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this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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Asklemmy
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Neither. Save your money.
As a counterargument: spend your money. 200 dollars means a lot more to a teenager than a college student (with an on-campus part time job), then when you find yourself at your first full time job you may sometimes be spending 200 dollars like pocket change.
As a result, you will most likely cherish what you buy now for 200 USD way more than what you can buy down the line. That console you need to save up 6 months for right now? It becomes a lot less sentimental when you can afford it every other month. So spend your money on something that you'd like right now. 200 dollars won't change your life in college much, but it can change your life significantly right now.
It won’t change your life, but the mentality of not spending just because you can will
I'm not advocating that teenagers should save no money. I'm just saying you don't have to save "all" of it.
Good financial planning isn't just not spending every cent when you can, it's also figuring out how to get the most out of your money. There is plenty of expensive stuff that I've spent thousands of hours with, which makes them totally worth the investment. There's no way a teenager would be able to figure that out without some trial and error.
I'd say it's better to get that out of the way now than later. If you make a bad purchase decision as a teenager, at most you're short 200 dollars. Maybe that startup idea isn't exactly what you imagined it to be, but at least you figured that out now than after sinking 20k into MLMs.