The investments you will most regret skipping in 20 years are a mix of financial ones, such as paying off debt, land and index funds, and personal ones, such as health, relationships and financial education. Twenty years ago you should have invested in Amazon, the video says, and 10,000 dollars then would be 1.8 million dollars now. Fifteen years ago you should have bought a cheap apartment or house, and property prices have doubled since 2009.
The 15 items below look ahead the same way. Some are about money and assets, others about the parts of life that return more than any portfolio.
Watch the full video here, or skip to the breakdown below.
The 15 investments at a glance
- Ridding yourself of debt and going debt-free (0:52)
- Buy proximity to culture or interest (1:33)
- Buy as much of the earth as you can (2:38)
- Put your money in the S&P 500 and don’t touch it (3:33)
- Art (4:42)
- Travel (6:37)
- Your health (7:33)
- Your partner (8:35)
- Your friends (9:41)
- Your financial education (11:16)
- Your spiritual and emotional health (13:20)
- Your social skills (13:58)
- Your home as a safe haven (15:11)
- Documenting your life (16:03)
- Being okay with who you are (16:58)
- Bonus: now is better than later
1. Ridding yourself of debt and going debt-free
You may have expected stock tips, but the video argues your debt costs far more than you think. Take out a 300,000 dollar mortgage and you may end up paying back almost double. Credit card debt is worse.
While you carry debt, you are not free: someone else can take the fruits of your labor for missed payments, and you will never sleep well. Paying it off aggressively now, it says, may be the best investment you look back on in 20 years.
2. Buy proximity to culture or interest
The video gives two golden rules of real estate. Rents may stagnate for a while but never go down, and there is always demand for rent around strong economic centers. Hence the saying location, location, location.
Every city has two centers: the old town where tourists come for shops and commerce, and the business center where multinationals have offices. Property close to both will always find renters. Student housing is a special mention: if your city has a great university, property within walking distance cash flows as long as there are students, though refurbishment costs are higher and the time spans shorter.
3. Buy as much of the earth as you can
You can own a piece of the planet, plant seeds and let generations after you eat from the trees. Unless funds are heavily mismanaged, children argue or there is a medical emergency, the video sees no reason land should ever be sold. It calls it generational wealth at its finest.
It lists rising population, people leaving cities and off-the-grid infrastructure becoming more common. The gap between residential and agricultural land, it says, might be one of the biggest arbitrages of our generation. When buying land and building a decent home costs less than a city apartment, the market has misjudged the value.
4. Put your money in the S&P 500 and don’t touch it
You won’t know the next Amazon until it is as big as Amazon. What you can do is use an index fund, which bundles the top 500 companies in the US into one basket. When a company does poorly, it gets replaced by a more promising one. The UK equivalent is the FTSE 100.
The video calls corporations the most efficient machines for generating economic value and says to automate 10, 15 or 20 percent of your monthly income into such an index and not touch it no matter what. You don’t need to time the market or pick stocks, only be consistent and forget it. Twenty years on, it claims, you will have returned more than the smartest people on Wall Street.
5. Art
The video’s case is that as the number of super-wealthy people grows, demand for the limited supply of blue-chip art rises. Premium art rarely changes hands, so demand sits at an all-time high regardless of the economy.
It says the creators found art a mystery until they looked behind the scenes and saw how much money flows into it. Citing Sotheby’s, it notes that bidding on art valued at 20 to 50 million dollars surged 60 percent in a year when other markets were in flux. Platforms now make investing in art as easy as buying shares, though the video treats it as a sponsored segment, so treat it as one view and not a recommendation.
6. Travel
Everyone thinks travel is expensive, until you get old and realize life passed you by. Ask what you remember from last year and it is usually one or two big events and the trips you took. That realization hit the creators so hard that they have tripled their travel budget every year since.
They now travel more and further, because your mind expands in proportion to how far you go from what you call home. You can tell who has been places by how they carry themselves and the stories they tell. Over 10 to 20 years, the video says, nobody regrets traveling far.
7. Your health
Every dollar spent on health now saves you hundreds 20 years from now. Prevention costs a fraction of treatment, but people skip it because we are raised to fix things only after they break. Alux compares it to asking a divorced person whether it worked out better than fixing the relationship early.
Take a moment to assess your body: strong or weak, back pain, rested or not. One thing is certain, it says: 20 years from now your health will be worse, and feeling half as good as today will cost a lot. Think of these investments as a way to make aging suck less.
8. Your partner
The team calls this controversial: your relationship with your partner matters more than your relationship with your kids. By the time children are 18, you will have used about 90 percent of the time you spend together. Kids are around for 18 to 25 years, and your partner stays until you die. Hours with your partner beat hours with the kids five to one.
So date them, wow them, keep yourself in love and make them fall in love with you again and again. Go through hell together and come out stronger. After location, it says, the person you spend your life with is the most important decision you make.
9. Your friends
You don’t stop making friends after a certain age, but you don’t get to make new old friends, so you are stuck with the ones you have. If a couple of them are true friends, cherish them: reach out, help, check in and spend time together. A real friend doesn’t ask how they can help but jumps in when they see someone struggling.
The narrator warns that you don’t want to die alone in a mansion. The beer on the porch beats it. Don’t let friendships fade for lack of communication, show up to special events and reach out in dark times, because they will never forget it.
10. Your financial education
Your wealth in 20 years is the outcome of the choices you make now. Most people live with the blind arrogance of ignorance and believe they are smarter than everyone until you look at their numbers.
On average, the video says, every self-help book you read makes you 1 percent richer. After 100 of them, it is rare for income not to double. Events can be expensive, but with real networking they might yield clients and partners for decades. Financial education is an infinite game and the more you learn the better you play. It recommends 10 to 15 minutes a day of money content, which it calls raising your financial thermostat.
The creators say they got tired of three-hour podcasts that hold ten minutes of value and built an app that distills actionable insights from world-renowned experts in 15 minutes.
11. Your spiritual and emotional health
People bottle things up and then blow up their lives years later. The video’s line is that if you don’t heal yourself, you will bleed on people who haven’t cut you.
It is never too late to search for meaning, though being 45 and still searching for yourself is not a pretty picture. Find your version of god and try to live a life that would make them proud. If you are lucky, you will stumble on peace along the way.
12. Your social skills
How long will you hide behind the label introvert? Alux says it is a decent story at 14 but awkward at 30, when you should be able to talk to anyone, speak in public, teach and lead.
Charisma and confidence compound through network effects. If people like being around you, they invite you places and introduce you to others, and your access grows. Tell stories, entertain, listen, show empathy and ask great questions, and know when to be serious and when to lighten up.
13. Your home as a safe haven
The average person has four places they call home: the one with their parents, the first place after moving out (all the rentals bundled together), the first they own and the one where they raise children.
Moving from one to four, collect the things that let you feel at peace, from slippers and a bathrobe to pillows, a mattress, chairs and kitchenware. Home is where you know where everything is and everything is the way you like it. Waking up in a place you dislike, the video says, is no way to live.
14. Documenting your life
Humans have a time bias: the present doesn’t seem valuable until it becomes the past. A photo or video of everyday life may not feel special now, but its value rises over time. Print photos, because they hit differently in your hands.
Document your early days, your struggles, your first prototype and your first office. You don’t need to make it public; a private YouTube channel works. Twenty years from now, when a documentary is made about your life, you will be glad you did.
15. Being okay with who you are
This one is broad on purpose. It covers mental health and your relationship with society. Pay for a therapist to help you work through your past, and try a few until you find one who isn’t just pretending to know what they’re doing.
Spend time reflecting on why other people make you feel the way they do and why you gave them that power. Who do you want to impress, and why? Who set expectations for your life and how do they differ from yours? Some people waste the first half of their lives pretending, the video says. Find your voice now and you may look back at it as the defining moment.
Bonus: now is better than later
The bonus applies the same logic to having children. The team prefaces that it is a massive decision to make only when you are confident you can raise a child well, and says not to have kids out of wedlock or while still a kid yourself.
Its argument is that postponing is something people often regret. You don’t need to be a millionaire first, only confident in your competence, and the video presents children as an unmatched return on happiness. Postponing, it says, means choosing lower-quality years with them. Whatever your view, the closing message is to act with purpose and a sense of urgency about the things that have a deadline.
The one you would choose
The narrator ends with a question: if you could make only one of these investments this year and it was guaranteed to succeed, which would it be? Your answer is probably where you should start.
Notice how many of the 15 are not assets in the usual sense. The creators’ point is that the biggest returns come from the things that compound over decades.
FAQ
What investments will you regret not making in 20 years?
Alux lists paying off debt, property near city and business centers, land, an S&P 500 index fund, art, travel, health, relationships, financial education, emotional health, social skills, your home, documenting your life and self-acceptance.
How much of your income should go into an index fund?
The team suggests automating 10, 15 or 20 percent of your monthly income into an index like the S&P 500 and not touching it. You don’t need to time the market or pick stocks.
Why is paying off debt called an investment?
Debt costs more than it seems, for example a 300,000 dollar mortgage can end up costing almost double, and it keeps your income exposed to missed payments. Paying it off aggressively frees you.
Why does the video say to invest in financial education?
Your wealth in 20 years is the result of today’s financial choices. The narrator says each self-help book makes you about 1 percent richer on average and recommends 10 to 15 minutes of money content daily.
Why invest in travel according to the video?
Because trips are among the few things you remember from a year, and your mind expands the further you go from home. The creators tripled their travel budget every year after realizing this.
Keep reading
- 15 Investments Rich People Make The Poor Know Nothing About
- 15 Investing Mistakes the Ultra-Wealthy Don’t Make
- 15 Uncommon Investments That Actually Make a Lot of Money
