Billionaire Mark Cuban’s Financial Advice To 20-Somethings

Mark Cuban is the American billionaire investor who, among other businesses, owns Magnolia Pictures and the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. Although his life is luxurious and glamorous these days, his 20s didn’t look quite the same.

After finishing university, he moved to Dallas in 1981 and lived with roommates while bartending at night. He spent the next few years living very cheaply and investing his earnings in his first business, software distributor MicroSolutions.

He spent the next decade building the business which he eventually sold to H&R Block for $6 million, starting off his career as a mega-investor. In his book, “How to Win at the Sport of Business,” Cuban advises people in their 20’s to live as cheaply as possible, all the while paying off student debt and saving for investment. “It doesn’t matter where you live,” Cuban writes. “It doesn’t matter how you live. It doesn’t matter what car you drive. It doesn’t matter what kind of clothes you wear.” Your 20s are the best years to save for the future, when you’ll need big sums of money to make smart investments, open a business or buy big items like a car or home. “The cheaper you can live, the greater your options,” Cuban writes.