The Biggest Money Mistakes to Avoid in Your 20s

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Not contributing to your retirement: 

This was the most damaging mistake for me. I still haven’t recovered from it. I was earning minimum wage while in graduate school and could have socked my savings away in a Roth IRA. At the very least, I could have started saving for retirement when I started my first job. I thought retirement was too far away and I should be saving for some immediate needs like getting a car. The end result—I didn’t save for retirement or a car or anything else. I just spent my entire salary. This mistake alone cost me more than $100,000.

Not starting an emergency fund: 

This was the excuse I used not to start contributing to my retirement, but I never ended up starting anemergency fund either. Every single month, I would always end up with one big expense or another and I told myself I would definitely start the next month. I didn’t actually do it until my late 20s.

Not setting financial goals: 

I never stopped to think about what I would like to do in five or ten years. Only when we got married and everyone around us began buying a home did we realize that we didn’t have any savings to show for our working years. This mistake cost us more than money. We were not saving anything—even after we started working with a budget—simply because we never set any financial goals for ourselves. Early in our early marriage, we would fight at least once every month about our lack of savings. ”