It’s unclear if the mistakes we’ve made will be applicable to everyone. In fact, some of the mistakes may be the right move for some people. That said, we’ll start with bigger mistakes we’ve made since the chances of these items being “good decisions” are quite low. Then we’ll move onto the smaller scale mistakes. While we did avoid the biggest errors: high debt, single form of income and legal marriage at a young age, there are still many mistakes that we would reverse (if we could turn back the clock).
Introduction
First on Regret: Overall, every single person you meet could have done something better to maximize their potential. While we don’t worry about these mistakes, it is simply reality. Think about it like this, if you never learned from a mistake then it means you wouldn’t be able to go back in time and improve your current life. This of course is impossible.
The good news is that smart risk adjusted decisions should lead to a high quality life. Maybe you could have done things better but if you avoid the disasters (big mistakes), it won’t move the needle that much. Regret to us means you made a mistake that was large enough to not enjoy your current life. We’re not in that camp.
Second on The Past and Future: Generally, if someone didn’t make a major mistake they won’t long for the past. We wouldn’t go back in time and redo everything. This is because there is a lot of luck and timing involved as well. If we could go back in time with our current knowledge, then of course we’d take it (you would simply do the same things but undo obvious old mistakes). This is why hindsight is 20/20. With this in mind, we don’t have any interest in re-doing all of the work we did in the past. The future is a lot brighter because the correct life decisions over the past couple of decades makes the next several decades easy to live. In short, we’re not writing this post to complain about the past (we would not redo it) instead we’re writing it to see if these mistakes are being made by anyone else.
Third on Major Mistakes: To wrap the introduction up, we wouldn’t classify any of the mistakes we made as “life changing”. That is because most life changing mistakes are avoidable in nature (except for extreme examples of bad luck: getting hit by a bus, natural disaster etc.). We’ve already mentioned the major mistakes but we’ll go ahead and restate them. The first is debt: anything that cannot be paid back within a year is a high level of debt (particularly if the debt was supposed to increase your income). The only exception would be a rental property. The second is a single form of income: by having a single form of income you’re not diversified. If you lose the single form it could set you back many years since compounding is brutal if it works against you. The Third item is legal marriage: we don’t talk about dating or anything like that anymore since it’s essentially something that can be learned in 2 years. What we do emphasize is never creating a legal contract because all of the effort you put in could be cut in half for no reason (out of your control). If you follow these three items alone you’ll be at the middle of the pack without much effort at all. Simply avoiding the major traps.
Laundry List of Changes: Personal Life, Personal Finance, Health, Business
Personal Life #1: Grasping to Mediocre Talent: We’ve done this several times. When you find something you’re reasonably good at, you think it could be your calling. The problem is recognizing when to move on. If we could go back in time we would have thrown a LOT more spaghetti at the wall to figure out where our talents were. This is a mistake since you lose valuable time investing in a skill where you’re only going to be in the top 20% or so. Nothing to sneeze at but nothing to be extremely proud of.
We get questions about this “talent” and it’s quite easy to summarize. How much time does it take for you to excel? The general framework is 1) people must tell you you’re good without fishing for complements – no friends and family don’t count, 2) you must get into the 2nd or 3rd standard deviation without working long hours – this is relative and more art than science and 3) the distance between you and your competitors should lengthen every single year that goes by for the first 5-7 years or so. The last one is something we figured out at the end (unfortunately). If you’re creating more and more distance between you and the competition, you’re basically near top-tier. After a few years into the task, you’ve already thinned the crowd to decently talented people. So if you’re getting further and further away from them every year after that, you’ve found your skill.
Personal Life #2 – Giving Out Second Chances: Smiling and nodding is the best strategy to avoid giving out free second chances while leaving the door open. If someone has failed to deliver on a promise do not expect them to do you right the next time. If you’ve worked with them 10 times and one time there was an error, this was likely due to chance/law of large numbers. If the first task is immediately a mess and they go against what they said they would do (or made some new rules as well), go ahead and back out. There is nothing wrong with moving on and you’re going to save yourself a lot of time as well. If someone was willing to try and pull the blinders down on the first go around, it’s likely someone who will do the same in the future.
On a positive note, yes in rare instances 0.1% of the time, (okay, okay, 0.0001%), people do change. Instead of being the person who helps them get on the right track, just leave the door open if they do change several years later. This way you’re not the one actively involved in fixing their problems for them. Let them figure it out themselves or have someone else help them along the way. Life is extremely short and it’s just not a good use of your time. There are many people who are honest and upstanding people to work with, don’t try to make lemonade out of a lemon when you can just go out and find something better.
Personal Finance #1 – Focusing on Returns Not Cash Flow: We got lucky. The majority of our investments over the past couple of decades have been more illiquid and less cash flow oriented. This is because we didn’t want to be heavily involved in real estate. Not smart. We realized the main reason why real estate professionals make up the vast majority of millionaires is because of cash flow. Cash flow is more important than the return profile when you’re younger since you need money to invest. The more money you have coming in gives you a chance to take on more risk. So on and so forth.
We got lucky because the returns ended up being similar. We recognize this as a mistake since it wouldn’t be good advice for someone in their 20s/30s today. While we wouldn’t go down the real estate path, we would be buying and flipping many websites. Websites offer monthly, bi-monthly and sometimes daily/weekly cash flow. This is typically inconsistent but is a lot better than a non-cash flowing asset that gives you the same return. Our strategy of buying non-cash flowing assets with excess money didn’t make much sense. It would have been easier to focus on buying nothing but cash flowing assets until we were we’ll into financial independence territory. Then move to non-cash flowing assets. Unless it’s earning money while you sleep, try to avoid it as an income stream. Assets that earn money in your sleep are: Real estate, websites, subscription income, dividend paying stocks and any employee who earns less than they generate for you. That last one sounds insane. But. Why would a company hire you unless you generated more than you were being paid?
Personal Finance #2 – Not Tracking Finances Properly: While you shouldn’t have time to check your net worth on a daily basis (creating an obsession) it is foolish to track everything in an excel sheet. Excel sheets don’t tell the whole story since you’ll have investments that may have management fees (like a mutual fund), you’ll have assets that go up a lot of in value that should be de-emphaisized later. And. You’ll have assets that go down a lot in certain years that you should re-invest into to buy lower and rebalance your allocation. We didn’t do a good job of tracking asset mix and it is going to take another 1-2 years to finally get the mix to make sense. Let’s think about that for a second. Despite serious planning and thinking for many years, it will still take another 1-2 years to rebalance. This is not a good use of time.
For those that are serious about developing multiple streams of income and a high net worth, we can recommend Personal Capital. The Company offers *free* software tools with the following four key features: 1) ability to avoid losing money by tracking all fees associated with an investment product allowing you to choose the best possible fund for your future, 2) portfolio analysis where your risk profile is stacked up against your current age and retirement goals, 3) in addition to these free tools, you can also track your net worth and path to becoming a millionaire and 4) when you hit $100K in networth you’ll receive a free one time consultation with an investment professional at Personal Capital. After linking up all of your accounts you’ll be able to sit back and watch as your net worth goes up and your fees remain minimal over the next several years. We strongly believe that Personal Capital is the premier personal finance software tool when compared to its competitors such as Mint.
Personal Finance #3 – Using Minimal Leverage: Leverage is a good and bad thing. If you have a long time horizon and high cash flows, you can take advantage of leverage. We made a mistake of being too risk averse to leverage. Keeping it well below optimal. Imagine having a rental property that is 80% paid off and appreciated by 15% or so. It doesn’t make sense to keep the leverage at just 20% of the value especially if you have a 2 year lease locked in. When thinking about leverage, it is smarter to delete all of your active income and see if you can make payments on your total debt load. You’ll be surprised to find that you can take on a bit more leverage since it is unlikely that all of your income streams go to zero. A good rule of thumb (if investing long-term), you can have your annual payments = to your passive income excluding the asset. This means that dividends, bonds, etc. should offset your mortgage payments. Which of course means all of your rental checks are going straight into the bank. Being blunt here, this is probably too risk averse as well. But. We don’t have any interest in taking on material risk anymore (personal decision making)
Health #1 – Not Taking Nutrition Seriously: When you’re young, you can consume practically anything. The most classic items are cheap carbohydrates: pizza, ramen noodles, lots of rice, candy bars, fast food etc. Your body is able to consume these items and see no major impact (when you’re young). This leads to the belief that food is just a way to get rid of the “hunger” feeling. Completely wrong.
Around your mid-20s to early 30s you’ll see a dramatic change in your body. You’ll feel worse when you consume unhealthy foods. Your skin will become more dry, prone to acne and pale. Instead of having a glowing/healthy skin color it will look matted and broken down. This leads to a large amount of damage to your internal body. Healing from the inside out takes a lot more time and is not easy to reverse.
The answer is clear. Your body does not react to food based purely on calories. While it is true you could eat 3 candy bars a day and lose weight, your body will be in terrible shape after a week of that type of torture. Just look at the experiments run on people who eat fast food consistently. They break down. Taking your diet seriously should begin as soon as you are living alone (low 20s at latest).
Health #2 – Giving up Intense Cardio: If you’ve played any sport at a high level, you know that touch (coordination/accuracy) and cardio go away first. While you don’t need to play a sport that has a ton of coordination involved, deleting anaerobic activity is pretty close to a death sentence. Yes, we’re taking it to an extreme to emphasize how important it is.
If you don’t do any sort of high intensity training: sprints, sprints on a bike, jumping exercises etc… You’re going to be in quite a bit of pain. This doesn’t show up instantly and is more of a slow erosion over time. Where does it show up? In your sleep. If you feel groggy in the morning it is typically because of lower oxygen intake (breathing out of mouth) and lower blood flow (no movement). Both of these are caused by low anaerobic activity.
Going to the gym is what every average guy does. It’s just not enough. You want to have a body that is used to various types of movement from regular strength (weights) to anaerobic (sprints) to endurance (swimming). Most people fall into the trap (including us) of focusing on body composition. Sure you look a lot better but you want to feel 100% as well. Giving up intense cardio probably causes you to lose 1 hour of productive work per day. We wish we were exaggerating but it seems to be reality. Note: when you get to your mid-30s stretching becomes a dangerous item to neglect. We luckily avoided this one but we’re leaving this note here in case someone reads it and realizes that they have not been stretching for several years. No stretching = severe injury.
Business #1 – Get the A- Not the A+ unless you own Equity: There is no reason to go above and beyond unless the results are going to accrue to you. This is seen most in the work environment. Trying to be the #1 person is unlikely a good use of time. Using Wall Street as an example, if you’re in the “top bucket” you’re going to make roughly the same as the #1 ranked person in your class. Maybe you’re off by a few percentage points. This really doesn’t matter because the #1 guy has a much higher bar to keep up with AND he is going to be forced to work more (everyone wants the guy on his team). The only exception (getting an A+) is if you’re in a revenue generating role and have nothing else to work on (unlikely).
A- work is not good enough if you own Equity (your own business). This is because you obtain all of the benefits. The A+ worker in a corporate environment is almost always the “highest operating margin employee” this means the extra few thousand he is paid is more than offset by the revenue he generates. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so loved, would he?
Put these two together and you’ll realize that it is better to be “liked” but not extremely liked in any corporate setting. This gives you a lot more time to build your own stake in something that flows directly to your bottom line. A+ work is only necessary if it is going to benefit the person who matters: you! You should only be motivated to do A+ work if you see the benefit of said work.
Business #2 – Small Money Matters if It Doesn’t Take Time: Should never sell tiny websites. Well, it depends but the point is pretty simple. If you have an extremely small website that makes $500 a month, you should not laugh at it. If it makes $500 a month but requires a lot of time to run, then you should dump it. The key here is how much effort are you really putting in? If you have an old website that makes a few hundred dollars a month but spend 15 minutes a month on it… keep it.
Just because a website wasn’t a success doesn’t mean it was a failure. There is definitely a middle ground and the middle ground is determined by time. We’ve sold quite a few websites that we considered failures. Making between $300-600 a month. We should have kept them. They are still up and running today and probably make the exact same amount of money. That was many years ago! All of that money could have been sent into a bank account without doing anything. In fact, if you have 20 “failed” websites, that would be $6,000-12,000 a month… with minimal work. This is a simple reminder to see if you can automate any “failed” project you have. If you can reduce the time to practically zero, you should keep it until it goes into the red (could last several years in the green).
Business #3 – Trying to Sell to a New Market: Yes everything is sales. And. No, sales are not equal. We wrote last post that it is better to sell to the masses since you learn basic communication skills with a wider audience that allows you to improve your social life as well. That said, if you know how to sell to the elite, there is no need to change gears. While this is a high level view, it makes absolutely no sense to try and change your target group.
Assume that you have a solid business that targets women in their 30s-50s. Now you want to start a second idea. Is it better to try and target men in the same bracket or a different set of women? Trick question. Neither. You’re better off finding another product to sell to the same age group! This is because you’ve already figure out how to tap into the sales funnel for that group. This is also why you find that specific affiliate marketers sell to certain niche’s. Gambling websites do not hit the same group as cosmetics. Diet does not target the same group as Lead Gen. While there are some specific instances where they do overlap, it is much smarter to stay with your core competency.
This is also why we are quite impressed by people who succeed in various types of businesses. Most can only tackle 1-2 industries or target audience (not throwing shade, one industry is *more* than enough). That said, targeting multiple at the same time takes a lot of skill. Also. We’ve noticed that this is typically where people blow their money. They succeed in one area then try to expand in an unrelated area… only to fail and lose a large amount of money. While we did lose a good amount of money trying an endeavor that was unrelated to a core business, it didn’t break the bank. We’ve learned our lesson and hope that anyone reading this will be sure to max out their core competency before moving on. Remember, if you know where your talent is, you need to maximize it before moving on to more risky ventures. Targeting a completely new group of people is a big risk.
We’re sure we have missed a lot more (will add as they come in) but if there are any other mistakes to avoid please leave them in the comments!
“Grasping onto Mediocre Talent” is the one that sticks out in my mind for the mid-20s type that read this. The others of course take time to digest, but can be more easily implemented. This one is pivotal because it will lead to your “talent leverage” which is to what degree you can leverage your skills you’ve built. A sales type forcing himself to be a programmer will only be able to leverage these skills to a low degree.
I know this is all a crapshoot and depends on taking risks, but would be interesting to see a post about *recognizing* in your mid-20s when you’re investing in a dead end skillset/career, and *pivoting* from that skillset/career to one that suits you.
The easiest solution is in the post, the difference between you and closest competition should get wider every single year (general), if there are 10 guys in your league, in 1-2 years there should be 5. Some better some worse, but lesss people able to keep up.
Ha totally agree. Glad I work in a professional services firms with diverse service lines and the ability to lateral in via networking. Trying a few things out to determine if I have talent in a specific area is priceless.
As always, amazing post. Thank you!
How long would you all recommend giving an effort before deciding that something is not a talent? Skill acquisition is no linear, as you all have pointed out in the past.
I’ve seen this at my company. We do Saas sales in a pretty particular niche, and it takes a while to really understand how to drive urgency and buying behavior with our customers.
There are a few top producers here we spent the first six months to a year struggling and not doing well at all. On the the other end, some people do well during their ramping months but end up being solid lower-middle of the pack
This is your own skill there is no math formula. Just like anything important in life it’s up to you to figure out if you can improve or not
Taking a “while” is not a good metric. We doubt you’ll see a difference between top and bottom performers after a couple years.
“Regret to us means you made a mistake that was large enough to not enjoy your current life.”
This is an interesting way to put your current life decisions in your 20s and early 30s through a filter coupled with looking 10 year out and wondering if you’ll regret something.
Through this frame, are you going to regret not going out 2-3 nights a week to hookup
and get drunk if you are broke in your mid 20s? Probably not.
Through this frame, are you going to regret not building real social skills /connections with quality women and men sober? Probably.
Through this frame, are you going to regret watching sports/tv 2-3 hours a day for multiple years when you are broke in your mid 20s? Probably.
The harder question with this becomes are you going to regret staying in a mediocre job while working on a side business that might break through? That’s where risk adjusted decision making comes in… can you do both?
Thanks for the post!
Everyone makes mistakes, if you go through life and wouldn’t be able to improve with the ability to travel backward in time… that’s just sad.
That said, if you make good decisions the cumulative decisions should lead to a great life. So no reason to regret some bad moves.
Edit: Through this frame, are you going to regret not going out 2-3 nights a week to hookup
and get drunk if you are broke in your mid 20s? Probably not.–> should say Probably
Through this frame, are you going to regret not building real social skills /connections with quality women and men sober? Probably. —> should say Probably Not.
Thanks for response
This entire post just screams leveraging compounding and efficiency.
Awesome post guys, thanks.
Good post gents.
I’m currently trying to purchase some websites. Is there any source you recommend for evaluating websites for sale to ensure you don’t get scammed/ ripped off? Any expert, blog, book or ..?
Thanks!
Not Q&A, we don’t make exceptions anymore.
I am familiar with Flippa, FE International and Empire Flippers.
Flippa is the one that can be shady, other two are curated.
Great post, would love to hear more about buying websites.
Ha! Step 1: create successful one yourself.
I am getting in to copywriting right now. Your tip on income diversification struck a chord with me. I saw you said no Q&A….I think that that would be a great topic to delve into “process for creating an income generating internet asset”. The thing is most of the stuff i find on youtube is low quality, like “dropshipping” it’s just a race to the bottom. But thank you for the post, I am 24 and although I’ve made some amazing return based investment you reminded me of my dumb mistake of not focusing on cash flow…thank you. this is my first time on this blog.
This is covered in efficiency.
I can’t figure out if I actually made a mistake or not:
– Turned 15 and wanted to be an entrepreneur
– Put out ads for a mentorship from CEO’s
– Offered to pay CEO’s whatever they average per hour
– Got a bunch of No’s and BS offers
– Gave up after a few months of parents telling me I’m dumb and to go college route
– Had a few failed businesses over the years and finally gave in to parents and “friends” telling me I was never going to make because of these failures
– Went into the military which burned my good years away
Now that I’ve burned the best years of my life away and I feel kinda old and useless I found this blog at age 27 and now in the running for a tech sales job while trying to build my product based side business as instructed.
I can’t decide if I actually did mess up when I was searching for this type of info for 12 years and took action for years and failed for years. I feel I searched for the knowledge super hard and never found what I needed because if I had this blog 12 years ago I’d be golden.
Perhaps you have made some mistakes but as it says in the post, you can’t go back and change it. You’re still young though man and you have time to turn it around, and the life lessons you’ve learned may help w/that. You’re not 47 or even 37. The WSPs timeline to be a millionaire by your early 30s is a great benchmark, but it doesn’t mean you’re out of the running because you’re behind by a few years. With a successful product biz, you could get there quicker than you think.
Remember, no better time than today! Easily best time to be alive.
Yo man, WSPS is a nest of hyper successful people, if you keep on grinding you’ll make it. What else are you doing to do? Retire and work 30 hours per week and think about how you wasted your life?
Keep at it! You’ll be a millionaire (or multi) in a decade.
What helped me when I got started was expecting nothing. Don’t expect to make any money this year or next year. Just focus on working as long and as focused as you can.
You’ll get there.
“Grasping to Mediocre Talent” stands out to me, since I will be entering my last year in University. I think this can be extended to some skills (such as chess or even running) that are really difficult to monetize and be well off, even if you get to the top 1% in ability.
Arguably, I’ve gotten to the top 1% or 0.1% in chess, and even people much more skilled than I have turned to other ventures. However, its an excellent lever to getting into a top college and should be used appropriately.
Use the skills you leveraged to build those skills.
Funny thing about getting to top 1% of anything is you build a skillset of developing to top 1%.
Leveraged that development skillset and of course the thinking methods you gained in chess for something that returns at a higher rate.
Every skill you developed helps you in some way you might not realize it right now.
It’s really a odd drunken walk to the top, never linear.
Avoiding marriage is a recurring theme on your blog. And I understand the financial risks of a divorce.
But once you are financially “set”, you don’t lose half of your wealth due to a divorce. I don’t know how it is handled in the US, but I’m pretty sure in many countries a marriage is handled like this: as a “joint ownership of the increase in capital value of assets” from the moment on that you are married. Everything you owned before the marriage still belongs to you after a divorce. So marriage can be a financially bad decision when you marry early in life, but once you solely live off the interest of your wealth, a divorce won’t matter that much anymore.
On the other hand, I cannot understand people who marry in their early 20ies – it’s just seems too early because you lack experience in life/relationships.
Not how it works in the USA.
In theory that’s what a prenup would do but even those get thrown away in court sometimes. If I get married I’d do it in Aruba or somewhere where I can take the part of the contract where she gets my money and hopefully transfer that to a U.S. marriage certificate.
Adding to the Health section, I personally do saunas for 20-30mins post-workout, 3-4 times/week, and I find it helpful for improving circulation and blood flow. As well as other health benefits like better skin complexion.
According to Dr. Rhonda Patrick, men who used saunas atleast 3x a week were found to have 30-50% (more or less, but it was a significant %) less chance of suffering from a stroke, heart attack, cardiovascular-related diseases, or lower overall mortality-rates in general.
Take it what you will, but I figure it’s also a good opportunity to unwind and practice stoicism or mediation during sauna.
Nice! For fun we will play devils advocate. People with time for saunas are probably rich/low stress people which is why they live longer.
Similar to the wine story that didn’t control for wealth (alcohol actually isn’t good)
Either way if it reduces your stress levels, it is good for you.
Boxing/mma for younger guys is great for intense cardio. Kill 2 birds w/ 1 stone.
Learn how to fight, build confidence, make friends, get in amazing shape, etc…
Probably better to tone it down when you’re older im guessing… It is tough on the joints but im in my 20s and don’t feel anything yet. ha.
mma and boxing are easy ways to get CTE especially for the young. Many mma and BJJ guys get injuries from newbies practising on them improperly. The injuries made in your 20s catch up with you later on. And then surgery after surgery.
You can learn the minimal amount necessary to be able to punch, restrain or sleep, and run away but besides that don’t invest time in it.
For confidence building sure its helpful, for making friends, BJJ probably gets you in touch with higher net worth individuals than MMA and Boxing.
But if you wanted soft contact with rich guys just get an expensive gym membership and be fitter than the rich guys you see in there. They’ll ask you how you developed your physique.
Swimming is good, underrated because its not seen as ‘sexy’.
If i was 19 again i would have swam a lot more
Unrelated to this exact post but I just want to comment about the reoccurring theme of the “average person” and “smile and nod”. I didn’t realize how much I believed in these 2 ideologies until I came across this blog.
I’ve always detested the average person usually because they are soft (thinks getting rich is evil and will make you an asshole) and have nothing intelligent to say (offering unsolicited advice). Until I reached this blog, I finally realized why I resent one of my best friends which is for the fact he offers unsolicited advice while being soft and untalented. His internships which have resulted from nepotism has lead him to believe that he truly deserves these placements and is better than everyone else. Not to mention, he can’t wait to slave away in the corporate work force for the rest of his life. This is one contact that will be cut shortly.
I’ve always been a very popular guy and now I realize it is because I never speak my mind while smiling and agreeing to what most people say (they believe that we have a true interpersonal connection with our perceived similar beliefs). With this, not only do I not waste my time arguing with people (speaking my mind/proving them wrong) but it helps me get by smoothly and raises my social capital. I know countless people that will argue about shit because they’re insecure (need to prove they’re smart) and it results into them looking like idiots with no social value.
Anyways after this rant, just wanted to thank you guys for helping me realize why I think a certain way about things along with various truths. Bravo and thank you for this blog
My worst trait was my ‘never back down’ mentality. So much unnecessary BS that came out from that
On caveat from someone in the medical fitness field.. T levels are highest when young and a man should be focused on strength, weight lifting to maximize. Look at olympic weight records, all late 30’s. Meanwhile you still have people setting world records in cardio when they are old. One example,
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29098348
but if you can do both it is better.
How does the “focus on cash flow, not returns” rule square with investing in crypto, most tech stocks, etc.? Triangle Investing talks about the outline and timeline for owning each, but is there a specific upside/downside threshold that you have for then incrementally investing in a non-cash flowing asset?
Not a Q&A.
Another Good mistake,
– If you join military enlisted, don’t join longer than three years, which is the time needed to accrue maximum benefits (GI Bill, Veterans benefits and loans, etc.)
– Join while young, use T.A. and take college classes or work on online business, blow off military work
– Get out after three years and have 36 months of free cash flow while attending free schooling. (In some cites, up to $4,500/ month and full cost of college.) Just commute one day a week to the campus, get a cheap room outside city, use time to build business or anything you want.
– I joined for six years for a (good “civilian” skill set) and it was a mistake.
– Get pre-made military references, put *anything* you want on your resume for what you did during the military years. No one will know.
Agreed on this 100%.
Similar strategy: go through college ROTC on scholarship. You will graduate with $0 debt if you do it right putting you way ahead of average, then you can have a chill officer job and make twice as much as enlisted. For the next four years, you can side hustle like crazy since government jobs are not performance based at all.
lol chill officer job. might be chill if you have didn’t have Type A incompetent people everywhere in the services
individually, you’re either not an officer or on silo duty/air defense. commissioned mouthbreathers really make it suck
true, officers profit on others work socially. but not financially
side hustles tend to fall apart with year long deployments, emergency response exercises with a month in the field, cruises with no internet, delayed air movements because of incompetent people… not to mention 24 hour on call for subordinates doing criminal or unethical behavior, turning them from assets to pain in the @ liabilities
based on WSP values, military not a good mistake. incompetent people above you jeopardize your life to gain one sentence in a positive evaluation with human resources command. and health > wealth
for financial freedom, no performance leverage or equity. war booty went the way of the mongol empire. a man gets paid the same for 75 pushups as another man doing 38 or a woman doing 18.
also, beware the side hustle. US civil servants owning a business or using government time to build their own business may face severe liabilities. generally turn to arrangements like “this is a hobby, i do it for fun and don’t write off expenses” or “my family member x owns the business, i help run the family business in my spare time” when you own/run everything, automate for them to run as a alternate, re invest everything and incorporate an option for you to buy out the alternates equity at x dollars whenever you are out
pensions, the one good passive income stream, are already under attack with the ‘blended’ retirement program, a 5% match for a 20% decrease in pension with no recuperation of vestment. and any military pension puts you military law for life
for the audience, probably the greatest non WS readership is military due to the realization of a tragic mistake. military enlists based on deep insecurities in male psyche on belonging, and siphons off the population for physically fit, aggressive do gooders. then you look from the inside out, and realize you have been duped
after the pain, then go to sales. even if you got a bs/bse before going in, the asinine work you do will dull the numerics. but your intent and synthesis should improve through the iterations of pleasing your boss the way a golden retriever reads its owner’s emotions and proceeding through easily predictable shitstorms from higher headquarters/weather/supply/vehicle readiness that no one else bothered to think through
i think an article “don’t join the army” might be a good guest post, to end this line of thought now
is rice really that bad?