Nearly half of Americans aged 60 and older can't afford their daily needs, the National Council on Aging estimates. Over 3,800 older Americans reached out to Business Insider to share their financial regrets and the lessons they wish they had learned earlier. Six shared advice on saving, investing, and preparing for retirement.
CNBC, BlackRock, Brendan McDermid/Reuters
What does it take to get to the top? Well, who better to ask than those who are already there?
Navigating a career can be challenging, especially in a rapidly changing economy. But those in senior leadership roles on Wall Street have cracked that code, climbing the ranks through their decades of experience.
Because these top Wall Street money managers, economists, and strategists are among those best-positioned to offer career advice, BI asked them in recent interviews for the top pieces of wisdom they would pass along to those just starting out.
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Takeaway: Prioritize going to the office
"Show up in the office," Kostin said. "I can't imagine how a young person is going to actually absorb all the dimensionality of what's happening in the client relationships and with their work and colleagues and not be in the office."
Kostin's advice is simple, but it comes at a time when a massive debate is raging about various companies' RTO policies. In Kostin's view, working in person is critical to developing your career early on.
Morgan Stanley
Takeaway: Bet on yourself, and be OK with being wrong
"You've got to be willing to go take a stand on stuff, whether it's in a meeting, with people you report to, pointing out things that you don't agree with, kind of making a firm stance," Wilson said.
Wilson says this boils down to being open to taking on "personal risk," or the chance that the argument you're making could be wrong β or right.
"On Wall Street, personal risk often means taking contrarian views because that's where the real money is made and accepting the idea that you're going to be wrong along the way. I think ultimately how you deal with those consequences will determine whether you're successful or not," he added.
CNBC
Takeaway: Understand how technology is trending
As the biggest firms in the world pour money into AI development, Rieder said that those who are early in their careers should think about how the economy might look in the years ahead as robotics and AI increasingly augment our lives.
"I think the world's changing faster than anybody really recognizes," Rieder, who oversees $3 trillion, said.
"For young people today, understand where that's going to happen and how you take advantage of that β I think it's a really, really big deal," he continued. "I think we've left status quo, and we're moving to a whole new era."
Anna Wong
Takeaway: Be curious despite consensus, and come to a conclusion only after stress-testing it
"Constantly being curious, even if there might not be an obvious payoff to it," Wong, who previously worked at the Federal Reserve, said for her first piece of advice. "If investing is about finding what the market has not priced in, then what people have not priced in usually are in the details. For me, I have learned to be attuned to that little voice inside my head that sounds a tiny alarm in cases where I am about to make some broad assumptions."
Second, when it comes to forecasting, Wong said to consider if a conclusion is still valid after considering multiple arguments and points of view.
"The way I decide on whether to make an out-of-consensus call is to see whether it's possible to arrive at a forecast in many different ways," she said. "Most times I take as the forecast the middle of those ways β and that could at times be totally out of consensus, and at times be smack in the middle of consensus."
One of Wong's current out-of-consensus calls is that there's a 60% chance the US economy is headed toward or already in a recession.
JPMorgan
Takeaway: Treat every job as a learning opportunity, even if it's not what you see yourself doing long-term
Landing your dream job at the very start of your professional life is a rare occurrence. More often than not, you may find yourself at a job that isn't a great fit or isn't aligned with your long-term goals.
However, there's a lot to be learned while figuring out your career. "Do your hardest at the job you're currently at, even if it's not the job you love," Feroli said. "Whatever you're doing now will help you get to where you want to be."
Research Affiliates LLC
Takeaway: Enjoy what you do, and challenge widely accepted beliefs
"First piece of advice: Do what you love," Arnott said. "Because if you don't do what you love, you probably won't be very good at it. And if you do what you love, you're going to have fun even if you're not wildly successful."
He continued: "Second: Never accept conventional wisdom as true. Always be curious. I've made a career out of listening to conventional wisdom and thinking, 'Gosh, has anyone tested that?' And I go and test it, and half the time it turns out to be true β and fine β and half the time it turns out to be a myth."
Invesco, PIMCO, and Charles Schwab all use Arnott's alternative indexes as the bases of various mutual funds and ETFs they offer. Arnott recently told BI that market consensus around AI could be too bullish, and large-cap growth stocks may be in for a rough patch.
BlackRock
Takeaway: Take time to explore interests outside of work
It may seem counterintuitive, but the key to Li's career success has been making time for new experiences outside work.
"Don't only spend time on the things immediately useful to you in your seat right now," Li said. "The world is so unpredictable. Other things you could absorb may end up being helpful to you in ways that you don't even know."
Hobbies that she's picked up over the years, such as learning about cryptocurrency or studying Italian, have opened doors in her life that she could not have foreseen.
Li believes having diverse experiences is especially important in a post-AI world: "These days, I really force myself to experience things that have nothing to do with my job because it trains my brain in ways that my job doesn't. Who knows, it could become useful in the future and in an environment where we just don't know where the future is," she said.
Kathleen Elkins
My dad doesn't like spending money β and he wouldn't mind me writing that.
He also doesn't like having excessive things. He keeps his space neat and tidy and buys only what he needs. An early lesson he instilled was the difference between a "want" and a "need," and he taught my brothers and me to spend only on the latter.
Gift-giving presents a challenge to my minimalist, money-conscious father, as it often involves spending money and spending money on things. He could opt not to buy us anything, of course, but he's more of a softie than he lets on.
His solution for his three kids, at least, is what he's coined the "go-to gift."
The concept is this: For any gift-giving event, such as a birthday or Christmas, he'll buy one "go-to gift" only after the receiver has successfully pitched him on why he should buy it.
I can pitch anything, within reason, but I have to convince him that I'll use it or that it'll add value to my life. As he likes to say, "Anything goes β¦ as long as it's utilitarian."
His strategy is useful for him and me: He feels better about how he's spending his money, and I have to spend time thinking about what I value and what items or experiences could have an additive effect.
In 2021, ahead of a particularly busy road racing schedule, including the Boston and New York City marathons, I pitched him on a pair of carbon-plate running shoes. One year, he subsidized my gym membership for six months. This year, he's buying me a case of tennis balls. The activity-focused gifts are a relatively easy sell for my dad, who values health and movement just as much as I do.
He hasn't flat-out turned anything down yet, but when I asked for a pair of high-quality joggers one year, he had a few follow-up questions. That was in 2017, and I like to remind him that I still own and wear them seven years later.
Around the holidays, when his gift-giving tradition is particularly top of mind, it reminds me to spend consciously β to think before I swipe my credit card and ask myself why I'm purchasing what I'm about to purchase. Sometimes, I can justify it; other times, I can't.
The second money lesson folded into his tradition is to buy quality. Rather than trying to "save money" in the moment by buying the cheapest version of an item, I'd rather spend extra on something that will last longer and save me in the long run β something like the joggers that are still kicking after seven years and hundreds of wash cycles.
Courtesy of Deel
This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Aaron Goldsmid, a 44-year-old from San Francisco about mistakes he made early in his career. Business Insider verified his previous employment at Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I had a somewhat atypical journey into tech. My parents were Broadway performers, and I was the first person in my family to go to college.
I became interested in computer science in high school and broke into tech straight after studying computer science at Columbia.
Through the college recruiting process, I got a job at Microsoft in 2002 and spent nearly six years there, largely working in the security space.
During the 2010s, I held tech roles at Amazon from 2011 to 2012, Facebook from 2012 to 2014, and Twitter from 2014 to 2015, as well as working at several smaller companies.
I've been fortunate to work at some of the most iconic tech companies during interesting periods. I've taken tools from each opportunity and now apply them to my current job as the head of product for Deel, a payroll and HR platform.
Because my parents didn't have 9-to-5s, I sometimes struggled to determine how to succeed in the corporate world. I didn't have anyone telling me about things like checking boxes to get to the next level in my career and how frictional relationships can impact the workplace.
Now that I have two decades of career experience under my belt, I understand how to avoid some of the mistakes I made early on and plan a career more intentionally.
When I informally coach folks about careers, I usually advise them to think two jobs ahead.
Instead of thinking about what you dislike about your current job and whether your next role will solve that, think two jobs ahead. I tell early career techies to ask themselves how their next role will get them to the role after that.
After leaving Microsoft, I moved from Seattle back to New York, where I grew up. I wanted to secure a job in the city, and because the tech scene wasn't as mature in New York in the early 2000s, I took a role at NBCUniversal, helping build their video streaming service.
I did good work in that role, but I'm not sure it necessarily advanced my career. I then joined a startup because they gave me a very fancy title, but I ended up leaving before completing one year because I felt there were problems at the company, and I realized I'd chased a title instead of thinking things through.
As I advanced in my career, I knew I needed to focus on the skills I needed to acquire rather than the prestige of a position.
When I joined Kiva, a microfinance nonprofit, in 2018, I didn't view it as a permanent job. I took the job to gain skills outside a product and engineering capacity.
During my time there, I learned about business development and communicated with UN officials and central bank leaders. Not only did I get to experience the challenges faced by other teams, but I also got to know different contours of the product, business, and customer experience.
When I moved into my next role, a general manager at the communications company Twilio, I had a broader scope of experience and could operate more effectively.
You can accelerate quickly into a senior role, but taking a less fancy role and diversifying your experience might mean your upside long-term is much higher. If you're thinking two jobs ahead, evaluate what opportunities will help you more in the long run. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Early in my career, because I didn't know how corporations worked, it was easy to think that everyone in a company was aligned and felt the same way, which is foolish.
When I worked at Twitter on their growth team, my job was to play in other people's sandboxes and tweak things. The company was having a difficult growth time, and we had to be hyper-focused on hitting our OKRs. This sometimes came at the detriment of my team's relationship with the rest of the product engineering org.
We had to step into other team's territories and move quickly. I felt I needed to hit a goal at all costs, and the problem was "at all costs." We often weren't on the same page as that team and had to go back and repair relationships afterward. In hindsight, I needed to do a better job of explaining why we were doing something from the outset.
Not everyone is trying to achieve a company's mission in the same way, and so by investing in relationships, you can more clearly communicate how you align with others in a company. Even if they don't align with you, they'll respect your process.
Early in my career, I didn't have a role model in the corporate environment, so I questioned what "good" looked like and how I should show up.
Folks who are early in their career will often look at people who they think are successful and think, "I want to be just like them."
But sometimes, early-career workers have a hard time distinguishing the reasons for a person's success from their bad habits. They might not know things that the company has been willing to work around or that hold that person back.
Early in my career, I over-indexed on emulating senior leaders. For example, I'd see some of them making sweeping statements like "This is the future, or, this isn't the future." They can get away with that because they've proven themselves, but I'd do the same, and it would fall on deaf ears. I hadn't yet earned that level of credibility and still needed to "show my work" before I earned that trust.
As a senior leader at Deel, I'm very conscious about how I present myself to early career folks. In larger meetings, I remind myself that there will be people on the call who view my role through a limited set of interactions. I don't want to pass on any bad behavior or shortcomings for them to emulate.
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