July 19, 2020

Originally wrote this for my friend who just graduated.

Setting Up Life Foundations

Exercise

Try out all kinds of sports (fencing, bouldering, tennis, swimming, parkour, karate, etc), find your favorites and develop the love for exercise for life (but don't go so far and hurt yourself).

Mentors

Find those that you respect and who you want to be, research them, reach out, ask actionable advice, turn those advice into action, update them, ask for more advice. Most people will want to help those who turned their help into fruition, and those who are so eager to grow.

Find your 5 best friends

Especially in college where people are for the most part, pure, trusting and don't have conflict of interest with each other. It's cliche but you are the average of your closest five.

Set up finances

• Set up high yield savings account that is reasonably liquid, save some money it in
• Open up a Roth IRA and invest in index funds with them, max out your employer's 401k match (although who knows what our monetary and social security system will be like 40 years from now)
• As long as you are responsible with money (always pay in full and never miss a payment) and don't tend to spend more than you need to, open up as many credit cards incrementally as you want to get the sign up bonus (will come in very handy especially when you want to travel) and build your credit score and history.
  • Otherwise, try credit piggy backing where someone you trust and has a good credit score can add you as their credit card's authorized user (you don't have to use their credit card but you might be able to "inherit" their good history).
• For the most part, automobiles and rent are the biggest suckers of money. One almost always depreciates and the other you are left with nothing. Think assets versus liability, and find creative ways to avoid spending on these.

Pay it forward