Hi guys, it's Mark.
So your twenties are the most important years of your life
as they can shape your entire future.
I firmly believe that these are the years
that can make or break your fortune.
Recently I made a video all about the best purchases
to make in your twenties.
And you guys seem to really like it.
But the truth is all it takes is one bad purchase
and it could set you back for years.
Even though I made lots of smart choices,
there were some mistakes I didn't see coming
until it was far too late.
Each of these purchases are different.
So it's really important to watch this video until the end.
Otherwise you could miss something really crucial.
Remember this isn't financial advice.
These are just the things that I wish I knew
when I was younger, as I would have become
a millionaire a lot sooner.
We'll get into this right after you hit
that like button for the L tube you-gorithim
and subscribe for more videos
that help you grow your wealth.
Number one is cheap goods.
Now I know this one might sound a little controversial,
I may not make much sense at first, but buying cheap goods
could end up costing you a lot of money.
As the saying goes, buy cheap, buy twice.
In my early twenties,
I was looking to employ some talented people,
as I knew that if I was going
to make my business successful
in the longterm, then I needed an awesome team.
One of the people I wanted to hire,
wasn't sure if joining my business was the right move
for him, as it meant leaving a secure job.
So in order to sweeten the deal,
I decided to attempt him with a company car.
It was a red Ford Fiesta XR two,
as I knew this was his favorite car.
Unfortunately, a lot of other people like them too,
making them one of the most popular cars to steal.
So I bought a cheap lock to secure the car
while it was parked outside.
Within a week, the car was stolen
and even the thief seemed insulted
by the cheapness of the lock,
as he left it dismantled on the side of the street
where I parked the car.
As if to say, "don't insult me. buy a better lock."
That's honestly what it felt like.
This just goes to show that buying something cheap
can often end up costing more in the longterm.
If you want a product to be fit for purpose,
then the cheapest in the market is highly unlikely
to succeed in that mission.
To be honest, now I try not to judge
a product I buy based on the price.
I'm more focused on getting a good return for my investment.
Number two is get rich quick courses.
Lots believe the only uneducated people fall
for get rich quick schemes,
but the reality is that everyone is vulnerable
to this given the right circumstances.
I've seen some of the smartest people I know
being sucked into a scheme that's promising them
the world on a gold platter.
Just to drill this point home even more,
Jim Browning who is a professional scam detective
right here on YouTube actually got himself scammed
and they made him delete his entire channel.
So with the right tactics, even the best can be fooled.
I grew up in a small English town in Hampshire
and on my first trip to America
I was amazed how big everything was
from the mansions all the way up to the cheeseburgers.
One day I was sitting down watching the TV in my hotel room
and every infomercial I saw was telling me,
I could have it all.
All I had to do was buy their simple course,
which was a collection of video tapes at the time.
As a young guy in my twenties,
the commercials spoke to me, as I was aspirational
and I felt like I was made for more.
The sales tactics they use were perfect
for pulling in someone like me,
I just didn't realize it at the time.
I phoned up the number on the TV
to get some more information.
And they quickly started telling me
about all the bonus VHS tapes and books I would receive
if I bought the product while I was on the phone.
Of course, I started to panic and I ordered
them straight away because I didn't want to miss out
on a chance of a lifetime.
When they arrived, I was so disappointed.
It was just a bunch of generic information I already knew,
nothing new or groundbreaking and just stuff
I'd already learned from reading books,
that were a fraction of the price.
I tried to get a refund and the only response I got
was that if I really wanted to become rich,
I needed to buy the next set of VHS tapes.
Nowadays, this is called a sales funnel.
They just want to push you onto the next product
and make more money out of you.
The best way to avoid getting into a situation like this
is to be aware of the sales tactics these scammers use.
Although the products may change,
the tactics are always the same.
They sell you to dream and give you
just enough to make you want more.
They tell you that the product is priced as,
and then slash the price tag for a limited time,
causing you to panic and buy straight away.
This is because when you panic, you don't think rationally.
In these types of situations, it's best to stay calm.
If they can do the deal today,
then there'll be able to do it next week, no problem at all.
Number three is designer clothes.
I'm aware that a lot of people disagree with me
when it comes to my stance on designer clothes,
even my son to a certain extent,
but it all stems back to when I needed some new clothes
for my first vacation, with my friends,
I wanted to impress the ladies,
so I went out to get some clothes
from a local designer shop.
As I was told that it was the place to go
and being a ginger, I needed all the help I could get.
Nothing had price tags on and when I asked to pay
for the clothes I'd picked out,
I discovered it was a lot more than the cash I had with me.
They said not to worry as they could sign me up
for a store credit card
and they could give me a thousand dollar limit
and as a bonus, 10% of my clothes.
So of course, being young and very naive, I spent it all.
Although they may have mentioned the interest rates
at the time I didn't take any notice.
Each month I paid exactly what the store card asked for.
After a year, I worked out I hadn't paid anything off
the bill, I was just paying the interest.
So not only had I bought some overprice items,
I'd actually paid an extra chunk of money I didn't have to.
Always avoid signing up to store credit cards,
as it is usually designed for one purpose only,
to get you to spend money you don't have
and trap you into a credit cycle you can't escape from.
This is all designed to give the company
reoccurring revenues without having
to sell you anything else.
It's actually pretty genius when you think about it.
There are lots of better credit cards outlets
that actually do offer great bonuses.
So it's definitely worth doing the research
before ruining your credit score over some designer clothes.
So although I lost some money,
it was a valuable lesson about patience
and sticking to a set budget.
Number four is stock signals and tips.
There's always someone claiming they've got the tip
of a lifetime that will make you tons of money.
But my issue here is that even a monkey can be right
some of the time, if you take a punt enough times
and eventually you'll be right.
I had a friend that worked at a meat market,
and he'd given me a couple of stock tips
that had gone really well.
I used to give him a bit of extra money for stock tips
and signals, but they weren't called that back then.
The first signal I took went really well
and when that happened, I was really hooked.
This was back in the dot com bubble
when everything seemed to be going well,
you could invest in a random stock and hit it big,
it was just that crazy.
It just so happened the next stock signal I listened to
was the one that didn't go so well for me.
He advised finds me to buy a stock called Maddie@Invest,
I ended up losing the majority
of my investment within a few weeks.
I felt extremely gutted as that was money
that I'd worked really hard to make.
To be fair after that bubble burst,
it was very hard for me to go back
and invest in individual stocks, which is probably one
of the reasons I champion index funds now.
If you're gonna take a signal from someone
don't just rely on that, do your research.
I know it's pouring, but it's well worth doing
as you could end up losing a lot of money.
These signal groups are huge nowadays
on Discord and people seem to love them,
but most of the people are often making
more money selling signals
than actually trading themselves.
When people are giving out signals and tips,
they will nine times out of 10
be being paid one way or the other,
wherever it be a commission or a direct fee
from you taking the information.
Ultimately, the only person that can lose is you
because the tipster gets paid regardless.
The only time I'd let someone else pick a stock for me
is when a company gives me a free one.
And public.com are currently giving you a free stock worth
all the way up to a hundred dollars if you're in the USA,
and Free Trade are giving away
a free stock worth up to 200 pounds
if you're in the UK, I'll leave the links down below
if you want to check that out.
Number five is sports betting,
peer pressure and gambling often don't mix.
However, it can be easy to fall into this trap.
I wish I didn't have to tell this stories to be honest,
it's quite embarrassing but here we go.
In my twenties a friend of a friend convinced me
the betting on horse racing was easy money
and that he'd never lost.
He even said he would guide me through the whole process.
So I decided to put it to the test
and I bet on a race that I knew nothing about.
The first bout I placed was for $500
because at the time I had a little bit of spare cash.
The horse came in second, he almost won,
but he lost by a nose.
Now that detail didn't matter of course,
because I'd lost the bet.
So he strongly suggested I try it again.
So like a true gambler,
I doubled my back to a thousand dollars.
The horse came in second, again,
almost an exact repeat of the first race.
Guess what my mate said that wasn't meant to happen.
So I decided to miss the next two races that he advised me
about and they both won.
So I thought that maybe I was just unlucky
and it would be different next time.
So I put $4,000 down
as i was really keen to get my money back.
Luckily, this was money
that was wasn't gonna affect my business in any way.
That a horse came in third, I was devastated
and vowed never to gamble to this extreme ever again.
Now I'm not entirely against gambling.
In sports it can make it more exciting for sure.
So in moderation, it can be a bit of a laugh and who knows?
You might make some money, but how about this?
I'll bet you lose more than you make.
The saying 'when the fun stops stop',
couldn't be more correct.
I should've stopped betting as soon as I made
that first loss, as chasing my losses,
ultimately lost me even more money.
Nowadays it's more common for people to bet
in their twenties due to lots of very addictive apps
that draw you in with free bets
to give you the taste of winning.
It's become such a huge industry.
Now the moral of this story is that this can quickly get out
of hand and spiral into something
that really affects your life.
So if you're going to bet, then I would say,
have a set budget and when it's spent, it's spent.
Number six is unneeded medical costs.
Unfortunately health is not something we can always control.
And when you're feeling your worst,
people can offer you treatments you don't actually need
to lock in regular payments from you.
If someone at the Nike store tried to sell you
the same shoes you purchased last week,
you'd probably decline the offer.
But when it comes to injury and pain,
you don't quite understand it.
It can be far easier to bamboozle you.
I hurt my back when I was a teen
and I never did anything about it.
And it progressively got worse and worse over time.
Eventually I had no option, but to seek help.
And as I've been passing this spinal clinic every day
for years, I thought it was about time I went in
and did something about it.
The problem is when you're in that amount of pain,
you're virtually paid anything to get out of it.
Just before we dive into this,
I'm not saying the guy didn't know what he was doing,
because he was certainly able to take away the pain,
but he took the opportunity to sign me up
for a year of treatment, which to be honest,
I really didn't need.
But like I said, I was in a vulnerable position.
All this was due to the fact,
I didn't look up the clinic beforehand,
as he did this to everyone.
He was a businessman trying to squeeze
as much profit out other people's pain as possible.
If I ever expressed that I wanted to leave,
he seemed to have the next best treatment I couldn't miss
out on.
It almost felt like a bit of a cult atmosphere.
By getting a second opinion,
this expense could have easily been avoided.
This entire situation really drilled into me,
the power of second opinions and research.
Number seven is over promised services.
With have great communication It can be really easy
for somebody to sell your dream
when it comes to buying a product
or service that you don't actually need.
Remember everyone is trying to make living,
and sometimes they don't have your best interests at heart.
Although I wasn't in my twenties for this one,
it will be something that affects you nowadays,
especially with the growth of the internet
and if you're planning an online side hustle.
When the internet started to take off,
I was convinced by a salesman and web designer that in order
to have one of the best websites in my industry,
I had to have a specific type of technology
called Adobe flash.
He probably knew it wasn't right for me,
but that's what he had to sell.
So of course he attempted to sell it to me.
It sounded like the ultimate thing
to drive my business forward,
but he was actually the opposite.
It brought no money in it and therefore,
no return investment.
With a bit more research, it would have been really easy
to tell that this was a waste of time and money,
but once you've invested some money,
you feel like you have to keep chucking more money in
otherwise it will well become a sunk cost
that will never be recovered.
The designer then disappeared on a big job in Dubai
and I was left with a website I had pay $10,000 for
and the ability to use it for?
You've guessed it nothing.
The big lesson here is that there are no shortcuts
when it comes to doing your research.
I wasn't con but what he gave me
just wasn't really right for me,
it did actually look quite good,
but it wasn't functional, it couldn't sell anything
and it wasn't searchable on Google.
Sadly, it's all in hindsight now,
but I did learn something really important
from this mistake, and that's the seven day rule.
This is essentially waiting seven days
before buying anything.
This acts as a cooling off period before committing
to the purchase to ensure it's actually the right decision.
It helps stop impulsive buying decisions
and allows you time for further research.
So the big takeaway here is your twenties are more important
than they might seem.
Making the right choices now can set you up
for success in the future
and save you a lot of unneeded stress,
maybe avoid having white hair when you get to my age.
You may think you have some spare money to throw away,
but in your twenties, that thousand dollars could spark
the start of a multi-million dollar business
like in my case.
The one thing I always say about mistakes is
it's only a disaster If you don't take a lesson from it,
I'd even go so far as to say a mistake
is only a true mistake if you do it twice.
So I'm gonna leave the next video right up there,
but don't click on it just yet.
Make sure to subscribe if you want to grow your wealth.
And don't forget to pick up some free stocks in the links
below, okay, I'll see you over there.