The Financial Upside of Not Following Your Dreams

Personal finance journalist Jonathan Clements suggests that the usual advice to young adults to follow your dreams—in choosing your major and your extracurricular activities—isn't necessarily the best advice. The probem is that it usually takes a little while for people to figure out what their life's passions are, and young adults don't always get it right the first time. So rather than spending your early working career in a low-paying "dream" job, he suggests you might as well spend those formative young-adult years socking away a lot of money. Such a strategy will ward off the discouraging feeling that young adults can often have, because at that stage in life, the only way their savings can grow significantly is through their own contributions to their savings.