How a 20-Something Improves Their Quality of Life Long-Term

Quality of Life

Quality of life can mean a lot of things to different people. Fulfillment in life and work is only one aspect that can influence a person’s quality of life but it can have a magnificent impact.

If you’re familiar with Andrew Carnegie’s Dictum, you know that he believed the first third of your life was to be spend getting as much education as you can, the second third was to be spent accumulating as much wealth as you can, and the third was to be spent giving that money away to worthwhile causes.

 

Andrew Carnegie Dictum

• To spend the first third of one’s life getting all the education one can.
• To spend the next third making all the money one can.
• To spend the last third giving it all away for worthwhile causes.

 

In my own life I’ve know the positive impact of education and giving to others. I’ve also learned that money won’t buy you happiness, but a lack of it can sure interfere with being happy.

Carnegie’s Dictum operates similar to the airlines’ recommendation to secure your own oxygen mask before assisting anyone else; if your own affairs aren’t in order you won’t have the faculties to do good for anyone else.

I have friends and family that are currently in their late 80’s and 90’s. Assuming that today’s 20-somethings are likely live just as long, if not longer, they’re still in what Carnegie would consider the educational third of their life.

With the next shift in focus to be towards building wealth in the next season of life, a 20 year old would be wise to tailor their learning toward financial literacy and developing skills that will bolster their career pursuits.

In the earlier stages of building wealth your greatest income will be the result of your own labor (i.e. your day-job), but as you establish financial security you can begin to fund more passive streams of income like private investments, real estate, retirement funds, ect.

Only through financial literacy will you be able to make practical decisions on how to make the most of the labor you’ve expended in the earlier days of your career. Becoming financially literate will help you to understand the importance of living within your means, how to be prepare yourself for life’s unexpected surprises, and how you can create a future with more choices and opportunity.

Most Americans live paycheck-to paycheck. The stress of this circumstance, brought on by frivolous spending, the burden of debt, and shear ignorance when it comes to managing one’s finances, negatively impacts a person’s life and their work.

By learning financial literacy in your 20’s – rather than in your 40’s or 50’s you can set yourself up for a future with far fewer of these stresses. You’ll enjoy life more and you’ll perform better at work which will make it even more fulfilling.

If less stress and more work-life fulfillment isn’t an improved quality of life, I don’t know what is.

Better yet, by starting to educate yourself in personal finance at such an early age you might be able to fund your life after work (your retirement) well before you need it.

This would mean you could take bigger chances on starting the business or non-profit you’ve always dreamed of. It would allow you to pursue any number things, because when you don’t have to worry about providing for your most basic needs you have a lot more options.

 

First Steps toward Career Success and Financial Independence

As I’ve already alluded to, your day-job is going to be the major economic engine driving you toward financial independence at first.

To make the most of this reality a 20-something can improve their long-term quality of life by being very purposeful in their on-going education.

Education shouldn’t end at graduation. If you want to be happy and feel fulfilled, continuing to grow, mature, and learn is a must.

By self-directing your education toward building expertise and skills that can be applied directly to your career aspirations, you can increase the likelihood of a very lucrative middle third of life.

Of course it can be a challenge to go an inch wide and a mile deep in learning when you don’t have clarity on what direction your career should take.

 

Knowing Your Purpose

As a 20-something, what to focus on through your on-going professional education can be hard to pin point, especially if you haven’t taking the time to articulate your professional vision.

Professionals in every stage of their career benefit from the clarity of knowing their own purpose and their career’s mission.

Writing a professional mission statement is great way to get clarity on your purpose. Knowing your purpose will answer the questions of WHY that you encounter throughout your career. The purpose of a professional mission statement is to identify your priorities and values.

With a professional mission statement to remind you of why you should do things will make answering questions of what you should do and how you should do them pretty easy.

Questions of ethics or whether to accept a new position can be very black-and-white when your professional priorities and personal values written out succinctly in a single statement.

If you don’t already have a professional mission statement, I’ve created an easy to follow worksheet that will help you to write your very own. [Click Here to Access Worksheet]

 

Set Goals and Create an Action Plan

Knowing your purpose is important, but disciplined pursuit of goals is how you work to fulfill that purpose.

When it comes to setting career goals you’ll want to make sure you set SMART Goals to ensure you actually move the needle in regard to the greater mission you’ve chosen for your career.

If you’re new to goal setting or you’ve struggled to achieve goals in the past, I’ve created a worksheet that will help you to set and achieve SMART career goals. This worksheet will also help you to create an action plan for achieving both your short-term and long-term goals. [Click Here to Access Worksheet]

 

Personal Finance

When you look at your finances from a bird’s eye view there seems like to be a lot of directions you can go and that can be over whelming. For most people it looks a lot like your focus should be on building wealth through acquiring assets, playing the stock market, or dabbling in real estate. But what about accounting for emergency expenses or settling debts?

Similar to spreading yourself too thin in your career pursuits, trying to tackle too many things at once or focusing on the wrong things first can get you into trouble. That’s why I like to keep it simple by subscribing to what Dave Ramsey calls the 7 Baby Steps.

The progression of Ramsey’s approach to personal finance is one that starts by protecting your bare essentials from the downside of an unfortunate investment outcome or market shock. At its core is the common sense that things don’t always go to plan and that there is risk associated with every financial decision you make.

With that wisdom, Ramsey’s approach seeks to free people from debt and arm them with a surplus of cash so that they can recover from losing their job, a failed business deal, or a market crash. The approach is designed to give people hope and opportunity no matter how unlucky they happen to find themselves in the short-term.

By working the steps in the order in which they were designed you keep yourself moving forward rather than being held at a standstill by trying tackle too many things at once.

 

Dave Ramsey’s 7 Baby Steps

1. $1,000 Emergency Fund
2. Debt Snowball (Pay off Everything but the House)
3. Large Emergency Fund (3-6 Months of Expenses)
4. Save 15% of your Annual Income for Retirement
5. Save for Your Children’s College Tuition
6. Pay You’re Home Off Early
7. Build Wealth and Give

 

It’s pretty common for people of all ages to get caught up in what society implies they should have rather than living within their means or focusing on the appropriate aspects of personal finance at the right time.

I’ve done it myself. When it came time to graduate high school I was dead set on going to college. I’m glad I attended college and earned a bachelor’s degree, but because I didn’t have much of a plan going in, I ended up with a pile of student when I graduated.

Graduating with student-debt is pretty normal. In fact, the average student in the class of 2015 graduated $35,000 in the hole.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that my student debt was costing me a lot more than I had anticipated when I first applied for them.

I now see debt as burdensome nascence in a lot of ways. Continuing to carrying debt was going to cost me substantially more than the sticker price of my tuition. By continuing to make payments on student loans it would have also made it really hard for me to save up for a house, to put money away for retirement, or to take care of the expense of surprise doctor’s visits and car repairs as they came about.

If you’re interested in learning about how I cut costs to pay off +$20,000 in student loans and medical bills 15 years ahead of schedule you can read about it in a blog post I wrote titled, Lessons Learned from Paying Off +$20,000.

 

Final Thoughts

In all, the keys to improving your quality of life are common sense, purpose, and urgency in responsibility.

If you use common sense to keep your finances in order, you’ll have a lot more options in life. By knowing your purpose, you can choose to spend your time doing things that excite you and allow you to be fulfilled.

Through owning up to the circumstances of life rather than ignoring them and allowing them to build, you can squash problems while they are small, stay free of debt, and prevent significant amounts of stress.

The challenge to implementing these things long-term is staying motivated and disciplined.

If you’d like a list of the communities I use to surround yourself with like-minded people and the resources I use again and again to maintain my motivation and discipline in regard to my finances and professional pursuits, I’d be happy to send it to you. [Click Here For Free Access]

By getting plugged in to communities founded on the same personal and professional values you will be exposed to helpful ways for achieving your goals more easily. You’ll also be able to see the success of others which will help to affirm that what you’re after is possible and worthwhile.

[Click Here For Free Access to My Recommended List of Communities and Resources]