Young Money - Jack Raines

Partial Excerpts (antilibrary)

Copyright

2026

Author’s Note

The default state of one’s postcollege twenties can be summed up in one word: “uncertainty.”

Chapter 3: The Problem with “Someday”

One of the biggest problems we face today is that we have solved life. Go to college, get a degree in a well-paying field, stay off drugs, remain gainfully employed for thirty-plus years, and save 15–20 percent of your check. If you follow this plan, you won’t run out of money, you’ll contribute to society, and you’ll have, by virtually any standard, a “good” life. The issue, however, is that the solved life leaves no room for desires that cause us to deviate from this path

The problem with “someday” is that it provides you with the pleasure of acknowledging your desires without you actually making those desires your reality. It’s built on the misconception that at some undefined point in the future, your life’s circumstances will be more convenient for you to pursue your desires than they are today. But do you really think that’s true?

I placed my now-finished copy of Vagabonding on my bedside table and turned off the lights. Well, I thought, I’ve spent months stewing over this job, but I could, just…do something else. I’ve been dying to see the world, and travel restrictions are finally being lifted. I have twelve months to do, really, whatever I want before starting graduate school. What am I still doing here?

When I was eleven, Mama Ruth taught me that at some point, you have to spend the money on the things that you want. When I was twenty-four, Vagabonding showed me that I wasn’t crazy for wanting to leave my job; I was crazy for trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t. I realized that if traveling abroad was a priority, my window of opportunity was now. So, in June 2021, with Potts’s book weighing heavily on my mind, I told my boss that I was heading to Barcelona.

Chapter 4: Life Is a Stage-Specific Endeavor

every experience in life is stage-specific. If you don’t act on the desires of your youth when you’re young, the opportunity to do so will expire long before you do.

Although hostel amenities can be lackluster, hostel culture is second to none

you are just another twenty-something traveler living out of a backpack who wants to party with his new friends

This hostel thing is fun, but man, it would have been more fun five years ago. It feels like I missed the window to make the most out of spontaneous stuff like this

When you’re young, you have several advantages over your older counterparts: You are the hottest you’ll ever be, you have a kick-ass metabolism, you don’t yet have real responsibilities

Your one disadvantage, however, is your lack of money.

Investment banking is, obviously, a popular career choice for MBA students, but one of the more interesting things I noticed during business school was that my classmates who joined investment banks out of undergrad would commit seppuku before ever returning to a bank.

our VP screamed, ‘What’s the point! I’ve been here for eight years! What’s the point?’

This guy spent a decade with Goldman, and there he was, at thirty, still in the office with all of us at one thirty in the morning

The difference between money and time is that money is both infinite and fungible

What made my time traveling abroad so fun was that I spent it with dozens of other folks around my age in a similar stage of life

There’s this shared camaraderie among young, broke people who acted on their desire to see the world: “A kindred spirit. Let’s go hike a volcano,

And do you realize how little money it takes to enjoy yourself in your twenties?

I believe we all have some dream or ambition that we want to pursue in our twenties, whether that’s traveling the world, starting your own company, or moving to a new city on a whim. And the window of opportunity in which you will most enjoy these experiences will close long before you feel financially comfortable enough to make the leap

Chapter 5: Memories Compound Faster than Money

Excess frugality is a by-product of good advice taken to the extreme. You have decades to make money, but for some experiences you only have a few years to spend it.

Chapter 13: The Case for Living Life Backward

The antidote to apathy is replacing optionality with necessity by defining “the only things that matter” in each phase of your life. The key to figuring out “what matters” in each stage is working backward from death.

consider what, exactly, it was that I wanted to get out of life itself

What do you want to do before you die?” “In what order do you need to do those things to make them a reality?”

over the following weeks I wrote a list of “things that matter

Without taking the time to establish your priorities, your life lacks intentionality. Instead of being the pilot of your life’s direction, you become a vessel through which inertia manifests itself in the world

many of the things you thought would matter actually don’t matter

life is not a series of one-off decisions; it’s a conglomeration of countless interconnected decisions that all affect one another

I realized that out of everything that I wanted from life, the only thing that was truly time sensitive was “travel cheaply while I’m young.”

Chapter 14: Status Games Rule Everything around Me

the acquisition of status rarely quenches our desire for status.

Apathy is the first thief of intentionality, but now, I’d like to discuss another: status. If apathy wastes your life by tricking you into not doing anything, status wastes your life by tricking you into pursuing the wrong thing.

Status can’t exist in a vacuum because it’s relative. It demonstrates a relationship between two things

assuming, of course, that both parties recognize this “status.”

Because status is relative, it’s a zero-sum game

Status obsession is common for middle-school and high-school kids, I think, because school is a breeding ground for status games