I am 17m and will be turning 18 in May of this year. I currently have 5000 in savings and hope to have 1800 extra to invest by then. I work as a Patient Care Technician in a hospital part time. When I hit college I will be a year ahead and will graduate at age 21 with a bachelors in Nursing and will have 0 college debt because my father is a professor at the college and I get to go for free including room and board. During the first two years of college I will be working part time (16 hrs. Per week) at the hospital at around 18 bucks an hour as an ER tech. I will live at my parents house after I graduate and work as a new grad ER nurse in Des Moines, Iowa making hopefully >$70,000 a year. I will live at my parents house for 2 years and make money, then I will go to Physician’s assistant school (~100k of debt), during which I will not work and will have to pay tuition. That will take 2 years, and I suspect I would like to live on my own during that time.
My question is, how much money and where should I invest those few thousand dollars when I turn 18 in a few months? I want my money to be untouched until I retire probably. How much should I keep and how much should I invest? During college and those next couple years I won’t have much necessary that I have to pay for, so how much should I put aside to pay for Physician’s assistant school? How much should I invest? Since I’m living at my parents, could I invest 90% of that money? How reasonable is it to live on my own and pay for school without working? Being an ER physician’s assistant like a I plan have an average of >$200,000 which is far more than I’m used to being the child of teachers. So reasonably couldn’t I invest like 80k per year and still have a family if I just live by the same metrics as my family does now? Any advice would be appreciated. I just want to set all my kids up and myself for later in life.
Are there any other finances during my early 20’s I need to think about?
How should I change my investing strategy as my income jumps from 20k to 70k to 200k?
If you could restart at 18 with my situation, what would you do?
Thank you!