5 Things I Got Wrong in My 20s

I once lost 80% of my income overnight.

At that time, it was something I could not have imagined even in my dreams.

I was doing affiliate marketing in the crypto space, working with one of the biggest exchanges in the world at that time. A steady stream of income for almost two years made me believe I was standing in a very safe place.

So safe that even if someone told me the exchange was under attack, caught in scandal, or had some kind of problem, I did not pay much attention. In my mind back then, it was like a pillar holding up the whole market. It Could Not Fall.

Until one day, at the end of November 2022, the storm came and swept almost everything away. That was the first time I clearly saw that what I had built for so long was actually just a castle made of sand.

I thought that with what I had at that time, I could already “finish early.” But in truth, I was just standing on something that could disappear in one night.

That shock did not only take away most of my income. It forced me to see a deeper mistake: I had fallen into the “illusion of safety.” I thought that what was fine today would stay fine for a long time.

The most dangerous part was not losing money. The most dangerous part was that when I believed everything would stay fine forever, I stopped preparing for the day life might suddenly turn. I was still learning, still working, but inside, I was no longer living with the feeling that I still needed to grow up.

Looking back, I see that I was not the only one living like this. Many young people, whether they work a job or run their own business, can easily fall into the same trap: when things go well for long enough, we start to confuse the feeling of stability with the real strength of our life.

That is why I want to share the 5 stupid mistakes I made in my 20s. Because my mistakes did not begin on the day I lost money. They began with the wrong beliefs I had been living with for a very long time.

1. I was wrong to wait for luck instead of building ability

Back then, I did not hate hard work. I just thought it was too slow. I looked around and saw many people working extremely hard every day, yet their lives were still just enough to survive. So I believed that if I wanted to change my life, I needed one big breakthrough.

I used to gamble and play the lottery because I believed that if I just won one big time, my life would turn to a new page. And a few real wins were exactly what pulled me deeper. I started playing more, betting bigger, and always thinking the next round would be bigger than the last.

But money that is easy to win is not easy to keep. When I won, I spent it all. When I lost, the money I had kept getting smaller. And luck did not stay forever. Very quickly, I ran out of money and fell into debt.

Instead of using my time and money to read one more book or learn one more skill, I wasted them on games of chance and hoped luck would smile at me.

Maybe stories about people getting rich overnight made that belief feel more reasonable. Especially because I had tasted that feeling myself. It made me believe in it more, and sink deeper into that path. And once you have tasted fast wins, slow things stop looking attractive.

Only after I went through the feeling of losing everything because of gambling, and then heard people talk about the value of learning and effort, did I start to believe that some things must be learned, trained, and built step by step. But those are the things that truly stay with you for a long time.

And I realized that if I wanted to go in a different direction, I could not keep living in the exact same way.

If I wanted someone to recommend me for a job, I needed to have some skill first.

If I wanted someone to give me a chance, I needed to prove that I had the ability to carry it.

And at the very least, I needed to show up in places where people who could help me actually existed. It could be a self-development class, a skill-building class, or a networking event.

No one could know me or help me if the places I kept going to were gaming cafés, drinking spots, or just staying at home all day.

So I studied more. I joined self-development classes and skill-building classes. I read more books and really felt like my mind became brighter. I used the internet not to play games anymore, but to find ways to make money.

In the end, I really did make money, through my own ability, steadily and sustainably for the years that followed.

I realized that luck may help me win once.
Only ability can help me win many times.

That was in my early 20s. And after I stopped believing in luck and started making money through ability, I stepped into another mistake.

2. I was wrong to make money but not know how to keep it

Making money is one skill. Keeping money, using money well, and allocating money are completely different skills.

Even after I started making money through my ability, I still made mistakes. The money I made was more than enough for my student life, but I still spent it very quickly every month. I raised my lifestyle, spent more, for a reason that sounded very reasonable: improving my quality of life was necessary, and it would also help me make more money later.

I always saw money as something to release pressure, to upgrade right away, to reward myself in the present, not as something that needed to be kept to build a foundation for the future.

I thought I just needed to “make more.”

But the truth is, if the root is wrong, then no matter how much I make, the result will still be the same. If I always spend everything I earn, I will stay poor forever.

This was not an easy lesson for me.

By nature, I love experiences. I love new things. When I had money, I quickly spent it on lifestyle.

Even later, when I was making much more money, my lifestyle also grew like crazy: the most expensive memberships that I never fully used, expensive courses that I cannot even remember what I learned from, one luxurious trip after another...

Even investments that were supposed to “help me keep money” turned into “burning money” because of carelessness and lack of understanding.

Many of my expenses did not look stupid. In fact, they looked very reasonable. But that was exactly the biggest trap. If I did not have a clear principle for keeping and allocating money, then many times I was only spending money under a better name.

When you do not respect money, money will not stay with you. It leaves one way or another.

You may think: I’m still making little money, so why should I care about keeping or allocating it?

But that is exactly when those skills need to be built first. If you do not learn them early, then even when you make more later, many times you will only spend more. When you have little, it matters even more to know how to save, accumulate, and prepare for the opportunities ahead.

Also, the most dangerous part of always spending everything you have is this: if your cash flow suddenly stops, but your costs do not stop, and you do not have enough saved for the next six months, that is when it becomes truly dangerous.

I was the victim of this belief myself. I did not only not know how to keep money. I also thought that income stream would stay there for a very long time.

3. I was wrong to think the good days would keep going on by themselves

There was a period when I truly believed I had almost solved the money problem.

At that time, money was coming in very steadily and very well for almost two years. It came from affiliate work in the crypto market, where I had brought more than 50,000 users to some of the biggest exchanges in the world. And that steady flow made me believe it would stay there for a long time.

When something good repeats itself long enough, we no longer see it as a favorable phase. We start seeing it as the normal state of our life.

I stopped giving all my attention to building more, and allowed myself to step outside and live more.

During that time, I lived like a young boy who had just stepped out into the world for the first time, with a pocket full of money.

I traveled across many places, from Asia to Europe to America, not only for myself, but bringing my family too.

I also threw myself into the most expensive self-development and business programs, as if I was trying to live out all the years before.

I thought everything would keep going like that forever.

Until one day at the end of 2022, the real storm came. One of the biggest exchanges I was working with collapsed, and it also took away 80% of my income in a single night.

I realized a painful truth: being at the top of the market does not mean being impossible to defeat.

Those easy days made me confuse “I am doing well” with “everything will stay like this forever.” I had fallen asleep inside that feeling of comfort, until life slapped me hard enough to wake me up and look at reality again.

Cash flow is not safety. Real safety is the ability to create cash flow again when circumstances change. Like a bird standing on a branch, it is never afraid that the branch may break. Because what it trusts is not the branch, but its own wings.

After the shock passed, I had to face an even harder truth: even when I had money, I was still not truly happy.

4. I was wrong to think money would make me happy

What made me run after money was never only about survival. I did not want to be pitied. I did not want to be looked down on. And more than anything, I wanted that when my family needed me, I could say: I am here.

From a very young age, I carried shame and insecurity because of my poor family situation, the conflict at home, the fighting. Later my father became seriously ill, and my family did not have money to treat him. I grew up with the feeling that my family was too poor, too miserable, too easy to be looked down on and stepped on.

Maybe from very early on, I was no longer only afraid of lacking money. I was afraid of feeling too small, too weak, and not strong enough to protect the people I loved.

I thought I had to make a lot of money, build a big house, and become someone no one could pity anymore. From there, I created another version of myself: someone who always had to be successful, always had to prove his worth, and always had to be strong enough to protect his family. I believed that if I could live like that, then I would finally be happy.

I left behind my old self. I left behind close friends. I left behind endless drinking nights. I left the safe life in the city where I was born and raised. I even left the person I loved, so I could build a stronger life.

After so much nonstop effort, I finally got the things I once wanted. I built a house for my family. My family’s life became better. People admired me as a symbol of success.

But... deep inside, only I knew that I always felt empty after each milestone.

People praised me, but the truth was, there was no one I could truly share my inner world with. After those fast trips and beautiful experiences, deep inside there was still a deep loneliness.

During the Covid period, when I could not go outside or meet anyone, and I stayed home alone, I realized an even deeper pain: all the old wounds inside me were still there. They had never disappeared. It was only because I was so focused on the outside that I could not see them. But once I slowed down, they came up, like a starving animal that had been left unfed for too long, now crying out.

Even after I had achieved the things I once wanted, the wounds inside me still could not heal by themselves.

Money could make my outer life fuller. But it could not heal the wounds that had made me chase it in the first place.

That was when I began to slow down and learn how to hold myself.

5. I was wrong to let success decide the direction of my life

I did many things right. But the more I lived by other people’s standards, the farther I felt from what I truly wanted.

From that old feeling of being looked down on, I slowly built a shell that always had to succeed. It did not only push me to chase money. It also quietly shaped my later choices: choosing a hot major, a high-income job, the milestones that everybody wants.

At that time, I thought that if I just followed the path that most people called “the right path,” then my life would also be okay. Every time I reached one more recognized milestone, I believed I was going in the right direction. But later I realized: many of the things I tried so hard to reach were never truly what I wanted.

Looking back, I now understand that the most dangerous thing is not failing to succeed. The most dangerous thing is living by other people’s expectations for so long that you no longer know what you truly want.

Only when I came to the US, where no one knew who I was and no one cared about what I had achieved before, did I feel something for the first time... light.

Light because I no longer had to keep performing the role of a successful person. Light because I no longer had to tense myself up just to prove something. Light because, for the first time, I was standing in a place where my past no longer decided in advance who I had to be.

I realized I had spent too many years living someone else’s life without ever truly asking: what do I actually want?

Money can open many choices for me. But I need to start choosing my own life. If I do not choose what I want, I will keep living by momentum and by standards other people chose for me long ago.

From there, I started learning how to choose again. No longer choosing what only sounds right in the eyes of the crowd. I returned to the things that truly make me feel alive. I chose to study psychology. I paused running to get to know yoga. I began building my personal brand to share my experiences.

On the outside, those may look like just a few new choices. But for me, that was the first time I stopped living on autopilot and started choosing the direction of my life for myself.

That was when I understood that freedom does not only come from having more choices. Freedom is also the ability to truly choose what you want, instead of continuing to live by what other people chose for you long ago.

If you are in the beginning, middle, or end of your 20s, maybe you cannot avoid every mistake. I am also not sure that if I could go back, I would do everything completely differently.

But looking back, losing 80% of my income in one night was not the thing that destroyed my life. It was the thing that forced me to see clearly that I had placed my life on things that were too fragile.

From there, I understood that some things look like they are protecting us, but in truth they only give us a temporary feeling of safety. Cash flow can disappear. Achievement may heal nothing. Other people’s approval also cannot choose a life worth living for us.

If there is one thing I want to keep from all those mistakes, it is this: do not place your life on something that can disappear overnight. Build wings of ability. Learn how to keep your money, keep yourself, and choose your own direction.

The rest of your life will begin from there.

- Nam