People working towards financial independence love a benchmark to work towards.

Should you be saving more, investing differently, buying a house, starting a business, slowing down,

are you on track?

Are you really behind?

This is what we're going to be discussing today.

All of the financial milestones that you should be hitting in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s,

and your 50s.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast.

My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my ahead of schedule co-host, Scott Trench.

Thanks, Minnie.

Great to be here.

Excited to talk about the track record of achievements that we think are good milestones, good benchmarks for serious

students of personal finance who start early, right? So this is going to be, you know, not for the

median America. This is going to be for the account probably top 10 percent, top 25 percent

of wealth builders over their careers who start in their 20s pursuing financial independence.

And as a caveat, these are milestones we think you should be hitting

if you start financial independence in your 20s. If you're watching this and you're behind,

can you catch up? Absolutely. Don't let these parameters discourage you. Instead of thinking

of them as age milestones, think about them in terms of quartiles or percentages along the

journey to financial independence from wherever you're starting. All right, with that, let's jump in to the major milestones you should hit in your 20s. Scott, since you are closer to your 20s than I am, why don't you run through what we should be doing in our 20s, what we recommend our listeners be doing in their 20s? Yeah, so I think if you're looking to achieve financial independence early in life, then the point of your 20s or the focus of your 20s should be to build a strong foundation and exit your 20s with really strong momentum on that journey to financial independence. So it's not about getting rich in your 20s, although some people do that and are able to achieve that. But for the vast majority of people, I think it's about building the habits, skills, and trajectory that will move you toward financial independence. So this is a foundation, not the finish line. And we've got a couple of milestones. So the first one here is going to be to learn an investing order of operations and to automate investing according to that, right? That order of operations that we like best here at Bigger Pockets Money is to build a $1,000 emergency reserve, tackle your high interest rate debt, take the 401k match, and if your employer offers something like an employee stock purchase plan or other free money to take advantage of that, then to fully fund your emergency reserve, which would be three to six months of expenses, to max out your HSA, to fully fund the 401k, to max out your Roth IRA,

max your 529s. If they apply, they may not apply in your 20s, but they may apply in your 30s,

depending on how your family situation evolves. And then from there to begin aftertax investing

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