 If I don't eat leftovers for dinner, then I can have the leftovers for dinner instead of lunch. I don't know. Anyways, welcome to my channel. My name is Jocelyn J. And in today's video, we're gonna be talking about how I've invested, or five ways I've invested in my 20s, invested my money in my 20s. And I know you all like the vlog kind of style content. So what I've been trying to do is to have like searchable content, like five ways to invest your money in your 20s or whatever this title is gonna be, but showing a little bit of my personality and my day-to-day, especially since the weather's starting to break. All right, so since today is over 50 degrees, I'm actually about to walk to Subway and get a little sunlight so it can energize me to crush it today. More of these because these make drinking water so much better. But I went with this like, I forget the name a little bit, but this is Draymond Green's choice of sandwich. Not the biggest Draymond Green fan or anything like that, but the sandwich actually looked pretty good. I did a poll and I saw that you all were interested in investing. So I figured I'd go ahead and make a video talking about my experiences, investing my money. I'm a front end developer and also a content creator on YouTube for those of you all who don't know. So if you could give this video a thumbs up, I'd really appreciate it. It helps out with the algorithm a lot. One, it'll push this video to other people who may be interested in watching this kind of content. Also, it lets me know as a creator if you like this video and wanna see more content like this and I wanna make sure that I am making videos that you all like. So also subscribe to the channel to watch more content like this and become a part of this amazing community. So I definitely didn't grow up talking about like investing in terms of like investing in 401Ks, Roth IRAs and stocks. You know, I come from a single household and that really wasn't at the top of our list. So I will say that I am very fortunate to be able to have an experience or have experiences investing my money and to be able to do that and to make this video. So I'm very blessed and fortunate. So I definitely wanted to say that. In this video, the main purpose, the main purpose of this video is to share my experiences along with, you know, giving some advice that I think is beneficial. I'm also gonna talk about some of my mistakes. Give this video a thumbs up if you wanna see a like, you know, five reasons or five mistakes to avoid in your 20s, some sort of video like that. I think those are really beneficial. I definitely watch them and I think we all have some sort of experience that we've had that we regret in terms of either investing our money or just spending our money poorly. First thing that I would recommend is to take advantage of your employer's 401K benefit. If you aren't familiar with a 401K, a 401K is a retirement plan that's also a tax advantage retirement plan where you can contribute to it directly from your paycheck pre-tax. When I first started working, like fresh out of college, 22 years old, I didn't really take advantage of that 401K opportunity. I invested a little bit of money and the reason being is because I wanted to have like the largest paycheck possible. So fast forward, you know, months later, I don't know what prompted me to do this but I like found some sort of like calculator that showed me how much money my paychecks would be based on how much I contributed to my 401K. To basically see if there was a major difference between like investing 3% into my 401K compared to like my max contribution that my employer would match, which was 12% and I'll get into that in a second if that's confusing or you're not familiar with that kind of like terminology. So basically I quickly came to the realization that I was screwing myself over by not investing or not contributing to the max 401K that my employer matches. Reason being is because if you're trying to save your money and you're putting it all in a savings account that's only gonna yield, at least my account was only yielding like 0.01% whereas a 401K yields significantly more. On top of the fact that my employer matched up to half of 12%. So basically if I contribute 4%, my employer matches 2%. If I contribute 10%, my employer matches 5% and then if I contribute to the max, which is 12%, they will match me at 6%. So that's literally free money that I'm getting from my employer. So I'm glad I did it because listen, compound interest is a thing. So my 401K goal right now is to invest enough money or at least enough money to have around 100K by a little bit earlier than like age 30. Next thing is I know that some of you all may not be able to invest into a 401K right now. So the next thing I wanna talk about is investing into the stock market. And for example, I have used Robinhood. For one, I've learned from my mistakes of not holding when it comes to the stock market. To give you an example, I invested in one share of ETHRELM in mid-November. It was like $465, that's all it cost me. And then for some reason I pulled out, I started losing some money and I was like, oh, okay, I'll do this later. Cause I typically like to be pretty organized with my investing, like, okay, I wanna have X amount of dollars here and there with no credit card debt, for example, that's when I'll start investing my money. But like three months later when I reinvested in ETHRELM, ETHRELM went from $465 a share to like maybe $1,100 a share, $1,200 a share, which is almost like 300% increase. So if I would have just held and just, you know, dealt with the ebbs and flows of the stock market, especially cryptocurrency, your boy would have made an extra like $800. Luckily I did reinvest in ETHRELM over a month ago and have, it's been growing, I think it's gonna continue to grow, at least I hope so. Praying to God that ETHRELM hits 10K. But ETHRELM isn't the only thing I invest in, I also invest a little bit in the Bitcoin along with a few other stock. So that leads me into the third recommendation that I have, which is to experiment as a computer science grad and, you know, engineer. We did a lot of experiments and experiments are how you figure whether or not something works out. I don't like to just listen to what everyone else has to say because we all have different experiences. We're all in different situations. I like to experiment for myself and to figure out what works best for me in life. But with Robinhood and stocks, I'm really just experimenting. I don't invest a ton of money. I invest about 10% of my total portfolio. One thing that I realize is that it doesn't make sense to have over six months of emergency fund just sitting in a savings account, at least not for me right now with a stable job and passive income. It makes more sense to either invest that in a 401k Roth IRA or put that money into stocks. And I'm gonna be honest with you, it's been great investing in cryptocurrency and learning more about like investing in stocks and just the overall market. It's been great, especially when you see that you're actually yielding return. So now I basically invest in any money that I'm not using for debt. So if it's not going to my student loans or my credit card debt, then it's gonna be going into my 401k or into stocks. So like the past year, I'd say I started investing in a Roth IRA. It really benefits you when you're young, especially when you're not in that crazy high 35, 30% tax bracket. And for those of you all who aren't familiar with a Roth IRA, it is similar to a 401k. It's a retirement account. However, it provides tax-free growth and withdrawals. However, you do have to pay taxes to that amount you contribute to from your paycheck. And that's where that not being in a super high tax bracket can really benefit you. As of right now, you can contribute to up to $6,000. I'm pretty sure if you're under the age of 50 years old. The huge benefit of a Roth IRA is that your money grows tax-free. I know it's a pain because you're contributing to it directly from your paycheck. You know, and it's taxed like off-grid. You have to be patient and you're playing the long game. With 401ks, the benefit is, hey, you're not being taxed, you know, from your paycheck when you're contributing to it. But your withdrawal is gonna be taxed and you get like a 10% penalty if you pulled out your 401k early. Make sure that you research these things on your own for sure the percentage of money that they're gonna take out of your 401k when you're eligible to take that money out is gonna be different based on your tax bracket. So let's say you're in the 24% tax bracket and you have a million dollars at age like 55 or 60 and you wanna withdraw that. They're gonna take 24% of that, which is $240,000. So long-term, taking, you know, 20% out of 5% from your paycheck by putting it in a Roth IRA early and being able to withdraw it with no tax penalty is significantly better than taking a huge chunk out of your 401k where you thought you were a millionaire and now you're not. The fifth tip that I want to share with you is to just take risks. Taking risks is something that is really important in life whether it's taking a new job, taking a new role or investing money. Risks can help you in the long call but if you don't take any risks they'll end up hurting you long-term for sure. For example, I would have never known the power of investing into the stock market if I would have never pulled out and lost money in the beginning. But then I realized had, wow, this stock, this share went from $465 to $1,200 in a matter of three months and if I would have just held I would have actually profited 300%. Also remember, there are ebbs and flows with the stock market, especially when you're investing in tech, you know, like, you know, Tesla or you're investing in some, you know, new, innovative electric car company and of course cryptocurrency. And last but not least, investing in your 20s is a huge benefit. Take advantage of that, you know, time is money and time goes faster and faster. It seems like as you get older, especially as you have more responsibilities and find yourself spending money on things you didn't have to spend money on when you were in your 20s. Since you're in your 20s you have the ability to invest and see that money grow long-term which is a huge benefit and take advantage of that. So that concludes this video. I hope this was helpful. This is my first time doing an investing video. I'm not an expert. I'm a developer, not an investment banker but I'm learning along the way. I'm reading this book where it talks about being an amateur and sharing things when you're an amateur. So that's basically what I'm doing. I hope this was helpful. Give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it at all. I wanna see more content like this. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. I really appreciate it if you all can become a part of this community. Hit that notification bell so you can know right away when I release a video and as always have a blessed rest of your week. I'll see you all soon. Peace.