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In this day and age of social media apps like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, there are so many “financial gurus” and media people giving you all sorts of investing advice where they sell you a $1000 course claiming you can become an overnight millionaire by investing in a crypto strategy.
Along the way, it’s so easy to get mislead by “shiny object syndrome” and constantly seeking to invest into the new latest hot investment that’ll get you a 10x return.
The reality is that a lot of the advice on social media is bullsh*t and honestly, I prefer not to even view YouTube videos from financial content creators as even the most honest ones can sometimes make clickbaity titles and sell you on the course.
With that being said, I want to dive into the key foundational mindset, tips and habit shifts to become a successful long-term investor.
1. Stay off Instagram & TikTok completely to filter out bullsh*t advice
I know this might be hard for a lot of you, especially teenagers as Instagram and TikTok has become a huge part of our lives.
But I promise you that once you get off both of these platforms, it’ll be such a life saver for your mental health and less distractions.
I’m so fortunate to have never properly used Instagram or TikTok, and I can say for sure that I don’t encounter a lot of bad “investment” advice simply because I’ve turned off all the distractions.
Social media is a huge source for getting distracted by all sorts of advice.
And I know quitting ain’t gonna be easy. It’s gonna take a lot of discipline, willpower, commitment and accountability.
I’d suggest using an app like AppBlock on your phone.
Essentially, AppBlock is a cold turkey app blocker designed to block apps and websites on your phone. But the great thing about this app that I’ve found a huge advantage compared to other apps in the market is that you can setup a “Strict Mode” where you can’t delete the app or change the settings of the blocks you’ve setup.
I honestly don’t know what I would do without this app. This app has been a life saver, especially cause it’s hard to quit on the strength of your willpower, as willpower can only get you so far.
*Remember to add in my todoist task blog article idea of “how to filter out content and take things with a grain of salt”
2. Follow 2-3 honest financial content creators and filter out the rest
This kinda ties back to the first point but it’s very important that you only follow 2-3 people who you really trust that are honest and truly have your best intentions at heart.
Unfortunately, you won’t find a lot of them, especially on YouTube, as so many creators and “influeners” are most focused on getting views, engagements and maximising ad revenue.
I would highly recommend you follow Dave Gow from Strong Money Australia. He’s by far the best and most honest, down-to-earth person who will teach you from A-Z how to achieve financial independence in Australia.
Quick summary: Dave Gow moved to Perth at 18, worked at a forklift driver and retired at 28 years old! I know 28 years old sounds crazy but I’m telling you it’s 100% doable if you get started at an earlier age.
But what really sets Dave apart is that he sells ZERO courses, mentorship programs and no gimmicky “investment” ideas. His sole intention is to provide free financial resources for the average Australian, and he’s empowered literally 1000s of Australians to build sustainable wealth and retire early.
Most importantly, you need to know how to use that wealth to live your life to the fullest. And he’s speaking from his own experiences.
3. Remember that short-term and long-term downswings are normal and everything is going to be just fine
There’s always media headline is the news that a “recession is going to be coming soon”.
I hear these kinds of news EVERY SINGLE YEAR, and honestly, it’s getting sickening and tiring hearing these kinds of BS negativity.
I promise if you search up “us recession” in Google Search and filter by every year, you’ll find countless articles claiming “US recession is coming soon”.
And if you look at the history of the S&P 500 index price, you can see that there have been countless recessions along the way. Despite that, the US stock market has consistently been growing over the last 100+ years, and I don’t see what changing anytime soon.
As you can see in the image above, the grey highlighted area shows the recession periods.
And there have been quite a lot of them.
I mean think about the stock market as in the trajectory of your life. Life doesn’t always go the way you plan, and there are so many unpredictable things that occur you never thought would’ve happened in a million years.
There are prosperous times in your life when you’re absolutely killing it and struggles that feels like the end of the world in that moment. Despite all the ups-and-downs, you learn to persevere and come out as a better person as a result.
4. Don’t watch TikTok shorts for financial advice. Instead, read timeless books that teach you the foundations of wealth building
Whilst I’m not saying that TikTok shorts always provide bad advice.
My point is that the emphasis of your financial education should be in books that teach you the fundamentals.
And it’s through relearning the fundamentals over-and-over again that the financial principles instil as part of your values and you no longer need to view content online simply because you’ve become equipped with a wealth of knowledge.
These are the 3 books I’d highly recommend reading:
- The Millionaire Next Door
- The Richest Man In Babylon
- Strong Money Australia by Dave Gow
Like Kobe Bryant said, getting better is about going back to the basics and mastering the fundamentals.
These books instil a strong financial mindset to view wealth differently.
5. Don’t focus on chasing the highest returns. Instead, look to improve your savings rate and your cashflow
I remember at the start of my investing journey, I fell for this trap as well where I’d look at different investment options to find the highest returning asset.
For example, I would look at buying a Motley Fool’s subscription, tech ETFs, mid-cap ETFs, and possibly investing into art.
And whilst I don’t think they’re necessarily “bad” investments”, the problem becomes that you seek to chase the highest returning assets, only for you to dig yourself into a rabbit hole, never get started investing and invest into all different kinds of assets that you don’t even know what you’re doing.
When it comes to investing, invest in a maximum of 2-3 ETFs and that’s it! Keep in mind, it’s not a hard rule that I’ve set it in place but that’s what I’d recommend for most people.
Instead of chasing higher returns, invest that time & money into investing in yourself such as buying a course to upskill in your career, learn to negotiate a pay rise, take a course to switch to a higher paying industry, start a side hustle, work more hours and most important, improve your savings rate.
The first thing I would look at is improving your savings rate. If you’re already saving quite a huge chunk of your paycheck and you’ve reached a point where it’s hard to save extra, then look at increasing your income.
As a teenager, it’s trickier to increase your income as there’s less flexibility and age restrictions that prevent you from doing certain activities.
I’m going to be writing an article on how to choose a career as a teenager.
But as of right now, let’s discuss how increasing your savings (and using those savings to invest) can yield a much higher return.
For simplicity, let’s say you’re earning $70k per year after tax and invest $35k. That’s a savings rate of 50%. Let’s assume you invested for 10 years at 9% returns.
You would have $553k!
But if you were to increase your income by $10k after-tax and invest all of that, you’l have $711k.
That’s a $158k increase!!
If you wanted to achieve that by increasing your returns, you’d have to get a 13.8% annual return!
That’s a whopping 4.8% increase. Now, 4.8% might not sound like a lot, but keep in mind, that if beat the market by 4.8% over 10 years, that’s an insane feat that most professional fund managers can’t even achieve!
Now, the market might return 9% , 6% or 15% annually over the next 10 years. No one knows that. I damn sure don’t know it.
But the point is that if you were to increase your returns, you’d have to make riskier investments and constantly stress about your portfolio, which I’m sure you don’t want to do. And it’s quite a hefty feat too.
6. Focus on what you can control, not on what you can’t control
It’s so easy to blame your circumstances, current role, the economy, our friends, or whoever you want to blame for not achieving your goals or living your dream life.
The reality is that you’re solely responsible for your own actions, and there’s no point in complaining about external factors outside of your control.
Rememberm, you’re in control of your future and destiny, and by taking action, I promise your life will change in ways that you couldn’t imagine.
For example, right now, people are bitching and complaining about the high inflationary period in 2025 and how that’s the reason they can’t save.
Well, guess what. You can’t control the inflation levels. Nor can you control the return of the stock market, who becomes prime minister, billionaires getting richer, house prices increasing faster than wages, etc.
You want to know a fun fact. People were still bitching and complaining back in 2017 about house prices in Sydney. And now guess what? They’ve risen even higher. So if they stopped complaining and bought back in 2017, they would’ve gotten a crap tonne of equity from the massive housing boom.
I remember reading “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willinko and there’s a famous quote that still sticks with me to this day:
Once you stop making excuses, put your head down, and take action, you start seeing things through a different lens.
For example, if you’re a 16-year-old teenager working at a sh*tty job at Maccas, instead of complaining that you’re always short on money, you take extreme accountability by using an app to calculate your expenses and see where your money is going.
Or if you feel like you’re not earning enough, you can start a side hustle or move to a different role.
Take ownership and you will see results. Simply as that.
Summary
Let’s summarise the 6 points we went over to lead with a foundational mindset to become a successful investors:
- Stay off Instagram & TikTok completely to filter out bullsh*t advice
- Follow 2-3 honest financial content creators and filter out the rest
- Remember that short-term and long-term downswings are normal and everything is going to be just fine
- Don’t watch TikTok shorts for financial advice. Instead, read timeless books that teach you the foundations of wealth building
- Don’t focus on chasing the highest returns. Instead, look to improve your savings rate and your cashflow
- Focus on what you can control, not on what you can’t control
I know those are a lot of points I covered, and it can be overwhelming to know where to start to develop a strong mindset.
Well, I can say from experience that it’s a combination of learning from your own experiences and being humble enough to admit that you can’t beat the market.
Embrace the fact that “boring”, long-term investing is the key to building long-term wealth and that shiny new investment methods ultimately lead to a huge loss down the line.
But if I had to start somewhere as a beginner, I would read these 3 books over and over:
- Strong Money Australia: How to Gain Financial Independence and Create a Life of Freedom
- The Millionaire Next Door
- The Richest Man In Babylon
Just keep reading these 3 books at least 5 times to instil those fundamental financial values into your life so that it becomes a part of your identity.
I’m not endorsed by any of these books. Heck, the links I put in aren’t even affiliate links. I’m recommending these books because I truly believe they can chance your life financially, and fundamentally change the way your think about building and sustaining wealth.
These principles are timeless and will remain that way a 100, 200 and 300 years from now.
If you found this article interesting, feel free to share it with a friend and comment down below on 1 thing you’re going to get started on your financial journey.
