What financial advice would you give an 18-year old today?

A dollar saved or invested at age 18 is invaluable at age 50.

Bought sex is still sex.

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What financial advice would you give an 18-year old today?

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Travel
If you want a traditional 4 year degree, get it in a solid field(finance, engineering, accounting, science, etc.), you can always do something else unrelated after school if you want
Make yourself more interesting and well rounded
Get used to being out of your comfort zone, it will be wildly useful as you get older
Don't wait to do something you want to do, you are probably just making excuses.

$1 per day compounded for 50 years has effects. Read the backtesting. I read about a guy who invested $1/day until the kid graduated from college and through re-investing dividends the portfolio grew to $1 mil by the time the kid was 40.

Backpack through Europe during college.

Don't skack off in school. Don't take out loans. Ignore what every other is doing with their student loan money because its stupifm

If you look at the clock and are wondering why it's only 2:30 and can't you leave already, then you're probably in the wrong occupation.

But never forget to look after money. The old advice about doing what you love is important - but only if it pays well. If you love "working with people" and work for $25K a year as a social worker you will be bitter before long. You can satisfy just about any itch you have more profitably than you imagine.

travel and experience the world but save some money now in index funds and let it grow.

For every dollar you hide from the govt, that about 0.36 in your pocket??

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Start saving for retirement now.

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DONT AGREE WITH THIS AT ALL. While I wished i would have been smarter about my money in college (particularly not eating out so much) assuming said 18 year old is going to college I WOULD NOT advise a kid to start saving for retirement during college at the expense of enjoying the best four years of their life.

I'd rather enjoy my youth than have extra cash when i'm retired, but I also admittedly have peter pan syndrome.

You have the rest of your life to earn and save but college is a special time that will never be repeated. So if the two are mutually exclusive i'm going to tell a kid to go on that road trip or trip to beach or whatever over contributing to an IRA.

With that being said my piece of financial advice is to be smart about money (eat in as much as possible etc.) so that you can enjoy college and possibly have some money saved up for when you exit.

Non-financial advice: never be the drunkest person at a party, ok to be the second drunkest no one remembers that guy but NEVER be the drunkest.

Oh and if you are going to live in the dorms buy your own toilet paper.....