As I was reading “A Teenager’s Guide on How to Get Rich,” I kept thinking that someone should have given it to me a long, long time ago. When we are young, after all, it is likely that we can put the author’s advice into action. Once we are meshed into jobs and marriages, that window of freedom closes.
The advice to (1) find out what you are good at, (2) match it with what you enjoy, (3) and find a way to make money doing it is one of the book’s major points. “A Teenager’s Guide” is, at root, a call to entrepreneurship, and that is a good thing. Many influential media voices discredit commerce as materialistic distraction (or worse, soul-destroying). Young people need to hear an alternative perspective, and this book provides it.
It also offers some counseling advice I still need to consider. The author discusses the concept of reframing, the idea that subjective events can be considered good or bad, and that it is healthiest to see the good. Teenagers are not immune from doom scrolling, so this reminder to be positive is more critical than ever.
The book is easy to read and full of concrete examples of how to act. The author includes a chapter on cryptocurrencies, finally, and sounds an especially careful note: “It can crash at a second’s notice and when I say crash, I mean CRASH [my caps in place of italics]. People have been left with nothing.” The author never encourages any extreme measures, but his caution here is especially wise.