2 min RE elevator pitch to new college grad - lets hear it!

[Doug Kolb]

Scenario: your child graduates from college and lands a great job during a pandemic. He will be able to save at least $20-30k in his first year (good to be a software engineer). He lives in a major metropolitan area where the median house price is approximately $250k.  Let's also assume that he knows and understands the benefits of owning real estate and is curiously interested.  Also, for the sake of the argument, let's assume he's not much of a do-it-yourself guy (not great with tools). It's also safe to bet that he's got Scott Trench's book, Set for Life, on his bookshelf but probably hasn't read it.  

What very specific advice would you give him?  

Save how much and do what with it?

Timeline?

[Jim K.]

@Doug Kolb

I would highlight the dangers of coasting right now, going with the flow, doing what everyone else in his job is doing. From what I've seen, and I've had a privileged perspective, it's remarkably easy for these guys to get into the teamwork aspect of programming and very much blur the boundaries with their colleagues between their social and professional lives. Software guys have strong friends in other software guys, and they tend to lead similar lives.

This means a lot of these guys, really smart guys, tend to get trapped into the career path of corporate drones, almost with no effort in the beginning. I've seen it happen. There's another tendency at work here. The job is socially isolating and clannish, but there are a lot of women out there who quickly come to see these guys as sweet, nice, undemanding meal tickets. The software guys very often spent their whole adolescence and college years as ostracized nerds. Ah, but now they have jobs, jobs that make money, and there are plenty of women out there who are looking for a man as a meal ticket first, and everything else later.

I'm certainly not knocking all women here. Not coincidentally, young women who get into computer science are even more likely to suffer from the gigolo versions of these meal-ticket-seekers.

I've seen the traps spring both in my own family and also in my close circle of college friends. The guys end up mortgaged out of their minds, living in McMansions and driving Teslas, paying debts that lock them into working until they die at their desks, the women end up Instagramming and Facebooking every aspect of their lives, determined to finally earn the respect of their own mothers and the other PTA moms in their McMansion neighborhoods and churches.

All opportunities to create wealth exist in the gap between what you make and what you spend. These guys all too frequently end up with financial obligations that simply make that impossible. Their cups should be running over when instead they're leaking from a million holes.