As some may assume, and if you don't know: I really can NOT stand banks and make every effort to give them and Urinal Sam as little as I have to (so much so I can't even stand paying $0.49 for a postage stamp). Plus, I already spent 10 years of my life in the Air Force, so I try to spin this as I've paid my dues to the government.
Dislaimer: This may be pretty well known, but if this helps one teen or just anybody out, then I've done my job. And remember, always invest what you're willing to lose. The key to investing is to detach emotion from your money - so try to think of investing as buying coffee.
The Banks
If you can't be them, be them. I mean, who else will welcome you with a smile after they've just fucked you over $15 because you're account balance fell below 'x' amount of dollars? My thoughts, why lose to the bad guy when you can just be the bad guy. Becoming a minibank was something I realized almost 2 years ago and I do recommend sites such as lendingclub to start earning passive income. My strategy is 75% A-rated clients, 15% B-rated clients, remaining poor credit based clients. Yes, some have defaulted and the remaining amount of their loan that I invested has gone to charge off, but some do pay and my account is earning about an average of 6% a year due to the bad credit folks - hey no risk, no reward right?
Sadly, we're still in a time where we do need bank accounts so I keep the bare minimum in to avoid a penalty and bills. I don't let the banks take my cash and lend it out so they can collect the interest on it and give me next to nothing.
My Government Defense Strategy
Well, there's numerous topics on this which I follow. Obviously buying as well as trading cryptocurrencies. I prefer genesis-mining use my code eQxZFD for your 3% discount if you purchase. About genesis-mining, I was fortunate enough to start cloud mining back in october 2016. I had actually forgotten about and low and behold a month ago I remembered and was shocked to see the price of LTC at $38. I started mining at around $3-4 so I had quite a few months of just LTC building up. Of course, I cashed out my initial investment since the X11 platform is contracted over 2 years (BTC is lifetime contract so long as its profitable). So by a little luck, I have a little less than 1.5 years of pure profit coming in, and that's rather nice.
As for trading crytpos, I use bittrex. If you've been considering this, take this step with caution as you are on a live trading platform that operates 24/7. I'll give a hint though, most forex platforms have demos, it would be a great way to practice trading strategies. My only complaint about demos are that people don't treat them realistically as they usually give you 50,000 of play money. But do try to treat it seriously, do see how fast you can LOSE money most importantly, do understand managing greed and your emotions when you are losing, and do understand you always don't have to be in an open position. Do study the biggest faults of traders (common one being "catching the falling knife"). Overall, just make sure you have some confidence before going in. And honestly, don't go through trying any and every pair you see bc you saw 'x' crypto profit 200% today. Pick one or two favorites - I actually just scalp steem and seek a 1-4% profit per trade, I don't trade any other pair because I think steem has a "product" - thus "value" behind it.
Finally, I like to buy those precious metals. This is primarily for inflation in the future. I'm not one of those apocolypse guys or whatever, but I do think we are in for economic hardships as our government just loves to print more and more money and I believe statistics are skewed to hide the trouble that we're in. Plus, the weight of precious metals just feels nice in your hands.
Putting It All Together
So this sounds like a lot of work and it can be if you delve into trading. But the most important thing is you need to devise a budget. First pay off those credit cards. Then build a little cash pile, I like to have 6 months living expenses cash. But, you can build cash and build your portfolio all at once. So let's use easy numbers but you can decide your levels of aggression or safety.
An example:
Say you can save $1000 a month
$200 lending club
$100 genesis-mining
$300 cash ***until your 6 months living expenses are built
$100 coinbase BTC
$100 bittrex
$200 precious metals
This strategy mixes some high risk with very low risk portfolios. Its taken a while to build and you'll honestly have to determine whats comfortable for you and how aggressive of an investor you.
Hope this helps or gives new ideas to anyone.