My name is Monica, I’m a 22-year-old who is already suffering from burnout. I went to college for a year before I found out there was no way for me to work enough to afford all necessities and still manage good grades. I’m so sick of finding myself working my life away, especially at a job I don’t even like. At my current job I work 50 hrs a week and that’s all I have time for. All I do is work, barely eat, and sleep. I want to live, not survive!!
I’ve heard so much about trading but it sounded so confusing and scary to me; but what could be the harm in trying to at least learn? I’m excited to learn about something that could actually help me live freely. Good luck to everyone reading this, I hope we all become financially free and able to live the lives we want!
Hello, BP is a great place to start, start with the education section and be patient, good luck 
Regards Greg
Sounds like you have expensive necessities. If you can just about afford them with working 50 hours a week them trust me when I say trading is not for you. Imagine working all week just to see instead of earning money, you’ve lost it.
I’d recommend carry on working. Work hard, learn the ropes then apply for a promotion or a senior role somewhere else. Eventually you’ll get less hours and more pay. Or reduce your outgoings and go back to college and get a qualification so you can apply for better jobs. When you make money, invest it in gold, real estate, stocks and shares, private pensions etc etc.
When you have less pressure to earn, come back to forex. If youve already made up your mind and want to do what you want, then go through the babypips course. It’s free.
maybe one day you be earning so much from trading, you miss the fulfilment of a hard days work
Oh the irony
yes lol that was the word which came to mind
You have my sympathy. Many older people have an illusion that the current generation of young people “moan too much and don’t know how lucky they are”. Well, I have a different view. When I were 22 I was just off on a plane to Singapore, having been hired straight out of graduation for a salary equivalent to seven times a UK average wage. Before that as a student I worked 2 jobs in the holidays and earned enough to live 3 years at Uni on cigarettes, beer and drove a car in central London.
But the opportunities are just not there anymore and we have global competition and multinational corporations and choice of tax jurisdiction to thank for that. My £80 per week in 1975 would require a student to earn £800 per week in today’s fiat currency to be able to buy what I could buy in 1975 for £80. My student rent was £8 per week! About the best comparison I could make - and congratulations for being able to stomach 50 hours per week. I did that on a building site, and I did sleep a lot. But even at 50 hours per week the rate of pay would need to be £16 per hour, and I would bet that your rate does not equate to that. I estimate that the current generation of people in their twenties are between one half and one third as well off as I were in 1975.
I can agree what others have commented on here - but that is their lens on the world. When I did a degree it was an insurance policy. I had a burning desire to be self employed, but the UK was a basket case of an economy in the 1970s and it was so much easier to go to Uni on a full grant and get a degree. I am not so sure what I would advise young adults today, except I spent two years as a chair of governors of a private secondary school in 2006-2008 and used to say to the young adults there that if they did not know what they wanted to do, not to worry. Many people still don’t know what they want to do when they are in their 60s. What I did say to them was to try not to fall into the trap of taking the path of least resistance, or end up deciding that they would try to fit the mould of what their parents said they wanted for them. For many parents, their offspring are an opportunity to be surrogate images of what they themselves failed to do in life. Whenever I have confronted parents in this topic, they have steered their offspring in a direction that was not aligned with speaking to me any further. I was too much of a maverick, and may have "damaged their offspring’s hopes and dreams by merely suggesting that “university is not for everyone”, that “a half organized tradesman should be able to net £50K per year once he is properly skilled” or "the best time to take risks is when you are young before your life accumulates baggage like “children, 30 year mortgages and student loans”
It will be little consolation but a good read is Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad. If you stay in the Employee quadrant, you will be doomed to a life of wage slavery. Look at the other quadrants, and aspire to end up later in life in the Investor quadrant. I’ve just finished a book called Discipline Equals Freedom recommended on some of my current Forex coursework. It is written by an ex-navy seal. It touched a nerve, and caused me to redouble my efforts to remain focussed and disciplined in moving to achieve my goals. And I am 65.
I hope this has motivated you to consider your options carefully. I had a conversation earlier today with a trusted colleague I had the pleasure to mentor over a period of ten months in 2019. He was proud to inform me that he was pretty sure he was going to be offered a role for £70K per year + benefits based on his work experience. He is 32 years old. I am proud to have been part of his experience journey. You have all the time in the world at 22. Make great use of it. Every hour you spend on this forum will be worth 10 hours of time spent working in your current job and possibly the same for time you spend at “university”. Baby pips is the University of Life, and it has no direct cost other than time. Best of luck
Also read:
The Richest Man in Babylon is a 1926 book by George S. Clason that dispenses personal financial advice through a collection of parables set 4,000 years ago in ancient Babylon . The book is regarded as a classic
Everyone starting out on their trading journey, and however stuck they are, working their life away, should read this.
You need to resolve your life into a sustainable position before you can launch into trading. Your job must pay your bills - reduce your overheads and increase your pay. Maximise the job’s potential - get a better position, ask for a pay rise, work out the strategies that bring promotion, get a better job in your area, move to another area/country and get a better job, get a job in a sector/industry which is actively recruiting and growing, Maximise your extra-curricular activities to show employers what you’re capable of.
Then come back to trading.
Welcome start with education section it’s really good start of slowly
If you are already suffering from burnout and really want to become a trader, prepare yourself, if you got what it takes to get there, it will be a hard, miserable and painfull journey to get there.
So you got 2 choices either quit and look for other ways to improve your life, or continue and try to became a trader and this market will show you how good he his on making you miserable for quite some time.
Hi Monica, I feel you 100%. Burn out at our age is not uncommon these days. Especially with social media and the internet showing us so many different avenues of income. I have been working since I was 16 in high school and worked two jobs and did school full time at one point. So IM BURNT OUT as well. I hope to see you post more and I hope you find the resources and knowledge you need to be successful in trading. Cant wait to see more updates from you!
I echo a lot of what @Mondeoman said, especially
I started work almost 2 decades ago fresh off high school at an entry level job at a reputed MNC and worked my way up to junior management. To make up for my missing degree I took onto reading and self development wherever I could and worked frequently for 60-80hr weeks at times. Unlike your situation most of the times I did it with passion and joy though. It wasn’t enforced slave labor of any kind. Rose till the ranks rapidly relatively quickly till about 2009 and then plateaud.
Looking back I wish I’d had the drive and need you’re expressing right now to pursue a passion for trading I felt as a teen. I grew complacent and let other “real life” priorities take over in due time. There is no harm in doing the free course on babypips, reading a few books where you can and try trading on maybe $100 to atleast see if trading is for you. If you don’t explore the possibility now when that urgency and motivation is at the high it’s at then when?
Even if trading doesn’t work for you, that motivation and need to develop will hopefully translate to something else that works for you. Don’t let that flame burn out!
Hi @leilanitorres95 and @monicalsWinning,
I want to try to compare your feeling of IM BURNT OUT with my own work experience in my youth. What do you think is the biggest contributor to your feeling of being worn out?
Inability to sleep 7 - 9 hours per day?
Actual number of hours you spend at work including getting to work and getting home from work?
Other people’s expecatations of your availability when THEY want you to be there for them as opposed to choosing your priorities to fit your own goals and obligations?
External influence, such as diet, exercise or lack of it, no environment space to be alone, quiet and to get some serious “alone” time?
Other?
Thanks in advance.
Hi @Mondeoman thanks for the response and interest. I would say I am growing more and more burnt out because although my job pays the bills I cant seem to find the passion in it. I wake up to work 9 hours and sometimes up to 16 hours if quarterly goals need meeting but I go home and dread doing school or working out or I am too tired to play with my dog or cook for myself. So all of the things you listed are some what accurate. Working for someone to help build their dream takes up 5-6 days a week and were given 1-2 days to do what we want IF we don’t have errands to run. Its madness to spend all that time to build your boss’s dream but not go home and work on your own dream. Thinking of living a life like that for the next 30 years until retirement seems exhausting. But having all the things i have now like a home a car i need the money i spent the last decade building up and earning through my day job but now I feel the need to find something I like doing, possibly with less work and time, but so I can still fulfill my lifestyle. I feel im in a weird transition in my life where Im thankful for everything I have and glad my job got me here but im growing unhappy in my career and I need to figure out what’s next.