Welcome to Things Worth Remembering, our weekly column in which writers share a literary treasure that all of us should commit to heart. This week, we hear from Jack Raines, a 29-year-old writer and investor whose new book, Young Money, blends memoir and self-help to explore how people in their 20s can build both wealth and purpose. Today, in an adapted excerpt, Raines reflects on the book that made him drop everything at 24 to buy a one-way ticket to Barcelona—and why that remains the best decision he’s ever made.
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There are a few books in my life that have made me feel something. There is only one that has ever made me do something.
To explain, I have to turn back the clock five years to May 2021.
I was 24 years old, and it was 8:18 p.m. on a Friday in Atlanta, Georgia. I was supposed to meet friends for dinner in 12 minutes at a tapas restaurant 20 minutes away, and I was going to be lucky if I made it there by 9. The reason for my delay? Work, obviously.
If you’ve ever worked in a job where your responsibilities, schedule, and expectations appeared to defy the laws of logic and sensibility, this story might hit close to home. I was a financial analyst for America’s largest logistics company, and for the third Friday in a row, my eyes were glazing over as I worked well into the night to update a deck reflecting some trivial change in UPS’s hypothetical financial situation seven months out.
