Im 18 years old making around $600 a month and about to finish high school. What are my best options for setting myself up to be FI?

Maybe I can be of a little help. I am 20 and am pursing FI. When I was 18 and in high school, I was making about 400 a month during school and 2 grand a month during summer. I had been doing this for 2 years. I made the first mistake a young person with a decent amount of money makes, I bought a car, a 25 thousand dollars car to be exact. That was mistake number one because I took on a little over half of that in dept. The payments were not awful and I paid it off a couple of years early but that severely hit my cash flow. Looking back, I would have been perfectly happy with a car of over half the cost. Then I went to college, which my parents are paying for, then proceeded to buy a 2 thousand dollar computer, 1 thousand dollar tv, and a whole lot of other stuff I don't need. I finally got my spending problems under control but it still hurts. I'm 20 and my overhead is the biggest it has ever been at 300 dollars a month plus 200 for gas and food and I have made approximately 60 thousand dollars since I started working and I only have 12 thousand dollars in money assets to show for it. Moral of the story is, you do not need the biggest and the best of everything. I could have gotten along fine with a 5k car, 200 dollar tv, 400 dollar computer, etc and I would have probably 25 plus thousand additional dollars to show for it if I had. It is easy for money to burn a hole in your pocket, don't let it.

As far as financial advise goes, keep saving. You don't have enough money to start investing yet. I waited until I had 4k in the bank, then invested 3. I originally did something stupid and put the money in a roth ira with pnc bank and got sold some horrible front loaded mutual fund. I finally cut my losses (they were minimal, luckily) and rolled it over to vanguard and bought a target date retirement fund and have been making roughly 12% ever since. I now have a little over 8k in the ira and 4k in checking and savings. I would max the ira for the year but, I want a safety net as I'm getting close to graduation. Best of luck and do your research before you do anything.

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