Best Commencement Advice 2024
Welcome to the Cutting Room Floor, a newsletter where I round up all my personal finance articles, put out exclusive content and interviews, and flag my favorite job listings from around LinkedIn.
Confession time: I'm a little obsessed with commencement season.
The whole notion of commencement speeches is fascinating to me. If you had to boil down all your years on this Earth, all the highs and lows, all the fun things and hard things, into a few key points -- what would you say? What have you really learned from your time on this planet?
What a monumental task. And you can't be long-winded about it -- you have to get straight to the fucking point, because there are thousands of kids in caps and gowns in the audience who are waiting for you to wrap it up so they can go party and start their lives.
I'm such a commencement geek that I even buy books compiling them all, like this one. Or some particularly terrific speeches are even published as standalones, like George Saunders' famous "Congratulations, By the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness".
So for this graduation season, I scoured around the nation for some of the best money- and career-related advice for young graduates as they launch out in life. Enjoy:
Thasunda Brown Duckett , CEO, TIAA
Location: Howard University
"Have the courage to pay yourself first. It may seem odd to be thinking about retirement when you’re just getting your undergraduate and graduate degrees … but I’m here to tell you it’s never too early.
Now – today – is the time to think about the power of investing, the power of saving, and I need all of you to start saving early because a dollar saved today is worth more than a dollar saved tomorrow.
Saving and investing for retirement as soon as you enter the workforce is the absolute best way to prepare for all the hopes and dreams that you want to accomplish – your firsts, your founding moments, and your fights.
This habit is what will help you take on all those passion projects that impact the world. You’ll have a better shot by making decisions early, and by maxing out your 401(k) when you start working.
Let me share a few stats to put this in perspective: According to the New York Federal Reserve, the median starting salary of a new college graduate is $60,000.
So with that in mind ... if at age 23, you start saving 10 percent of your salary each year, taking advantage of the power of compounding interest, then by age 67 you could have almost $2.4 million accumulated. That assumes 6 percent annual return, and 4 percent annual salary growth – not hard to imagine. Over. Two. Million. Dollars.
But time is of the essence, because if you wait, and don’t start saving that 10 percent of your salary until you’re 30, you’ll accumulate $515,000 LESS. Are you OK with leaving that money on the table? Of course not. You owe it to yourself to take it."
Jerry Seinfeld
Location: 美国杜克大学
"I can't imagine how sick you are of hearing about following your passion. I say, the hell with passion. Find something you can do, that would be great. If you try something and it doesn't work, that's okay too. Most things do not work. Most things are not good. You know this already.
Let go of this idea that you have to find this one great thing ... Just be willing to do your work as hard as you can with the ability you have ... Find fascination. Fascination is way better than passion.
I will give you my three real keys to life. No jokes in this part, okay? They are number one. Bust your ass. Number two. Pay attention. Number three. Fall in love.
Number one, you obviously already know. Whatever you're doing, I don't care if it's your job, your hobby, your relationship. Make an effort. Just pure stupid, no-real-idea-what-I'm-doing-here effort. Effort always yields a positive value. Even if the outcome of the effort is absolute failure of the desired result.
This is a rule of life. Just swing the bat and pray is not a bad approach to a lot of things.
Now, if you have been at this amazing place for four years and still have no idea what you like, what you're interested in, or what you want to do in life, you are the luckiest ones here. Those of you that think you know what you want to do are very likely wrong, and perhaps even overestimating your ability to do it. You have convinced yourself that you know who you are and what's going on in the world. You don't know either.
The less secure and confident you feel in the direction, the more surprises and excitement you will have in store. That's good. So the better the job you've done in finding a path for yourself, the more boring and predictable your life is going to be. If you're sitting here today completely confused, feeling lost, adrift, and totally abandoned, I say congratulations, you win the Duke commencement ceremonies of 2024. You are about to go on a hell of a ride."
Mike Sievert , CEO, T-Mobile
Location: 美国宾夕法尼亚大学 - 沃顿商学院
"Stoke your successes, instead of fighting your fires. In life and in business, pay less attention to trying to solve what’s not working, and more attention amplifying what is.?Double down on the things that are working.? Stoke your successes.
When it comes to career advice, for me, the phrase 'follow your passions' puts a little too much pressure on younger people to know what their passion is.?An easier hack is to figure out what’s working in your life, and do more of that.?Something you find you’re good at, where your contributions seem to come naturally.?Do more of it.?Get help and coaching on those things, not the problem areas.?Do even more, and get even better.?This is about following your competence.
I’ll promise you this:?You’ll find yourself enjoying the things that you feel yourself getting better and better at.?One of them might even become a passion."
Gary Vaynerchuk , CEO, VaynerMedia
Location: 美国纽约大学 - 斯特恩商学院
"The best part about the world and business is that it plays out. What I mean by that is, it’s like a game. There’s going to be a score, regardless of what you think right now as you sit here.
All of you are smart enough to know that there are going to be be twists and turns. You can't control timing. One of the esteemed gentlemen here said, 'They’re going into such a tough job market.' And I said to him, ‘Good!'
Let me tell you why I said ‘Good’ in that way. The fundamental thing in the world that leads to actual pure happiness and success is adversity. The number one thing most of you need is a punch to the face. (The parents like that!)
Let me explain 'punch to the face' … I mean actual adversity. I have incredible empathy for the Covid factor, and many other things. But what all of you are about to find out about the game, the real business game, is that it doesn’t care about your feelings -- it's just the game.
So to me, that excites me, because so many of you in here are about to find out if you are actually ready for this and excited about it. And I believe that many of you will be -- but you’re going to have to lean into things that you weren’t taught properly."
Suzy Welch , Author, Professor & Speaker
Location: 美国纽约大学 - 斯特恩商学院
"So the first way that you can expedite the world making room for you is this: Do not network. That's right, I said it. My class has already heard this many times. Don't network. Networking is terrible. I know they all tell you to network. Sorry, am I fired? OK, do not network. It's mercenary, it's transactional, and it doesn't work.
Here's what you have to do: You have to make friends instead. Make friends, and lots and lots of them. Because making friends is actually what works, okay? If you were to ask anybody who has been incredibly successful, how did you do it? They would say, I had a few good ideas, I had a ton of luck, and I had great friends.
Number two, the way to make room for yourself more quickly is, whatever you do, don't go looking for a mentor ... The idea that there's somebody on a stallion who's going to gallop in and sweep you up and make your career, clear out all the detours and make your career for you, that's a myth. It almost never happens. No one person is going to save your career.
Everybody is going to help your career because you can learn from everybody. Everybody knows something that you don't know."
领英推荐
______________________________________________________________________________________
Fun numerical tidbits from my overflowing inbox
$125,900: The nation's average 401(k) balance, according to new Q1 numbers from 富达 . That's up 6% in a single quarter, 16% in a year, and 42% in a decade. (The average IRA is around the same, at $127,745.) This is at the highest levels since 4Q 2021, so ... good news! Just remember that everyone thinks they're a genius after an extended bull market -- a rising tide lifts all boats, so don't go thinking that you're Jim Simons all of a sudden. You're not.
15: Number of days taken off last year by the average American worker, according to a new study by The Harris Poll . In fact 78% of people say they don't take their maximum number of days off, even though they're eligible for them. There's a big disconnect here: Companies may say all the right things, about mental health, the importance of family and taking breaks, etc. -- but workers are still terrified to take time off. People are the top of the corporate pyramid need to demonstrate the behavior of taking vacay themselves, otherwise it's not going to happen.
50%: Percentage of people who don't even know what a 529 college savings plan is, according to a new survey by Edward Jones . Since it's 5/29 Day as we speak ... this is not good! As a parent of a college kid who is right in the thick of it right now, I can vouch that such plans can be lifesavers when the bills start rolling in. Not only do you (usually) get state tax breaks on the front end, you get investment growth along the way, and then tax-free withdrawals on the back end when used for educational purposes. And if you don't end up using it all, new regs mean you can roll what's left over into a Roth IRA. So if you've got a little one, just do it, and thank me later.
______________________________________________________________________________________
"Oh the Places You'll Go - With a Strong Dollar in Tow," Katherine Hamilton , The Wall Street Journal
"How the 'Harvard of Trading' Ruined Thousands of Young People's Lives," Alice Kantor , Bloomberg Businessweek
______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
Stay tuned for next week, when we will take a look at Generation Boomerang -- aka that college grad who has moved back home and is eating out of your fridge at this very moment.
Hey, don't blame them -- have you seen the price of housing lately??
As always, feel free to get in touch via Twitter (here), or email ([email protected]), or by DM on LinkedIn -- to suggest story ideas, or ask money questions, or hire me as a freelancer, or sponsor this newsletter, or broadcast your job opening.
Until next time!
-CT
Chief Heart Officer at VaynerX (Chief People Officer/CHRO)
9 个月Loving this recap and highlights Chris Taylor Thank you!
Bloomberg Journalist
9 个月Thanks for recommending my BusinessWeek feature as a good read, Chris Taylor! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-05-14/the-stock-market-multilevel-marketing-company-for-teens?srnd=undefined
CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER?, CFS?, AIF?, Investment Advisor @ LPL Financial
9 个月I too like reading/ hearing commencement speeches! Thanks...
newsletters at The New Yorker
9 个月Thanks for mentioning the Google piece, Chris!