Always question everything you’re learning. Today I will discuss 3 common “life advice” often given to seniors in high school and college. I’ll discuss why these advice are given and why they are HORRIBLY misleading. In fact, I would say that they may even impact your retirement. Read on… LIE #1: “Choose a degree that you are passionate about, forget what everyone else thinks.” So you love dancing and singing? Then you should pursue those majors and forget what society thinks, right? WRONG. Unless you’re okay with making french fries for the rest of your life, the only thing that matters when you are looking for a major to study is how IN-DEMAND that skill set is. Just because something sounds prestigious doesn’t mean that there is DEMAND for it. If there is no DEMAND for what you are learning, you are falling prey to opportunity costs - In other words, 4 years of your life that you could have been spent learning, saving, investing, and accumulating wealth. If you were to take a basic construction job paying 65k which requires minimal education, and invested EVERYTHING at 11% to 12% ROI (which is the current market historical average as of today), then you'd be almost 8 million dollars richer at retirement. That's the cost of 4 years of useless education. This poor advice has lead millions of students astray as you can see with the number of folks graduating with liberal arts degree and thus ending up with a student loan crises because they can’t find demand for their skill set. It would be much more fruitful to learn employable basic skills such as Microsoft Excel, interview skills, communication skills, and basic programming languages than to spend four years getting a useless degree. Instead - Find a career path that you're both passionate about and there is demand for and requires minimal training. If you spend 9 years in school getting a PH.D, then that's 5 years flushed down the garbage disposal that you could have spent saving and investing. Some hot cake degrees with HIGH DEMAND right now include Computer Science, finance, applied mathematics, and engineering. LIE #2: Being able to work on a team is more important than being able to work independently. Sure, it’s important to get along with other people, but in 99% of work environments, you are evaluated as an INDIVIDUAL. The values that you are able to bring to the company is worth infinitely more than what you are able to accomplish amongst a team of slackers. A group of team members will rarely ever all be let go for poor team performance collectively, but if one individual is not meeting company expectations, he or she is the first one to be let go. Learn how to work independently, and you will be able to bring value to a team. More and more studies are starting to show that employees working in lone cubicles are much more productive than those working in a distraction filled open office space. LIE #3: There’s no such thing as a dumb question. This advice may have been good in high school, but in the real world, asking too many questions is a sign of weakness and submissiveness. Instead, whenever you are unsure about something, turn to google. Google will answer just about every burning behavioral and technical questions you have. Supervisors and your superiors will never admit this, but they are silently judging the employees who come to them with too many questions. Instead, be able to work with minimum supervision and use your sound judgement when working on any project. If you had to take advice on getting in shape from someone, would you take advice from someone who is obese or a fitness trainer in tip top shape? Similarly, if you want to become successful in life, would you take advice from teachers (~50k salary) or CEO's (300k+ salary)? In other words, consider the very real possibility that life advice your teacher gave you in high school and college could be completely wrong. Well there you have it folks, 3 common advice given to students that I have dispelled. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below, and I look forward to sharing another post with you right here at WhoTrades very soon!