$75,000 is an underestimate.  If you enlist in the Armed Forces for a three-year tour of duty, and you never make it past the rank of Private E2, your gross earnings will be just over $75,000 dollars.  You would have to be a complete failure to fail to make E4 in three years.

But let’s go with $75,000.00 to make the math easy for your camp counselor.  I mean high school counselor.

Granted, you will have to pay income taxes on that, but your friends in college will be struggling just to earn a bit of spending money working.  They’ll only be allowed to work part time, at jobs that will never prepare them for their chosen career field.

If you listen to an old man’s advice, you will invest the first thousand dollars you earn while on Active Duty in a reputable technology mutual fund.  Why?  Because if I had invested just $1,000.00 in the best performing mutual fund of the last thirty years, Fidelity Select’s Software & IT Services fund, it would be worth $1,023,000.00 today.

Read that number out loud to yourself and tell me if it isn’t worth investing today.  Investing in the market is like purchasing a lottery ticket gauranteed to win, just later down the road.

Listen to me, not what you are being taught in school.  You live in the most miraculous economy in human history. The Rule of Law has produced an investment marketplace where the biggest idiot in the world can emerge a millionaire if they just invest and let it ride.

Do not be an idiot.

Take the first thousand dollars you earn, open an account with a reputable mutual fund, and invest it in a technology sector in which you have confidence.  If you don’t have confidence in any particular sector, you are just being honest with yourself.  Mutual Fund companies hire experts to make their investment decisions and they will always make better choices than you or I.

Mind you, if you listen to me, and the only thing you do is invest the first $1,000.00 you earn while on Active Duty, you are destined to be a millionaire later in life, when financial independence matters most.

But you will still have a lot of cash your friends from high school will not have.  $74,000.00 more.

And get this, you will not have any expenses and they will.  They will have to buy clothes, pay rent, pay for transportation, pay for healthcare, and dental, and optical.  Meals.  Let’s not forget meals.  Let’s also not forget spending thousands on books.

Did I mention the Army doesn’t charge for the books?

In other words, everything you earn after taxes is Disposable Income.  The Armed Forces will provide you with all the uniforms you need, including socks and underwear, feed you three hot meals every day (more if you’re still hungry), and provide housing on base at no charge.  Medical, dental and optical all included.

In other words, you will not have to pay a single cent for your creature requirements.

In the Armed Forces you learn real economics, not rhetorical economics taught in public schools.  Public schools will teach you economics is all about what you earn (or don’t earn).  In the Armed Forces, you will learn there are two ways to become wealthy: Earn more or require less.

Do both and you win the game faster.

The average American After Tax Income is $44,000.00 per household.  If you are single, you are still in the household.  From that starting figure every American household must pay for their creature requirements.  Members of the Armed Forces do not.  Army pay may not seem like much, but what doesn’t show up on your pay stub is all the money you will not have to spend.

Do not look down your nose at a Private E2’s pay.

And trust me, unless you are a lazy, dumb brick, you are going to advance in the ranks.  After six years of Active-Duty service, or, at about the time your friends are just graduating from Graduate School and looking for their first career position, you will be completing your military career with gross wages nearing $175,000 dollars.

And that is if you never advance beyond the rank of Corporal.

Remember, becoming wealthy is not about what you earn, it is about what you do not spend.

Imagine, then, instead of investing only one thousand dollars in a technology mutual fund, you invested a third of your after-tax earnings.  Assume taxes and youthful stupidity will deprive you of half of that $175,000.00.  That still leaves you with $87,500.00.  Now assume you somehow managed to blow $43,750.00 on fun and games.

That leaves you with 40K to invest in that mutual fund we are talking about.

Fidelity Select’s Software & IT Services fund is currently making 27.79% per year.  A $40,000.00 investment would return $12,158.13 given last year’s performance.

Just let that $40,000.00 ride and you have $1,000.00 a month to spend – for life.

Or, better still, get a job and let all your annual earnings ride!  Your investment portfolio will grow exponentially.  If I had invested $40,000.00 in Fidelity Select’s Software & IT Services fund after being discharged from the Army in 1984, it would be worth $23,042,000 today.

Your friends in college will never, ever, under any circumstances emerge from college or university with $40,000.00 to invest in anything.  Your friends will all emerge from graduate school with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Your friends will have to then go work for the market to pay all that debt back.  Following my advice, you will enjoy the rest of your life knowing the market is working for you.

Am I getting through to you soldier?

I pray I have.