Dude, tell your mother to shut the fuck up (growing up lesson one). Put approx 5k or 10k into an IRA or even just dump it into a no-load S&P 500 index ( Vanguard is good because it's a non-profit ).
Don't cave and cash out, make this your stable long-term, so keep it low and automatic (direct deposit that 5k out of your account or unemployment cheques every month), even if you do crazy fucking things over the next 20 years ( being young, it happens ), keep at least that one thing constant.
Fast forward 20 years, which is where compound interest really starts to get interesting ( 10 years is good, 20 years is fucking mind blowing ). That 5k per year after 10 years in the S&P 500, will turn into 100k by the time you are 28, by the time you are 38, it'll be 400k !
And that's assuming you only put 5k per year in (ie. your a fuck up for the next 20 years). The beauty in doing this so early is that you'll still actually be able to get a hard on and fuck your trophey wife hard and put her away wet !
If you really have your shit together and you have a house, you could also leverage your equity ( which is usually 20% when you first buy a house ) and take an equity line out and re-invest the funds in the same S&P 500, provided your interest rate is < your rate of return, you'll come out with double your 20% equity in 10 years !
