By Dimitris Evgeniou

Scroll through TikTok or Reels, and you see guys my age in rented Lamborghinis promising €10,000 a day from crypto!

The captions scream ‘ESCAPE THE MATRIX’ and ‘FINANCIAL FREEDOM’ – a huge temptation for any 19-year-old student struggling with rising costs, while rents in Nicosia and especially Limassol skyrocket.

At our age, we are afraid that the traditional path isn’t going to work for us. And so we become easy targets for FOMO and herding behaviour.

In this small country, we often trust a good word from a friend more than a bank’s warning. It’s something Cyprus has seen recently in the recent Metamax pyramid scheme. Thousands lost money because they ignored the basic economic rule: high returns always mean high risk.

In the digital age, however, that trust is being used against us: guaranteed safety with massive profits is almost always a trap.

Yet still, the algorithms continue to feed us excitement. After all, boring truths like diversification don’t go viral!

My finance classes have taught me that real wealth is built through compound interest. Invest just €300 a month at age 25 and earn an average annual return of 9% per cent, and by 65 it could grow to over €1.4 million – compared to only €550,000 if you waited until 35.

The math shows that the greatest asset we have isn’t a tip on a coin. It’s time.

We often treat the crypto market like a casino thanks to overconfidence bias. And we forget that high volatility means you can lose everything.

With prices constantly rising in our shops and cafés, leaving your savings in a basic bank account means your money loses purchasing power over the long run.

But the answer isn’t to gamble everything on a ‘meme coin’ you saw on your feed. Instead of asking “how can I double my money by Friday?” we need to start asking “how can I make sure I can still afford to live in Cyprus in five years?”

Instead of chasing moonshots, we should now focus on diversification; not putting all our eggs in one basket and fighting inflation.

Which, today, makes financial literacy no longer a skill; it’s now a survival mechanism.

In a world where an influencer can reach thousands of people with a single lie, our only defence is a solid financial education in how money actually works. It’s about learning to spot the difference between an investment that grows and a scam that steals.

We all, but especially my generation, need to stop taking financial advice from 30-second videos. Instead, we should start respecting the math.

Because real investing isn’t about fast cars. It’s about patience and discipline. And the understanding that if you’re being promised zero risk with high rewards, you’re not being helped – you’re being hunted!

It’s time we stop looking for overnight miracles and start looking for the smart, long-term financial plan that actually builds a future!

‘Cyprus’ Youth Talk Money’ is a Cyprus Mail series developed in collaboration with the University of Cyprus as part of the Financial Literacy Initiative, supported by XM. New student articles are published every Tuesday.

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Dimitris Evgeniou is a first-year student in the Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Cyprus