If there’s anyone who can teach younger generations about saving money, it’s the men and women who are systematically robbing them of accumulated wealth and hoarding it for themselves. We asked prominent business leaders what financial advice they would give to millennials, and this is what they said.
Gary C. Kelly (Southwest Airlines)
“Automatically set aside one 737 every month. You’ll barely miss it at the time, but you’ll eventually have a whole fleet.”
H. Lawrence Culp Jr. (G.E.)
“Try to cut down on unnecessary spending like paying your taxes.”
Brian Halligan (HubSpot)
“When you buy something, round up the change and put the extra into an interest-bearing account. Next, tell me the routing and account numbers for that account. Then go out of town for a few weeks.”
Tim Cook (Apple)
“If you put away even 5% from each paycheck, soon enough Steve Jobs will die, and you’ll be CEO of Apple.”
Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase)
“30% of your income should be for rent, 25% for food, and 40% for hush money for mistresses.”
Doug Parker (American Airlines)
“Saving money can be hard, so don’t be afraid to ask your parents or Congress for billions of dollars in bailout money.”
Ramon Laguarta (PepsiCo)
“If you kick the vending machine hard enough, sometimes a free Sierra Mist will pop out.”
Craig Landau (Purdue Pharma)
“Sometimes the most obvious solutions work the best—start pushing drugs!”
Jeff Bezos (Former Amazon CEO)
“I wouldn’t sweat it too much, since in the future world I am creating, saving money will be a complete impossibility.”
Eugene Washington (Washington Piano Futures)
“If I could only give one piece of advice, it would be to invest in pianos as early as possible!”
John Donahue (Nike)
“You can save a lot of money with little things like making your own candles out of your breakfast’s rendered bacon fat.”
Marc Benioff (Salesforce)
“Save 10 pennies every day, then at the end of every year, melt them down to extract their raw elements.”
Dirk Van de Put (Mondelez International)
“Find gainful employment that pays you enough to put some aside, so whatever you do, don’t take a job at one of our factories.”
Larry Fink (BlackRock)
“You can easily earn as much as $500 by promising to stay the fuck away from me.”
Bob Iger (Former Disney CEO)
“Skip the cold brew and fancy brunch, and instead, buy the rights to the most beloved intellectual property on earth.”
Warren Buffet’s Dog (Berkshire Hathaway)
“Good luck scoring a cushy gig like this, you entitled fucks.”
Charles Koch (Koch Industries)
“Stop wasting money on dumb expenses, and come dig me up! I’m not the dead one!”
Elon Musk (Tesla)
“Rocket ship, rocket ship, rocket ship, PSHEWWWWW LIFTOFF!!!! WEEEEE!!!!!!!”
Bill Gates (Microsoft)
“One of the most important things you can do, and this is something it took me my whole life to learn, is avoid going to a privately owned island with a widely known pedophile for a few of his parties. That will really destroy your savings.”
Larry Page (Google)
“The security cameras at Michael’s aren’t actually hooked up to anything. Do with that information what you will.”
