Your window to get rich is rapidly closing

When you’re in your 20s, you’re often told that you have plenty of time to figure things out. That this is a decade of exploration. To not worry too much because things always work out.

If your goal is to find a career you enjoy, work a 9-5 for 40 years, and comfortably retire, the above advice is true. If your goal is to be rich before your knees hurt getting out of bed, it definitely isn’t.

First, let’s quantify what “being rich” means. According to a Charles Schwab survey, you need a net worth of at least $2.2 million to be “wealthy”. That’s a lot of money, but it’s not completely mind-boggling, especially when you consider that it’s net worth and not pure paper.

However, if you define the rich as the top 1%, then we start getting into mind-boggling numbers. The IRS says you need to make $540,009 per year to be in the 1%. The Economic Policy Institute has it at $819,234 per year. Sheeesh.

The only “regular” careers that have a shot of consistently reaching these numbers are those in finance. You can easily be pulling in half a mill a year by your early 30s.

But finance, especially the finance with the potential for big bucks, isn’t exactly a career you can just pivot into. To land a job at a Goldman, you need to have a math-based or economics degree from a very good school. You need to have connections. You need to do internships. It’s a whole process that aspiring employees plot out from their high-school days.

So you’ll have to do something to make yourself more competitive. That probably means business school. Which means a year dedicated to studying and applying, because if you don’t get into a good one you might as well not even go. Two years in school that you’re not able to work. And at least $200,000 in costs. All in all, you could easily be looking at a $500,000 bill when you take into account the opportunity cost of not working for two years.

Let’s say you’re 25 when you decide that you want to go to business school because you don’t want to be poor anymore. From 25-26 you have to focus on studying for the GMAT and applying for schools, and from 26-28 you’re a full-time student. Your reward is being $500,000 in the hole, and a job that burns out even 22-year-olds with much more energy than you, and that’s if you can convince a big bank to take you instead of the 22-year-old.

But, if you stick with it, you’ll be making 1% type money in the next 10-12 years. Being dumb rich at 40 isn’t a bad consolation.

However, everybody knows that doing finance will make you rich. So there must be a reason you didn’t go down this route in the first place. Maybe you hate finance. Maybe you don’t want to sell your soul to Goldman Sachs. Maybe you don’t want to work 100-hour weeks. Whatever it is, do you really think it’ll be better doing it at 28 rather than 22?

Of course you wouldn’t. You’re going to be absolutely miserable.

If you’re going to work 100-hour weeks, it might as well be at something you enjoy. And if you’re a mid-to-late 20s person not already in finance, the only thing that possibly intersects between “something you enjoy” and “will make you rich” is starting a business.

So go do it and give yourself a chance to make it. If you fail, so what? The comfortable path isn’t going anywhere.