisions to my friends – I had no other yardstick against which to measure my success or failure.

The other people around my age at work who, I assumed, made around the same amount of money I did, were contributing between 5-8% to their 401(k)s. Our match was 9.3% dollar-for-dollar, so I never understood why they weren’t taking full advantage of the free money situation – but when I’d ask, they’d say, “Eh, I need that money right now. I’ll worry about retirement later.”

At the time, that logic made sense – but I was a greedy Scrooge McDuck, so I still contributed 10% to a Roth 401(k).

I wish I would’ve told myself that I should’ve tried to max it out right away.

It sounds outrageous, but I think I could’ve pulled it off if I had a spending plan in place.

I also would’ve told myself this:

“You’re contributing to a Roth because that’s what everyone told you to do, but really, you’re probably better off contributing to a Traditional right off the bat, collecting the tax savings, and investing the tax savings in a Roth IRA.”

I didn’t know that a Traditional 401(k) meant I would defer income tax on up to $19,500 of income – or that the tax savings literally stayed in my pocket and would’ve been free to invest elsewhere, in something like a Roth IRA.

Because remember how I said about $43,000 of my income was mine after taxes? Had I contributed the maximum to my 401(k), my income after taxes would’ve been $45,000 instead – giving me an extra $2,000 per year to invest somewhere else.

If I had maxed out my 401(k), my take-home pay would’ve been $26,000 – more than enough to pay my $10,000 in rent and still have $16,000 (or $1,333/month) left over to spend on whatever.

The fact that I could’ve been maxing out my 401(k) for the last five years makes me want to kick myself, as this is the first year I’m doing so.

For a sense of scale, consider the fact that maxing out your 401(k) every year for 25 years will net you $1.3M if the market returns an average of 7% per year. That sounds like plenty of money, until you consider that $1.3M in 25 years from now is not the same thing as $1.3M today because of inflation.

The point? It won’t be enough. Don’t let your friends’ lackluster saving and investing habits fool you into complacency or thinking that half-assing it will cut it. It won’t. They’re not going to have enough, either.

Which brings me to my third and final piece of wisdom for my 21-year-old self…

3. Be careful about inadvertently adopting money habits you don’t want from your friends.

I’ve written about this one before, but I think having a fresh full-time job and moving to a big city when you’re 21 is the perfect storm scenario for assimilating financially in a way that isn’t beneficial long-term.

I wish I could go back and say, “You’re spending so much time, effort, and money on going out – half your paycheck goes to fast-fashion going-out tops, and the other half goes to $9 vodka sodas. You come home after most nights out feeling dejected, sick, and broke. This lifestyle makes you feel inadequate and lacking.”

So much of my poor spending habits when I first started working stemmed from the fact that my only hobby was drinking in crop tops. When I wasn’t drinking in crop tops, I was at the mall looking for more crop tops.

I’m not trying to put myself down, and I don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with the Shein-and-shots phase, but it genuinely wasn’t making me happy.

I wish I could’ve told myself that my true community – the place where I’d find my closest friends, experience the most fulfillment, and actually like the person I saw looking back at me in the mirror – was the Dallas fitness community at the various studios where I’d end up teaching.

Teaching fitness (i.e., early morning classes multiple days a week, including weekends) forced me to slow down, take a step back, and realize that I was falling victim to FOMO over something I didn’t even care about missing.

The rampant spending that accompanied the boozy brunch lifestyle only compounded the problem, because I not only spent Sundays hungover and regretful, but felt too shitty to do anything productive or worthwhile beyond ordering more food and laying around. It was a bad cycle.

It might work for some people, but I had this feeling in my gut that I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing. That it wasn’t going to take me where I wanted to go.

I (obviously) take full responsibility for that phase, but I didn’t do it alone. My friends and I were all in that phase, and I’d be lying if I said I never looked around at the people I hung out with and said, “Well, they’re doing it every weekend, it must be normal. This is just what people do,” any time I’d start to feel like maybe I didn’t want to spend all my free time, energy, and money at a bar with a monosyllabic name.

I’m grateful that I started yoga teacher training about 6 months after getting my full-time income, because it launched me into a healthier world with earning opportunity instead of only spending opportunity relatively quickly – but I sure did feel lost for 10 months between graduation and getting my first side hustle.

(Everyone acts like side hustling is some big chore, but I found it gave my life purpose and challenge in a way that full-time work didn’t.)

The truth about what matters most when you’re in your early 20s

When you’re really young, you probably won’t have a six-figure income.

Getting your spending in check early and learning how to really save is the most important skill you can hone as a young person, bar none.

It’s the first few years of working and living independently where the most impactful mistakes are made (remember? Los Angeles to New York).

The credit card debt, the lack of saving, the outrageous spending – that stuff takes years to undo. Trust me – I’ve met with plenty of women who – in their early 30s – are still trying to undo the actions of their early-20s selves, and are cursing the YSL handbags and restaurant openings that put them in the hole they’re still digging their way out of.

It’s not a personal failing to be bad with money. Really! It’s not. It’s not a moral failing, either.

But your life will be a hell of a lot easier and less stressful if you can get this shit right, right off the bat, instead of learning the hard way. I took the hundreds of experiences I’ve had consulting with women about their situations over the years and made the Budget Like a Millionaire Masterclass specifically because I think the power of a good spending plan is unmatched in your earliest working years.

In closing, I’m grateful that I got my shit together relatively quickly – but I can’t take credit for it

I started dating my now-husband (weird to say) in January of 2018, a few months before I started teacher training. The combination of dating someone who had been investing for years (a positive money influence) and getting a side hustle started me on a better path.

The first “beta Wealth Planner,” if you will, was a plain black-and-white spreadsheet with rows for my various accounts – it started in May 2018, only a couple months after we started dating.

That’s when I started tracking my spending, caring about my net worth, and making a concerted effort to live a little more intentionally. I realized I wasn’t in college anymore.

Getting hammered three nights a week wasn’t cool and fun anymore – it was just sad.

Spending like a cast member on a Bravo! reality show didn’t make me any richer, it just made it obvious to everyone around me that I cared way too much about status.

Picking up money habits from coworkers and friends wasn’t normal and savvy, it was just intellectually lazy and disrespectful to my future self.

It took one positive financial influence for everything to change.

One conversation, driving down 75S into Victory Park, where Thomas said, “I’ve been paying for law school with my brokerage account. I’ve paid for two semesters already, and I still have more than when I started.”

My friends, I nearly crashed my car.

How could that be possible?

That was the origin of me realizing I was doing it all wrong, swiping my Discover card around town with my eyes closed. I wanted a piece of the action, and I hope you do, too. Your future self is counting on you.