This manifesto is a one-stop shop for those who are busy and just want the bare bones – there is something powerful about boiling things down into a page or two of simple instructions. It’s what I want my nieces and nephews to know and internalize as they get started in life, the things I wish I knew when I was their age. It might be helpful to an 80-year-old, too, but setting the right course at the start of a long journey is powerful. Even small adjustments at the start add up over time. Compounding is not only limited to investing. All good habits, however small, will compound over time, slowly at first, then accelerating until it explodes with positive benefits. The opposite is also true – bad habits, whether in money, health, or life, will eventually catch up and you’ll find yourself in a bad way, wondering what happened.

Anyway, enough of the preamble. Here’s the manifesto.

• Build your human capital – work hard at school and work, and choose a practical, well-paying career – then maximize your income. Without a large enough income, there’s nothing left after you pay the bills and you’ll struggle to save and invest. Regarding a college major (or a trade) and your career, find something that you are curious about, feel drawn towards, and interests you. Something that comes easy and that you have a knack for – but is also practical and has a robust job market that will pay you well. Finding this balance is not easy for everyone.

• Avoid or minimize student debt. For example, go two years at a community college and get your prerequisites out of the way, then transfer to an in-state school. Don’t give a second thought about what someone might think if you do this – if you are pleasant, show up on time, are willing to learn, and can think critically and write well, no one will give a rip where you went to school. I worked with about 500 people at my old gig, and I had no clue where anyone went to school, nor did I care so long as they were nice and got the job done.

• On day one of your first job, automate your savings using direct deposit and funnel all savings to kill your credit card debt, if any.

• Once that’s done, build a 3-to-6-month rainy day fund of bare bones expenses in a taxable account (money market or savings account) – again, automate your savings using direct deposit. Three months if your job is stable and secure, six if it’s not.

• After that, every payday, money should flow into your 401K, IRA, and taxable accounts simultaneously via payroll deduction and direct deposit – if financial independence [FI] is a priority, about half in a taxable account and half in your retirement accounts. If you have student loan debt that’s cheap, say, less than 5% interest, just pay it down over the life of the loan. If it’s more than 5%, you may be better off directing all your savings to pay off the loan early. Once your loan is paid, start funneling money into your retirement and taxable accounts.

• Build your lifestyle around what remains. Start with saving 30% of your gross income and ramp up to 40% to 50% as your career grows. It’s doable with a decent income coupled with a modest lifestyle.

• Keep a modest lifestyle and minimize your recurring expenses, in particular housing and transportation, which tend to be the biggest. Once your basic needs are met, and you have a few creature comforts, know that spending more and more on stuff won’t make you any happier. The money you save is priceless – you’ll avoid most of the money stress of life, gain control and autonomy, and avoid most of the b.s. that others need to endure because they spend every last dollar they earn and have no choice but to take it, feeling trapped, boxed-in, and miserable, with no end in sight. The freedom that comes from a growing pile of “F-You” money is worth any amount of stuff that money could buy, times 1,000. This may be the most important advice on this site, so I’ll repeat it: Once your basic needs are met, and you have a few creature comforts, more and more stuff won’t make you any happier. But freedom and autonomy will.

• What makes us happy then? It’s not more and more spending. Create a purpose in life that gets you out of bed in the morning, surround yourself with friends and family, get out in nature, exercise, be curious about the world, take care of your mental and physical health, cultivate a creative hobby, build a quiet, comfortable sanctuary to live in, get really good at something and build a career of meaningful and productive work as best you can, and never, ever stop learning.

• The combination of a decent, growing income and a modest lifestyle is the key to FI, because you’ll be able to save and invest the (growing) difference between income and expenses, and you’ll only need a modest amount of passive income to cover expenses in retirement.

• Resist inflating your lifestyle with every pay raise and windfall and ignore the Joneses.

• Invest your savings in a handful of low-cost index funds – diversify into large and small U.S. and international stocks, and U.S. treasury and corporate bonds. Three index funds should do it: (1) Total U.S. Stock Market Index Fund, (2) Total International Stock Index Fund, and (3) Total Bond Market Index Fund, with an asset allocation anywhere between 100% stocks (with a 75/25 U.S. to International split) and a 70/30 stock/bond split, depending on your ability to withstand the occasional (temporary) market decline without losing much sleep. The key is to hook your wagon to the world economy at the lowest possible cost (with total market index funds), invest every two weeks, and then sit on your hands during the market’s inevitable ups and downs. It’s that simple.

• If you want to just set and forget, an asset allocation of 70% stock and 30% bond/cash should serve you well over the years. Rebalance your stock/bond split if your asset allocation drifts by 5%.

• Once the above are in place, just put your head down and continue to work hard and save and invest every two weeks. Ignore the stock market as best you can – it’s just noise over a period of days, weeks, months, even years. Think in terms of decades.

• Know that from time to time, the stock market will decline and you will lose money. Sometimes, a lot of money. But, based on the 150+ years of market history, these losses should only be temporary. Market declines are a part of investing – we just need to learn to live with it and ride out the downturns. As long as the world economy continues to grow so eventually will your investments.

• Avoid actively-managed mutual funds, individual stocks, and money managers.

• Keep your investment costs as low as possible. Remember that you pay your rent and buy groceries with after-tax, after-expense market returns. DIY investing in a handful of tax-efficient, low-cost index funds should do the trick.

• Think hard before buying a house. Like a new pair of shoes, it’s a purchase, not an investment, and will be a money sink that will divert lots of cash from your investments early in your career. And it’s the money you invest early in life that will do most of the heavy lifting down the road, due to the exponential power of compound interest, and you only get one shot at it. If buying a house is a top priority for you, then by all means. But you should at least be aware of the tradeoffs.

• If you can’t afford to write a check if something bad happens, you’ll need insurance. But you won’t need much if you follow this manifesto: always keep high-deductible, catastrophic health insurance; max out your disability insurance through your employer until you’re at FI; if you have dependents, buy term life insurance until they’re no longer dependent on you, and always run screaming from permanent life insurance and other “investments” offered by insurance companies; if you don’t have a lot of stuff in the first place, your home/renters/auto insurance will be minimal.

• You’ll be at FI once your investments equal about 25 times your annual expenses, which assumes an annualized 4% return after adjusting for inflation. This assumes you’ll never work again and also ignores other passive income streams like Social Security, and life insurance proceeds and inheritances, if they apply. For example, if your expenses are $40,000/year, you’ll need about $1MM in your portfolio ($40,000 x 25). This will throw off $40,000/year, inflation adjusted, forever without significant risk of depleting your portfolio.

• Once retired, set aside three years worth of expenses (net of dividend income and other passive income streams) in short-term bonds, a money market fund, and/or cash. This three-year fund is there to avoid the need to sell stocks to pay rent and buy groceries during a market downturn. Count this three-year fund towards the bond/cash allocation of your portfolio.

• Once you reach FI, your investment earnings will now pay your bills and a whole new world will open up to you. Be a beach/ski bum for a while, hike in yonder mountains, start a small, low-risk business, go part-time, or continue working full-time if you like, without the burden of money worries.

• Take care of yourself, above all. Take a walk or go for a swim every day. Go with the flow as best you can. Floss. Sleep 8 hours every night. Build a tribe of friends and family. If you have chronic stress, make structural changes to fix the root cause. Create a purpose in life. Get out in nature. Turn off/minimize screens. Avoid sugar, refined carbs, and seed oils. Eating these will spike your blood sugar and insulin levels, make you fat, and increase your risk for nearly every chronic disease of civilization.

• Another considerations: your brain chemicals, and we’ll focus on two. The “Future-Oriented” chemical dopamine, and the suite of “Here-and-Now” chemicals. Dopamine makes you want things you don’t have – it’s a future-oriented, planning and anticipation chemical. It makes you want more, more, more and it’s never satisfied if you let it run wild. Once you get what you want, dopamine turns off (its job is done, after all) and you’ll feel let down unless you cultivate the “Here-and-Now” chemicals (serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin). These are present-oriented towards the stuff that is right in front of you. They make you feel calm, at ease with the world, content, and connected to the people, places, and things around you.

• The problem is two-fold, however: (1) when dopamine is too high, the “Here-and-Now” chemicals decline; and (2) our brains are flooded with dopamine all day every day from: smartphone scrolling, Internet surfing, social media, constant music or podcasts, television, video games, overwork, junk food, news, gambling, shopping, casual sex, caffeine, booze, pot, any and all other recreational drugs. The smartphone thing has gotten insane – go anywhere in public and look around, everyone is constantly staring at their phone, scrolling. When you see this kind of mass behavior, it’s an addiction. This all keeps us from the here-and-now, and like any addictive substance will leave us feeling crummy. Like everything else in life, we need a balance. We need some dopamine to get us out of bed in the morning and get us to do the hard things to make a better future, but we also need just as much or more of the here-and-now stuff. So, not to nag but do your level best to moderate and/or eliminate all those dopamine-flooding activities I listed above and add many more activities that will allow your “Here-and-Now” chemicals to recover.

• Some suggestions: exercise every day, hard enough that you’re tired in a good way; throw your smart phone in your drawer and only use it for emergencies; turn off all screens except for maybe a t.v. show or a movie at night for a little down time; eat an animal based diet: nutrient-dense, bioavailable, and with minimal plant defense chemicals and anti-nutrients – 100% grass fed beef, organ meats, bacon, pasture-raised eggs, some fruit, honey on occasion, fermented dairy such as traditional cheese, yogurt, and kefir, and fermented vegetables like sauerkraut and traditional pickles; avoid refined sugar, refined carbs, and seed oils; drink in moderation; avoid drugs at all costs; get out in nature; read a book in a quiet room; stare into a bonfire at night; turn off the news; write; get 8 hours of sleep every night, from 10 pm to 6 am; meditate; cook; better yet, cook with friends; find a community (church; Cross-Fit; hobby group; volunteer group; local bar or restaurant; a tennis or golf club; etc.); travel, near or far; learn a hobby and work with your hands on something creative; spend time with family and friends; help others as best you can. Basically, anything that does not involve sitting, scrolling, or a screen – get out of the digital and into the analog world. This will lower your dopamine and the “Here-and-Now” chemicals will kick in and allow you to appreciate and be content with who you are, where you are, with the people you’re with.