Everyone wants to be rich in their 20s, but almost nobody pulls it off. Why? Because they follow advice that sounds responsible, but secretly it keeps them broke. Listen, in my 20s, I followed five steps and I became financially free by the age of 26 years old. These five steps, they helped me quit the only job that I ever had as I graduated college on a six figure residual income. By the way, what are these five steps for getting rich in your 20s? Let's go. There is a road map that most people follow, right? I mean, go to college, get a degree, land an entry- level job, save a little, dump money into a 401k, rinse and repeat for 40 years. Coming to bed, honey. Yes, dear. But dude, take a look around you. How many people do you actually know who actually get rich that way? The truth is most people never work in the field that they even studied. Big employers like Google, Walmart, Apple, they've stopped requiring college degrees altogether. And AI, well, it's about to replace a huge chunk of white collar work. So listen, if you want to build real wealth realistically, you've got to ditch the blueprint that everyone else is following and take the path less traveled. I've put together five easy steps that literally can help anyone get rich realistically, especially when you're young, when you have time on your hands in your 20s. So, let me show you exactly how to do it. But listen, before we dive in, I appreciate you hitting that like button right now. Consider subscribing if you want more content like this. It definitely boosts the algorithm. It helps me reach the maximum number of people who can benefit from this information. Step one, get a job. preferably in sales, something with commission, something with risk that you can learn a hard skill and make some really good money at. Because check it out, the first instinct might be to avoid a job entirely. Jobs are suckers, right? Like that's what the hustle bros say. But here's a truth. Having a stable income in your early 20s, that is the launchpad for everything else. You see, a traditional salaried position, it's a good start. And if it's all you can make work, then start there. But there is a better way if you're fully committed to breaking out in your 20s. So, let's say that you're making $50,000 a year because that's what the average college grad makes and you're one of the lucky ones. You're getting a 10% raise annually, which is way above average. Well, after 5 years, you'd be making just over $80,000 a year. Sounds pretty good, but you're still not rich. And let's be honest, most people aren't getting those 10% raises every year. They're getting like 3, four, and 5% maybe. Like I said, it's not a bad start, but you'll see here in a second that a 2-year work history is key for your next move. It's about having a job for two years. So, let me suggest that your best case scenario for getting a day job, if you're going to start with something, get a job in sales. And I just got to tell you, sales is not popular for a lot of people. It's a different kind of mindset. It's not something that a lot of people are going to want, but there's a reason why. Sales jobs, they're different. They're one of the few roles where you get paid literally based on performance, not seniority. Which means you can be young and make tons of money instead of waiting to have gray hair. That means no waiting for your turn. Listen, if you're good, you get paid. If you're great, you can earn more in a month than some people make in an entire year. There is literally a disproportionate reward for people that do really well at that game. For example, did you know that the top 20% of all earners make 130,000 a year? The top 1% make $430,000 a year and the top 1% they make over $3 million a year. In sales, if you do get good at it, you earn disproportional rewards. Even entry-level sales jobs like car sales, real estate, or software, that can earn you six figures without having a degree at all. And here's the bonus that most people overlook. Sales is the single best training ground for entrepreneurship. Like, every business comes down to one thing. Can you sell? Doesn't matter whether it's a product, doesn't matter whether it's a pitch, whether it's a service or a vision. You need sales. It's going to teach how to persuade. It's going to teach you how to listen. It's going to teach you how to negotiate. It's what's going to make you bulletproof for your future. So, think of it as kind of like a personal MBA that you're getting paid to attend. And by MBA, I mean massive bank account. So, just to summarize the first step, I need you to have a job for at least 2 years because I'm going to teach you a house hack. However, dude, you're young. If you can do a job in sales, you might as well take a risk on something that can make you way more money, right? You're young. You can always do something more conservative later. Hey, sorry to interrupt, but this can't wait. What I'm about to share could literally be the missing piece that you've been looking for. Give me just a moment and then I'll get you back to the video. It's going to be worth it. Listen, you don't need a whole bunch of side hustles. You don't need a fancy business plan. You need clarity and the kind that produces wealth without wasting your life chasing it. When I started investing in real estate, I made one decision. I was going to study every strategy that was out there. Buy and hold, fix and flip, short-term rentals. I was going to look at everything, but I wanted to basically compare them and find the best strategy. And I found it. I call it the straight path to real estate wealth. And guess what? It literally outperformed everything with the highest ROI, the least amount of effort, and the smallest startup cost at all. And that's basically why I wrote this book, The Straight Path to Real Estate Wealth. If you want to build passive income and start hitting six and seven figures without burning out, click the link below, get this book, read it. Believe me, there's millions of strategies out there, but only one that gets you there faster, cleaner, and with your sanity intact. Step two, get into a home as soon as possible. Listen, I know what you're thinking. Your parents like, "Oh, you should wait to get through college and wait till you start a family and then later you should get a house later in life." Listen, I'm just telling you right now that your very first house, it is the ticket to the game plan that I'm giving you of how to become rich. Because while your friends are literally signing leases and they're decorating their overpriced apartments, you need to start thinking like an investor. One of the biggest wealth hacks in your 20s is simple. Own the roof over your head. But just not for the sake of ownership. It's strategy. You see, you got buddies and they need places to live and they need rooms to rent. And there's a way literally for you to have them pay for your living. The real key is to let someone pay for your mortgage. So don't be thinking, I can't take on such a big financial responsibility. It's like, no, get into that financial responsibility as quickly as possible and let other people pay for you. This is where house hacking really comes in as our second step. You see, first you're going to need to build your credit. And that doesn't mean running up debt. It means using credit wisely. Get a secured card if you have to and preferably two or even three credit cards. You want to put your regular expenses on these like gas, groceries, subscriptions, but they need to be paid off every single month. Do not do this if you're going to keep a balance. What it does is it builds a credit score. And while it's climbing, this is going to help us in the latter steps of the plan that I'm giving you to become rich in your 20s. Now, why does this really matter? Because the bank is going to look at your credit score when approving you for a loan. And we want that leverage. The bank is going to give you 80 to 97% of the money on every house that potentially is going to make millions of dollars collectively like I'm about to show you. Leverage is what makes real estate so stinking powerful. So think about it. If you go buy some stock, you have to put every dollar in yourself. If you have $10,000, you can buy $10,000 of stock. But in real estate, whatever I put in, I get a multiplier of literally five. Now that's on an investment property. When it's a home for myself, I'm putting a three and a half% down payment, like a $300,000 home. That's like $9,000. So, get that job, live well below your means, have that job for a couple of years, and then get into that house as quickly as possible. The ROI on your first house with a 3% down payment is going to be so freaking amazing. So, I want to paint a picture of you that the bank's going to like, which is why we're going to up that credit score. Now, besides the credit score, the bank is going to look at your past two years of work history. like I'm talking about. They want to see you in a full-time job for those two years. Lenders want to see consistency. Step one is holding a job for two years is critical. Step two is developing your credit during that period of time so you have two or three lines of credit that they see you keep getting paid off. And if the bank sees that you've got that W2 income for two years and you've built your credit, they're going to consider you more reliable. And that's the beginning of them saying, "Why don't we give you 97% of the money for buying the house?" Oh, and by the way, here's a fun hack. Some banks will consider time spent in school as work history, which means that you may not even have to wait two years. You could literally get a four-year degree, get a job, a career in that line of work, and then they would take all your history and be like, "Well, you just started your job, but we're considering college or two-year history. Let's give you money and lend on a house based on the first job that you even just got right now." It's amazing. And finally, you're going to need that three three and a half% down payment on a property, which if it's a $300,000 home, that's you saving up $10,000. All right, this is the part most people screw up. Do not buy your dream home. Like, don't be looking for the nicest home. Don't buy a home for your lifestyle, especially if you got married younger. You're trying to impress your young buddies. Like, this is not a home to enjoy as much as it is an investment for your financial future. You're looking to buy a multi-bedroom property, a duplex, or something with a basement apartment or an attic apartment because you want to rent rooms. You want to rent space. You want them to literally pay for your mortgage. Get roommates. If you're single, and if you are married or in a committed relationship, then find a part of the house that you can share and rent out. Everything will basically help you pay to cover your mortgage that you took on. And suddenly, your biggest monthly expense becomes one of your biggest wealth levers ever. And ideally, you're living for free. Like that's how it was on my very first house. But I've got a buddy of mine. He's a millionaire today. He started less than a decade ago and on his first house. He rented out a part of the house. It paid for half of his mortgage. This is where you want to be smart. Most people do this wrong. They buy as much as they think they can afford. They don't rent any of it out. And it's stupid when you're young and in your 20s when you can afford to make these choices. And if you do it right, you're going to walk away in a few years with tens and tens of thousands of dollars of equity in the house. You're also going to have a rental property under your belt because you can move out, rent out the rest, make positive cash flow. Listen, the house you choose should be something that you can easily turn into a rental in a few years. So, you want to retain the asset when you move to your next place. Basically, rent it out and keep making buco bucks on it. Now, according to a 2023 report from the National Association of Realtors, homeowners have a net worth 40 times higher than renters on average. What does it mean? As early as possible, buy a house. Because when you buy a house, it already predicts that later in life, you're going to be worth so much more money. So, to summarize it all, house hacking isn't just smart. It's how normal people buy freedom early in life. I was worth $1.6 million as a 26-year-old that had just quit his job because I had 25 homes. I did the 3% down payment to get my first house. I rented out the basement. I lived in it for free. I used the equity in this house to buy my second house. By the time I bought more real estate, either my houses were buying it or partners were. And so here's the crazy part. I turned $3,300 into $1.6 million over four and a half years. It changed everything. So yeah, normal people may not be into the house hacking thing, but if you're in your 20s, this is smart. By the way, if you are not a subscriber on my channel, but you're getting extreme value here, please hit that like button and please subscribe because Uncle Chris has content coming regularly at you to help you live your smartest financial life possible. Let's go. Here's the third of five steps. I want you to start a boring business, like a side hustle. Listen, we've romanticized entrepreneurship so much that people think that they need a genius idea and then they're going to become, you know, some really big company. But honestly, what I need you to do is literally have some extra green on the side. You don't have to be crazy smart. You don't have to be a business savant. In fact, it's kind of better if your idea is just boring. Literally, if you want proof, ask the people in your neighborhood with giant homes what they do for a living. And odds are they didn't invent anything flashy. They own a chain of laundromats or they run a pest control business. Or they're in the poop business. Like, as in, I pay teenagers to clean up poop for my neighbors on their lawns and we just have a couple thousand homes and it makes us a million dollars a year, right? Like, this is stupid simple stuff. This doesn't require genius. You got AI. Put some ideas out there. Go get a stupid, boring business, something not too complicated, and start earning money on the side. Enough money that it could threaten your job to replace it eventually. I need you to have this extra money because it's how we're going to create acceleration. Alexi says it best. A mediocre idea with great execution beats a brilliant idea with no follow-through every single time. So, the secret is to solve boring problems really, really well. Listen, look at your own spending habits. Where does your money go? Well, that's where your opportunity lies. If you spend $30 a week on car washes, maybe there's a business there for you to get your hands on. Listen, if your parents struggle to find good yard work help, there's another idea. And the barrier to entry, it's way lower than you actually think. And by the way, if you have a degree, don't think this is below you. This is about being smart in your 20s and getting ahead. Let me put it to you bluntly. Do not build an app. Don't start a tech company. Don't try and engineer a new invention. Please, for the love of all that is holy, don't start a restaurant. Okay, these sound fun, but they will you will work your ass off and you will work yourself into the ground. They statistically have the highest rate of failure. Restaurants have a rager thined edge margin. And you have no idea what a developer costs for building an app. People literally think it's a few thousand bucks and it can turn into hundreds of thousands of dollars really quickly. And remember, you're not doing this for fun. You're not doing this to express yourself. You're not doing this to fulfill a need to become significant and stroke that ego. You're doing this to make money because you're in your 20s. because now is the time to hustle so that you can have the lifestyle everyone wants later. Oh, and by the way, while you're running this business, I want you to keep your day job. Chris, dude, that's a stop whining, complaining move. That's literally this is what we're going to do. Would you rather have a few years where you bust your hump and then later have to work so hard again? Take it from me. I'm going to say it again. In the beginning, you hustle at work and you grind your business. Build slowly, keep cost down. nights and weekends. Well, that's your real wealth building hours. Most people come home from work, they shut down, they Netflix binge, they doom scroll, unless you scroll on me, and they do that until they sleep. Listen, they're training their brain to be lazy and to screw it up. You have to train your brain to do the opposite. Those hours, dude, that's where freedom is hiding. I built my real estate portfolio while I had a full-time sales position while I went to school full-time. And you're right, it was a nasty four-year period of time in my life. So worth it when you look at the fact that I've been financially independent for 19 years. In the morning I was at school, during the day I was at work and nights and weekends. I was searching for sweet deals. I was sweet talking lenders. I was making offers. I was finding partners. You're going to have to sacrifice some short-term comfort, but not long term. You're building a machine that eventually is going to print money. All right, we're moving on to step four. This is key. Save 20% of what you take home for investing or more. Now listen, if you got a job, I want you to save 20%. And you're going to have to rearrange your budget until you can do that. If you're still young and you ultimately haven't like started increasing your expenses yet, save 40%. If you already have a hustle going on the side in addition to your job, save 50%. This is the time to get ahead. And you're we're talking about making the most important decision you're ever going to make, which is what percent of what I make do I get to keep and set aside for investing? It's called PYF. Pay yourself first. If you're like dumb Americans, every penny you make goes towards paying old choices that you've made and then you don't really have anything left over. This is about your ability to keep money. Listen, it doesn't matter if you make $60,000 a year or $600,000 a year. If it's all gone by the end of the month, you're broke either way. You've got to learn how to save. But it's not for emergencies. It's not for ammunition. It's for investing. Start by saving 20% of your income automatically. Pretend it doesn't exist. You should never see that money hit your checking account. Whether it's your sales job, your house hack, your side business, you want to treat every extra dollar like it's fuel. Fuel for your next investment. Fuel for freedom. And I'll tell you right now, this is where most people mess up. As their income increases, so does their lifestyle. That's called Parkinson's law. Your expenses expand to match your income. You get a raise, you get a nicer car, you land a new client, you book a fancier vacation. But if you can fight that instinct, if you can live below your means while stacking cash, this is where you get a chance to unlock something very, very powerful. Because when opportunity comes, you'll actually have the capital needed to strike. Also, this is where the minimalism game comes in. Look at the cost of living today. Dude, 20 years ago, the median home price was $230,000. Now, it's like $430,000. It's nearly doubled. I'm like, I would have never thought 20 years ago that real estate was going to double. That's exactly what's happened. Yeah. If you can find joy in the small things, I promise you, you don't need luxury items to find the real joys of life. They're here. They're in front of you. So instead, stop spending your money like you need to have a taste of what that ritzy luxurious life is like. And instead, be smart, but don't be a penny pincher. We're setting the money aside for a grand future. And along the way, I want you to choose into experiences that will build life's most precious memories. We're saving our money for investing. We're not saving life experience for our 60s. Your 20s, however, they are the time to build. Definitely not the time to show off. So instead of flexing your first, what's up, $10,000, put it aside and let it grow. That money, that's your leverage. It's what lets you make bold moves when other people are still waiting for a payday. And this takes us to step five, the final step. Buy assets. Listen, at this point, you've got income from your job, your property, and your side hustle. You're already doing far more brilliant than everyone else. You're saving aggressively. Now, it's time to make your money work harder for you than you work for it. Make your money work for you instead of you working for it. That starts with one rule. Buy assets, not liabilities. An asset is something you buy that goes up in value. A liability takes money out of your pocket every single month. A new car is a liability. It's a depreciating asset. The moment you drive it off the lot, it's literally worth less money, sometimes by like 20 or 30%. Same thing with the latest iPhone or designer sneakers. They look rich, but they're bleeding you dry. What you want to do with your savings is acquire assets, things that appreciate in value and pay you back over time. Listen, if you did a 3% down payment on a house, then a year or two later, why wouldn't you do it again? Turn the first one into a rental. Shoot, you might do this three times and move every year or two. And what happens? It's like, well, this house went up 50,000 in equity and this house went up 100,000 equity. I got a good deal on this one. Shoot, I'm in my mid20s and I'm worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and now my homes can buy me more assets. Buy things that appreciate in value and pay you back over time. Real estate, it's a powerful one, but so are small businesses. Stocks and bonds are technically assets, but you got to know what you're doing because they're usually growing at single-digit ROI. That's the old person, old school conservative, never go anywhere move. Highv value whole life insurance. That's another great place where I like to store money, pull it out, be earning here, and earning over here. And now all of a sudden, it's like, shoot, I'm velocitizing my money. It was sitting in this house. I pulled it out, put an insurance policy, pull it out, put it in another property. That same dollar is freaking sitting in three places at once. When I go work for money, I trade time for money. When I put my money to work, it works for me all day long. It works for me when I sleep, and it works in multiple places at once. Yes. Listen, the last thing that I want to put in this category is mentorship. This one is huge. You want to buy time with people who have what you want and can show you how to get it. This is called investing in yourself. I don't mean college. Most people will will go to their grave and they'll never invest in yourself. What I'm talking about here is investing in a course, buying tools that will help you, you know, scale and build your business. This is about being strategic. Like, you don't have to beat Wall Street to win. You just have to stop making the same mistakes as everybody else. The average millionaire has seven streams of income. And in this video, we've talked about several. And almost all of them flow from assets, not hours, not hustle, assets. The sooner you start acquiring them, the sooner your time becomes yours again. And if you followed all five of these steps, you should have three sources of income to say the least. This makes you an outlier in your 20s, and it sets you up for the brightest financial future. Listen, getting rich in your 20s, it's not a fantasy. I did it. You can do it. I have clients that have done it. But it is a fight. And there's a reason why most won't. You're going to have to think differently. You're going to have to work differently. And you're going to have to live differently than the people around you. And that's the point. While they're waiting for promotions, you'll be closing on deals. While they're upgrading their nice cars, you're going to be buying a duplex. While they're binge watching Netflix, you're going to be building something that will outlive you. And if you stay focused, stay scrappy, and follow these steps, you won't just get rich, you'll get the real reward, freedom.