Hey guys, it's sasha. This is one of the most common questions i get on my channel every single day, so it was about time. I made this video every day. I get asked about investing advice for teenagers in comments on my videos and in dms on twitter.

So let's do this, i am going to tell you what you need to do to set yourself up financially as a teenager, what you should not do and some really important tips along the way. Unfortunately, youtube was not around when i was a teenager, so i didn't get the benefit of having somebody telling me all of this, but at least i get to share these important steps with you so that if you have a few minutes to spare, i promise i Am going to make it worth your time? The first step is a pretty simple one, but it's also one that most teenagers will skip, because it's boring get your basic financial accounts set up and by basic financial accounts. I mean a bank account a credit card and an investing account. The trio you might already have a bank account, but if you don't just go and get one it'll only take you a few minutes.

It doesn't even matter which one you get as long as it is a full bank account that is free or has very low fees. Trust me, you don't need all the fancy, perks and privileges in the uk. Styling bank, for example, is a great choice and one that i personally use then go and set up an investing account. You can open a tax advantaged account like an isa in the uk or a roth ira in the us, but if you're a teenager you're, probably not going to be paying capital gains taxes anyway, so you can start with.

Whichever option is the cheapest? In the uk, the cheapest option at the moment is lightyear, who are the sponsor of today's video? They are the only completely free investing app for those investing in u.s stocks from the uk. So if you want to invest in stocks like tesla, google or apple lightyear is the only app in the uk where you can go and do that investing completely for free, you can deposit any amount. You want even just 10 pounds or 20 pounds to get started and you can buy fractional shares too, so you can buy some us stocks, no matter how little you have to get started with. If you use my link in the description light year, will even give you ten dollars just for opening the account and making that initial deposit of one pound or more so you can get a nice little boost to get.

You started on top setting up an investing account alongside your bank. Account is more important than you think, even if you only have 50 pounds or 50 dollars in there. It completely shifts your perspective and makes you think differently about money in a good way. So make sure you go and get one set up again.

It doesn't take a long time and it's relatively straightforward and then you go and get yourself a credit card. This is really important to do not skip this step. Again, you don't need the gold or platinum card that gives you access to premium, lounges and hotel concierge services, or any of that rubbish seriously. Don't waste your money on expensive fees for credit cards just get the most basic, regular credit card that doesn't have any monthly or annual fees and then just go and use that credit card once a month for food shopping or maybe stick your netflix and spotify subscriptions On it, just make sure you pay the card off in full automatically every month set up a direct debit in the uk or or to pay in the us doing.

This will begin building your credit score and your credit score is a massively important factor in life and will help with your investing. A good credit score means that everything will be cheaper for you in life, from phone contracts through to mortgages. So you'll spend less money on all of these things, which is good in itself, and if you'll ever need to borrow money in the future. For whatever reason, you'll pay less interest, and that means that you can put more money away into investments and guess what the number one factor that affects how well your investments do in the future is how much money you put in in the first place.

The next critical step is to start earning money. I know i know, look at the boomer talking and giving you advice. I also appreciate that your situation might be different. You might be going to university, maybe some other kind of education, maybe you're, going to be doing some traveling, maybe you're working already for the family business.

Whatever your situation is, don't make the mistake of waiting to start earning. I know that you might have loaded up with loans or government grants or your parents money or whatever, so that you don't need to think about earning money for the next three years, while you're a student trust me, i've been there, but there is nothing that will Teach you the skills of hustle, work, ethic and understanding the world of work better than getting out there and doing it. It'll make you a million times more effective when you come to apply for your proper graduate job. If you choose to do that and it'll teach you things that you will never ever learn in any kind of course or lecture hall, and it's never been easier to go and earn money, you can do it.

The old-fashioned way sure go and pick up the graveyard shift at the local supermarket. These are pretty much always available or you can go and set up a site hustle online. I have a whole video where i talk about side hustles and what how much you can make and the different ways you can make. I'm gon na put the link up to that video up here and in the description below so feel, free to go and watch that afterwards.

Next point is important, so listen up do not get into debt seriously. This is way more important and much more difficult than it sounds. Debt can be your best friend in life. In some cases i absolutely get it and it will it can.

Let you buy a house a decade or two before you'd, otherwise be able to go and afford one, and it can also be a massively powerful tool in your financial arsenal. Over the years. Maybe you'll start a business one day and you're going to use debt as a very smart and effective form of leverage, but debt in the form of a 20 000 loan to buy a car is not what you want in life. Trust me keeping up with the joneses, is a very bad financial strategy, never think of debt as something that costs so many dollars per month.

Debt is not a budget thing, it isn't a cash flow thing. Debt is a weight that can get attached to your waste and stop you from running at full pace, building credit and using it to your advantage is great borrowing money to go on a fancy vacation. Just so you can put up some nice photos on. Instagram is not, there is one thing that is worth getting into debt for, and that thing is education.

I know that in many countries like uk and the us going to university means getting into ridiculous amounts of debt or essentially having to pay higher levels of tax, but education is probably the absolute best thing that money can buy. So if you have the opportunity to go and learn, take it, i'm not saying all education is worth it. There are lots and lots of examples of courses that are complete garbage and a massive waste of space. I am aware - and you should be too so - be selective and choose things that you think will really teach you absolutely important, critical skills and don't stop learning ever.

I still learn all the time i went into the math at oxford after school and i studied a whole massive bunch of things since then, too. There are so many amazing, very useful courses online that don't cost a fortune and that can be incredibly valuable in all kinds of different ways and your teenage years and your 20s are by far the best time to soak all of that up. Trust me. It gets way harder as you get older, and you will only realize how much time you've got now when you are older, have kids and all the rest of that mumbo jumbo.

The next critical thing is to get into good habits and to start investing regularly. Every month, when you get paid or weekly or whatever works for you go and take the money that you don't need to pay for your bills, food and everything else and just go and put that small amount of extra surplus into your investing account. Even if it's just twenty dollars, even if it's just fifty dollars whatever it is, you've got making sure that you go and do it every single month is incredibly important in so many different ways. The money that you invest as a teenager will be invested for way way longer than the money you put in when you're 50., so even small amounts invested early can be a massive massive amount of money several decades in the future.

But it's not even about the amount by which your investments will grow. That's not the most important thing it's about getting into the right habit, because the moment you start putting that money into your investments. Your mindset will change. Trust me you'll see it.

Maybe you weren't that interested in money before, but suddenly you're now watching your investments, you're learning about investing every single week, just because you have a small horse in the race and as you earn more money over time as you progress through the career ladder as your Wages go up, you'll, be able to put more and more money away into investments. In fact, you might notice that your mindset change is something that you didn't expect. I know i didn't think about investing at all when i was 18 and when i had some spare cash i'll just go and burn it. I just go and spend it on whatever and if you get into investing, you might just find yourself surprised when you get excited when you have a spare tenant, because you can go and deposit into your account and do something useful with it.

Just remember when you first getting started with investing, you are going to make mistakes, and that is okay. You might go and buy stocks for the wrong reasons. Maybe you'll not buy stocks, maybe you'll buy something completely random, an asset that you'll later really regret. Buying and you'll realize it was was a massive mistake.

Some of your investments are going to lose a lot of value. You might go and take the ultra safe approach, on the other hand, and maybe invest everything into just the s p, 500 and then you'll feel like you've missed out on those stocks that went to the moon that you considered but chose against. Investing in you might invest, and then we enter a massive recession and your investments are going to be in the red for several years. That might also happen, but there's absolutely no replacement for learning on the job, with investing.

So the only way that you are really going to learn is to get started. Remember that you can go and get that 10 bonus for trying out light year through my link in the description. But if you don't live in uk or if you want to try out more than one different platform, i have other links in the description as well, so go and check them out. My next bit of advice for you is to really embrace the work hard play, hard motto.

I know far too many people who pick only one of those two, in fact most of the advice out there seems to tell you that it has to be just one or the other, go and spend every waking hour, hustling and bustling. Don't you dare have weekends or you know waste time when you could be earning money instead, but here's the thing your 20s are important, not just be because you get to learn a lot and not just because you get to make your first steps in the career Ladder, they are also important because you get to have fun, and life is actually much richer than money. If you go and lock yourself away for a decade sweating in a bullpen of a law firm on a saturday night, every single saturday night, instead of you know making friends and enjoying the little things in life, it might be a trade-off that you'll later regret. Don't go all in on one thing you absolutely do not have to, even if people are telling you that you do chances are the thing that you think you want to do for your whole life when you're 20 will be the thing that you don't ever want To do again by the time you're 30.

try out as many different things as possible in your teens and your 20s. That is the time to do it, go and work in different kinds of companies and in different kinds of jobs. I see a lot of young people who think that if they haven't made it by the time, they're 30 they've lost the race, that's something society tries to tell you is the case, but it absolutely is not. Those are the same kinds of people who sprint at the start of the marathon, not realizing that at 30 you still have 40 odd years to go before you hit retirement age.

You'll never have as much time on your hands as when you are a teenager, so invest that time invest your time into learning, into starting out side, hustles, invest time into building friendships and into working hard remember to take risks because you can. There is no better time to take risks than when you're just getting started. Don't follow a career path or structure your life or your investments or anything else, because your dad, your great uncle, thinks that it is the way it is the correct way of going about. Your life don't take the safe route just because if your society or family would approve, go and take a few detours, take a few risks.

Try a few things out, make mistakes and then learn from those mistakes. If you don't make the mistakes, you won't learn from them. You'll miss out on those lessons. The exact same advice applies to investing no amount of reading books or studying is going to prepare you properly for what happens in reality.

You can know all the theory in the world, but then the world panics and you go and make a massively irrational decision. Trust me, you will make it i made it. Everyone else made it too, but without making those mistakes early on, you won't ever become a good investor. You need to pick the wrong stocks.

You need to make the wrong calls. You need to make the wrong decisions you need to massively screw up and the earlier you make those investing mistakes. The sooner you'll learn then maybe make them a few less times. If you want to learn more about investing and managing money, please feel free to subscribe to my channel.

I have videos coming out every day, where i share things that i know try to help. You understand things a little bit better. Thank you very much for watching this video all the way through. I really really appreciate it and, as always i'll see you guys later, you.