Young Money by Jack Raines
Young Money – the new book by my friend Jack Raines – is subtitled A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties.
Ostensibly it’s a manual of sorts for how to manage life and career during the first decade after finishing college.
In fact, I found it just as applicable to me in my early 60s.
That’s because the central theme is that there is a time and place for everything and also commensurate costs and rewards.
The idea that you can’t do everything whenever you want is deeply unsettling and out of step with our current culture.
And yet that’s Jack’s central message. There are some things he reminds us that can only be experienced when you are young and broke and crashing on a stranger’s couch in Lisbon.
The book is a meditation on tradeoffs. The fear of missing out on parties in Ibiza balanced by the awareness that he needs to build a career to support a family.
A great deal of the enjoyment of reading the book is that Jack is an enjoyable guy. He’s easy to hang with on the page and in real life.
I met Jack several years ago. I had discovered his Young Money blog and reached out via a DM. We got coffee and he ended up teaching me more than I taught him.
One of the things about reading the book at my age is how vividly it brought back insecurities I felt at age 22. The urgency to find a job. The fear you’re behind everyone.
Jack argues taking risks in your 20s is exactly what you should do. Eventually the window closes.
Early on Jack reminds the reader that this journey inevitably ends in Death so it’s up to us to make the most of the time we have
In that sense, your 60s are as good a time as your 20s to take stock. You’ve made choices and accomplished some things, but there is still time.
There are also experiences that can only happen at that point in life.
Like any good book, Young Money can be distilled to a basic premise but not fully appreciated without reading the whole thing. There are so many delightful passages.
By the end of the book, Jack has made some career and life choices he feels good about.
I told him I hope he writes another book each decade.
We would all benefit from his wisdom
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BRIEF OBSERVATIONS
HOW TO FIND A JOB: This tweet by Jeff Weinstein, product head at Stripe, is a reminder of how much the work of hiring has changed. Oftentimes the best opportunities are scattered online for you to reach out to, not in a LinkedIn job box.
START TELLING YOUR STORY: Ben Sharf reminds us that posting online has this benfit that it makes you visible in general and brings you opportunities. That is one way the world has changed – its less about targetted hunting and more about general awareness.
CUSTOMER SERVICE: Love this example of Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas responding online to a post by Gergely Orosz, the founder of the Practical Engineer newsletter. This is what customer response looks like these days. You have to monitor the platforms where people are talking about your company.
IT’S NOT ALL THE SAME: There is a trope on the internet that says everywhere you go it’s the same. Here is the counterfactual, the Cafe Trieste coffee shop in San Francisco.
CITY LIGHTS: Obligatory tourist shot in front of the legendary City Lights bookstore in San Francisco.
Please reach out if you have any thoughts about today’s newsletter. I enjoy hearing from readers. Send me a message if you want to talk or meet up if you are in NYC.
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