Get your personal finances in order. Pay off all non-house non-car debt. Spend less. Start saving for retirement. Get a promotion and put all of that extra money in a boring low fee target date fund. You can expect to be able to live off of 4% of your investments for at least 30 years. For example, if you have $1M in investments, you can safely withdraw $40k / year from that. Plan accordingly.
This should actually be advice given to 20 year olds. Compound interest is magic:
If you put $5,000 aside every year and invest it at 7% p.a. from age 20-30 and then stop putting more money aside for the remainder of your life, you will have more money than if you started investing $5,000 each year starting at age 30 and for the rest of your life.
