I Kept Getting My Financial Priorities Wrong — Until I Realized Each Decade Has Completely Different Rules

My biggest money mistake wasn't spending too much on the wrong things. It was applying the financial logic of my 20s to my 30s, then panicking in my 40s when I realized how far behind that left me.

· Your 20s: The One Thing That Matters More Than Everything Else

Everyone says "save more." That's not wrong, but it misses the real game in your 20s, which is buying time.

Compounding is one of those things that sounds like a cliché until you actually map it out. Money invested at 25 has roughly twice the growth potential of the same money invested at 35 — not because of magic, but because you're giving it more years to multiply. For digital entrepreneurs especially, this decade is tricky because income is often erratic. You might make $8k one month and $800 the next. Most people use that inconsistency as an excuse to delay investing. That delay is expensive.

The mistake I see most often in the online business world: people in their 20s pour every dollar back into the business. The thinking is "grow first, save later." I did this myself. The business grew. But I hit 31 with almost nothing in retirement savings and had to essentially start from scratch on that front while also managing a real operation.

What actually matters in your 20s:

• Getting some money into a tax-advantaged retirement account, even small amounts, before you do anything else
• Not carrying high-interest debt while also "investing" — the math rarely works in your favor
• Learning how your business income gets taxed as a self-employed person (quarterly estimated taxes are not optional, and the penalties for missing them add up quietly)
• Keeping your lifestyle cheap on purpose — not forever, but now, while the cost is low

Realistic timeline: It takes most people 2–3 years of running an online business before they start thinking about money structurally instead of just reactively. That's fine. Just don't let it stretch to 6.

· Your 30s: The Decade Where the Decisions Get Real

By your 30s, the online business usually has more structure — maybe a team, maybe recurring revenue, maybe real overhead. And your personal life probably has more weight to it too: a partner, kids, a mortgage, or at least serious conversations about those things.

This is where financial planning stops being about habits and starts being about decisions.

The biggest mistake I see in this decade is confusion between business cash flow and personal wealth. A lot of online entrepreneurs are technically profitable businesses walking around in broke people's clothing. Revenue runs through the business, expenses get justified as "business costs," and personal savings stay thin because "the business is doing well."

The business is not your retirement account. The business is not your emergency fund. The business is an asset — but only if you treat it like one separately from your own financial life.

A few things that tend to matter a lot in your 30s that people underestimate:

• How you're paying yourself from the business (salary vs. distributions has real tax implications depending on your structure)
• Whether you have actual insurance — not just health insurance, but disability coverage, because if your income depends on you personally showing up and producing, you have meaningful income risk
• Whether you have a will and basic estate documents — boring, I know, but once you have dependents or assets, not having this is a genuine problem waiting to happen

If you hit 35 and realize your retirement savings are weak, you're not doomed. But you do need to start moving more aggressively and that usually means being more intentional about what you're pulling out of the business for yourself.

· Your 40s: The Decisions You Made Earlier Are Now Just... Facts

This is the decade where the compound interest story resolves itself — in one direction or the other. People who started early have assets that are doing visible, meaningful work. People who delayed are doing catch-up math that requires real sacrifice.

For online business owners specifically, the 40s also tend to surface a question most people don't think about early enough: what is this business actually worth, and what do I do with that?

Whether you eventually want to sell, step back, or just keep running it, the financial planning you do now should be connected to a real answer to that question. An unplanned exit is usually a cheap exit.

The other thing that shows up hard in your 40s: taxes at scale. When you're making more, even small inefficiencies in how your business is structured cost real money. This isn't something to figure out from articles — this is when working with an actual accountant who understands online business and self-employment becomes genuinely important, not optional.

What tends to matter most in your 40s:

• Having a clear-eyed view of your actual net worth (business equity included but valued honestly, not optimistically)
• Closing gaps in retirement savings with catch-up contributions if they're available to you
• Starting to think about your business continuity — what happens to your operation and your family's income if something happens to you
• Reducing structural tax inefficiencies, which usually means having professional help to find them

The Honest Version of What Most Online Business Owners Get Wrong

Across all three decades, the underlying pattern I've seen — and felt personally — is that online entrepreneurs treat financial planning as a "later" problem because the business always feels more urgent.

The business is urgent. The financial stuff is slow-moving and invisible, right up until it isn't.

There's no clean moment where you suddenly "have enough" to start thinking seriously about this. The people who waited for that moment in their 20s are still waiting in their 40s.