Among Phil Strazzulla’s first and most lasting childhood memories is a time he got something for nothing. He grew up south of Boston, and his parents liked to explain how the world works and then let their kids make their own decisions, discoveries and mistakes. That approach led to a trip to the bank to open a savings account when Strazzulla was in first grade.
Phil Strazzulla
“For every $100 you put in, you would get $5 a year for free (the interest rate in those days was 5%). This was a mind-boggling concept for me,” he remembers. “It sparked the idea that having more and more money working for you is a great way to have an income.”
From an early age, Strazzulla was hooked on saving and started investing at age 12, when his mother helped him and his brother open a brokerage account for the money they made from doing yard work. The brothers spent months researching a stock to buy and ended up making a good choice: They purchased shares of one company at $8 and sold at $11—enough of a return to earn them $100. “I’ve been investing ever since,” Strazzulla says.
A Lifelong Payoff
The financial skills Strazzulla started honing at a young age have created surprising opportunities for him. At 34 years old, he is the founder of Select Software, a website that provides software reviews for human resources professionals. Strazzulla estimates that he’ll have enough money to retire comfortably by the time he’s 40, though he doubts he’ll stop working entirely. “I love to teach and share knowledge and mentor companies,” says Strazzulla, who got an MBA at Harvard Business School and worked for a venture capital company before becoming an entrepreneur.
Strazzulla’s experiences in venture capital and business have given him a strong point of view about how young people—including those who don’t want to start their own companies—can achieve their financial objectives. One way, he says, is to take advantage of their youth to accumulate wealth and weather the natural ups and downs of the economy and the markets.
“My risk profile as a young person is to take a lot of risks, so long as I’m compensated for it. I won’t invest in my cousin’s bar because it’s risky and there’s no expected return,” he says. “But in the venture capital space, you take a lot of risk to invest in a company that could eventually make you 50 times the amount you invested.”
Planning for the Long Term
When the 2008 global financial crisis caused the stock market to precipitously decline, Strazzulla decided to put all of his money into low-cost equities. “I was 24 years old and knew I had to be aggressive to let my money compound over the next few decades,” he says.
It all goes back to the lesson Strazzulla learned at a very young age: Be patient and disciplined about saving and investing, and your money will do most of the work for you.
“If you can delay gratification and not go to that wedding because it’s really expensive, or you wear the same suit or live in a less-expensive apartment, you’ll have more to invest,” he says. “It’s swallowing your ego, which is hard in the age of Instagram. But if you put your money to work for you, you’ll pat yourself on the back, because you’ll be able to do all sorts of cool things in life when you have more time to do them.”
A former editor at Los Angeles magazine, Chris Warren has written for publications ranging from Institutional Investor and Forbes to National Geographic Traveler, Oxford American and Greentech Media.
Inset photo courtesy of Phil Strazzulla.