Just getting started and not sure where to go from here
There's a lot going on here. I'd be making the maximum ($5500 for a single person under 50) contribution to the Roth IRA each year. Not too late to put in for 2014 before Wednesday, 4/15.  Not out of your income, but from the T Rowe Price account. As long as you have earned income, you can make an IRA deposit up to the limit, 5500, or up to that income. The money itself can come from other funds. Just explain to Dad, you're turning the money into a long term retirement account. I doubt that will trouble him.  Aside from that, too much will change when you are out of school. At 18, it's a matter of learning to budget, save what you can, don't get into debt for stupid things. (Stupid, not as I would judge, but as the 25 year old you will judge.)
I recognize you are probably somewhere in the middle of various steps here... but I'd start and go through one-by-one in a disciplined way. That helps to cut through the overwhelming torrent of information that's out there. Here is my start at a general checklist: others can feel free to edit it or add their input. How 'much' house would you like to buy in terms of $$$ and bedrooms/sq ft. You can start pretty general here, but the idea is to figure out if you can actually afford a brand new 4bd/3ba 2,500 sq ft house (upwards of $500K in your neck of the woods according to trulia.com). Or maybe with your current resources you'll be looking at something like a townhome that is more entry-level but still yours. Some might recommend that this is a good time to talk to any significant others/whomevers and understand/manage expectations. My wife usually cares a lot about schools at this stage, but I think it's too early. Just ballpark whether you're looking at a $500K house, a $300K house, or a $200K townhome.  How much house can you afford in terms of monthly payments only... (not considering other costs like utilities yet). Looking around at calculators like this one from bankrate.com can help you figure this out. Set the interest rate @ 5%, 30-year loan, and change the 'mortgage amount' until you have something that is about 80%-90% of what you currently pay in rent each month. I'll get to 'why' to undershoot your rent payment later.  Crap... can't afford my dream house... If you don't have the down payment to make the numbers work (remember that this doesn't even include closing costs yet), there are other loan options like FHA loans that can go as low as about 5% down payment. The math would be the same but you replace 0.8 with 0.95.  Then, look at your personal budget. Come up with general estimates of what you currently bring in and spend each month overall. Just ballpark it...  Next, figure what you currently spend towards housing in particular. Whether you are paying for it or your landlord is paying for it, someone pays for a lot of different things for housing. For now, my list would include (1) Rent, (2) Mortgage Payment, (3) Electricity, (4) Gas, (5) Sewer, (6) Water, (7) Trash, (8) Other utilities... TV/Internet/Phone, (9) Property Insurance, (10) Renter's Insurance, and (11) Property Taxes.  I would put it into a table in Excel somewhere that has 3 columns... The first has the labels, the second will have what you spend now, and the third will have what you might spend on each one as a homeowner. If you pay it now, put it in the second column. If your landlord pays it right now, leave it out as that's included in your rent payment. Obviously each cell won't be filled in. Fill in the rest of the third column. You won't pay rent anymore, but you will have a mortgage payment. You probably have a good estimate of any electricity bills, etc that you currently pay, but those may be slightly higher in a house vs. a condo or an apartment. As for things like sewer, water, trash or other 'community' utilities, my bet would be that your landlord pays for those. If you need a good estimate ask around with some co-workers or friends that own their own places. They would also be a good resource for property insurance estimates... shooting from the hip I would say about $100/month based on this website. (I'm not affiliated).  The real 'ouch' is going to be property tax rates. Based on the data from this website, your county is about 9% of property value. So add that into the third column as well.  Can you really afford a house? round 2 Now... add up the third column and see how that monthly expense amount on housing compares against your current monthly budget. If it's over, you don't have to give up, but you should just understand how much your decision to purchase a house will strain your budget. Also, you should use this information to look again at 'how much house can you afford.'  Now, do some more research. If you need to get a revised loan amount based on the FHA loan decision, then use the bankrate calculator to find out what the monthly payment is for a 95% loan against your target price. But remember that an FHA loan will also carry PMI that is extra on top of your monthly payment. Or, if you need to revise your mortgage payment downwards (or upwards) change the loan amount accordingly.  Once you've got the numbers set, look for properties that fit. This way you can have a meaningful discussion with yourself or other stakeholders about what you can afford. As far as arranging financing... a realtor will be able and willing to point you in the right direction for obtaining funding, etc. And at that point you can just check anything you're offered by shopping interest rates, etc against what the internet has to say.  Feel free to ask us, too... it's hard to give much better direction without more specifics. Sorry for the late reply - it's the authors distilling of his top business books covering all of the topics you'd expect in an MBA course. I think it's a good starting point in that it'll give you a pretty good overview, you could then go in depth on topics you feel you need to. Here's the good reads link [Goodreads: Personal MBA](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9512985-the-personal-mba) Oxford Review makes a lot of sense.   You're right - I should start off with a small goal. I am planning to do a reach out to about 100 professors and kind of take it from there. Would you be interested in being an advisor? I think your best strategy is to learn more about the behavior of what you're investing in.  Learn everything you can about it.  Specialize in it.  The more you study, the more the proper strategy will present itself. Answer the questions you ask in paragraph 3 through your own study. There are some useful comments about the tradeoffs of the decisions in front of you.  Intertwined with the financial choices, hopefully you can see a map opening up.   Make a little chart if it helps.  Benefit and Cost.  If you're looking for financial options, you will have to also add more columns to that chart:  Option and Cost. An example is the comment on making connections with rich kids.  Trust fund babies are everywhere in this country.  Did you know any rich kids while growing up?  How were those rich kids you knew of back then... in your school... in your town?  How did they treat you?  Were you ever invited to their parties or gatherings?  Now there's an opportunity for the privilege to pay a lot of money to sit in a classroom next to them?  Even in the early days of American history with merit based millionaires... tycoons who made it rich by the seat of their pants.  At fancy dinner parties and soirees, a new term emerged to put each other again out of reach: old money (the deserving) and new money (uncultured climbers).   That's my bias.  You'll have some of your own.  What is important to YOU has to come through because these days, the price tag of any higher education implies a considerable piece of your life's timeline will be committed to... something.  Make sure you get what you feel is worth that commitment. Take stock of what has been said here by the others, but put a value on those choices and seriously consider what you're willing to pay for... and what you're not.  There is no formula for your success as there's been thousands of exceptions... ESID (Every Situation is Different). "There are books like, ""The Millionaire Mind"" that could be of interest when it comes to basics like living below your means, investing what you save, etc. that while it is common sense, it is uncommonly done in the world.  Something to consider is how actively do you want your money management to be?  Is it something to spend hours on each week or a few hours a year tops?  You have lots of choices and decisions to make. I would suggest keeping part of your savings as an emergency fund just in case something happens.  As for another part, this is where you could invest in a few different options and see what happens. There would be a couple of different methods I could see for breaking into finance that I'd imagine: IT of a finance company - In this case you'd likely be working on customizations for what the bank, insurance or other kind of financial firm requires.  This could be somewhat boring as you are basically a part of the backbone that keeps the company going but not really able to take much of the glory when the company makes a lot of money. Brains of a hedge fund - In this case, you may have to know some trading algorithms and handle updating the code so that the trading activities can be done by a computer with lightning speed.  Harder to crack into since these would be the secretive people to find and join in a way." Thank you for the wonderful response. I actually work out 4-5 times a week and have been for the past year or so(it's helped my productivity ten-fold).   I think I am going to finish up the Python codeacademy course in order to understand the basics of syntax and then I will continue from there.   If you have any other suggestions; I am quite open to them!  Thanks! That's a good point, and one I've recently been realizing too. I've been so focused on the aerospace and defense sector that I wasn't interested in anything else at first. Obviously I know now that's what has been causing my problems and I need to and have been changing my approach but it hasn't been successful yet, hence the post. But thanks for the advice, I had initially written off temp agencies (my temp job was through a friend not an agency) but now it looks like that may be one of my only choices at this point. I agree. I'd like to acquire as many assets as possible before making it official. Since we are currently in Ohio, which I think means that assets and debts are not combined. Once I get this one going, I want to start another one here, if I have the time to do it. Yes, I think the undergrad books alone are sufficient to get a general understanding. On the other hand, I would never discourage someone from pushing themselves and you may find reading the grad level books to be quite stimulating. If you're considering grad school sometime in the future then it will also help you get oriented to the language used in those settings.  Hull's book is definitely on the less-dry side of material I've read too (well, at least no more dry than the subject matter itself lol), so that shouldn't be an issue.  Try the grad book! In the tech hubs of the country (SF, Seattle, NY, Boston, etc) there usually meetups or talks that deal with how to properly do a startup.    There are programs you can apply to that will help you learn the ropes of that world once you have a bit of work done on your own. (YCombinator is the famous one)  If you aren't in those areas, it'll be much tougher.  Even the best unicorn idea won't go anywhere without the right people to do it.  Those people are in those areas.  It's part of the reason they are tech hubs.  People with ideas are in college, and then either finish or leave college to work on this idea.  They don't want to move far, so they stick around that college. (SF = Stanford, Seattle = UW, Boston = MIT, NY = Columbia).  As some of these blow up, they get attention from other people in the country that want to either join in, or do something similar so they move to that area to be around those people.  The positive feedback loop then keeps growing. It's difficult when you read every few sentences and a new phrase pops out. I'm not procrastinating here, I feel getting an overview of it here while I can ask specific questions about terms I don't understand will help me more than just reading it on my own. At least that's what I've found. I'm not smart and I learn better this way. I am in the same boat as you right now, I have about a year experience working for a financial advisor but even then it is not relevant enough for being an analyst.  I have put in over 120 apps over the past month and a half to any position that I meet 90% of requirements. The only thing I don't have is years of experience. I know how to code VBA, and how to build financial models but alas, I am looked over.  I have also been trying to network like crazy and just accepted to do a temp job working for a bank as a loan analyst and hopefully that will pan out into something better.  Many jobs want experiences with SAP and SQL, and I don't have either of those either, and there is no where to get experience because no junior analyst positions will take me without enough experience.  I turned down a banking internship because I did not want to take out loans for college, and now I am thinking I made the wrong choice. Hopefully some one will pick us up and catch us up to speed soon!  What area are you living in? I am in the Chicago area and I see new postings every day.  Also are you going to every job board? Career-builder, Monster, Indeed, LinkedIn, Craigslist? I have also hooked up with a few recruiting firms, they are the ones who got me the temp job. If you are in the Chicago area I will recommend a few for you to look into and a couple to stay away from.  Good luck on your search! I know you need it, because I need it too... I mostly volunteer within a church environment.  Given this is reddit, I'm not sure how that comment will fair.    But I also see a lot of  workshops via networking sites; linkedin has one called 'Financial Culture | Financial Literacy', between the articles and financial counseling workshops in the area I live it would be pretty easy to get involved.    Also, START FOLLOWING COMPANIES on linked in.  Join groups that are related to what you want to do, they post items all the time about relevant news to their industry.  The more educated you can get the better. I appreciate all the responses, but again, I have NO experience or education in the field.  I haven't started any major related college courses yet and do not have a job in the field. I am looking for beginner, introduction level reading material to start reading up on to start understanding the field before I even start school.