I would have pinned the average age on here closer to 4 than 40.
At your age I worked on building lifetime wealth one small step at a time. This means doing things that get you ahead both at 5 years, 10 years 20 years and the rest of your life. Figure out how to work a job that pays well enough to payoff a house and stash some money aside at the same time as being able to fit in a few long weekends for hunting. Dont take a corporate salary job they will suck your life away. Buy as many things as you can at the bottom of the depreciation curves. An example of this would be a vintage hunting rifle for $300 with a scope on sale for $200 that will outlive you instead of putting $1,800 into a rifle and scope you will sell for $700 in 3 years when you change your mind on the caliber. Im still hunting with a shotgun and rifle that I bought each for $300 new in college. Heck im still shooting ammunition i bought on sale after the obama bubble burst. This applies to all gear really. Every year here facebook market place is full of guys who have never hunted, watched tv, went to scheels and signed up for the store credit card. They then buy the best of everything, go hunting twice, scare off the elk, and assume they need expensive lease land to see elk. By the end of the season they are taking what ever anyone will offer on that twice used gear. Dont look past hunting shops in small mountain towns. When they switch from summer hours to off season hours they are in the slow down and hurting for cash. This is the time to trade or buy. Another easy way to grt ahead and have more money for hunting is to buy an old pickup that runs well for $5k instead of spending $60k on a new f150 that you might out grow in a few years. The savings you pay on insurance alone will finance your entire hunting season. Instead of putting money into a 401k and watching it crash, find the banks paying 4%+ on cds and use the money to pay off a house. these are the sorts of things ive noticed people do who are truly well off at 30 and 40 vs those who are sinking in debt and have no free time in their 40s. once you understand the financial concept of buy back your time, and realize how to calculate how extra spending on things that dont break you, equate to how many extra days a year working, this process becomes a light at the end of the tunnel. Last year i put my whole tax return into a cd. Ive put every dime of over time pay into cds all year. The interest paid so far this year on those pays for all of the tags and ammunition i will use hunting this year and then some. The money i save annually on insurance alone now that i sold my newer pick up and bought one from 20 years ago that runs just as well, is enough to pay for fuel for a round trip to the mountains for me every single weekend of the summer and fall and then some. And i do not have time to make it out that much.
