Lets suppose you could send a message to your past self. What would you tell yourself, and how much in todays money would you say your believeable advice was worth.
For example, I would have paid tens of thousands of dollars to know doing the particular arts undergraduate degree I did wasn’t worth it, saving myself years of unemployment and all the post-grad fees I spent to correct it.
Tens of thousands to GTFO within 6 months of graduating from high school. Allowing my family to choose where I went to college simply fucked everything up.
I’d pay my entire net worth to get a different set of parents. But seeing as my current net worth is ~negative $20k, I don’t know how much this sentiment is worth.
…bought out pimply Bill Gates at the eve of fortune!
Hm, the problem with my 2 very abusive exes is that I actually learned valuable stuff from them, so if I avoided them I would not be the person I am today.
Perhaps if I told myself to not do the competitive dressage and jumping and take martial arts/self defense instead, and accepting the chance to go to West Point and be an Army officer instead of what I chose I would be better off. [to be blunt, the null chance of escaping being raped was why I didn’t go to the point. I did not see the value of putting up with public and private harassment to get the ring. Perhaps with a strong self defense background I might have escaped being raped.]
Nothing. In fact, I’d pay good money to keep it the same. There were some tough parts and plenty of bad decisions, but without going through those I wouldn’t have worked out my rough points and grown in to what I am.
I wish that I’d established myself as an independent adult the second I turned 18. If this meant serving up fries while I scraped through college, then that’s what I should have done. And I shouldn’t have gotten married at 19 because I was so desperate to get away from my parents. I wish that I’d finished college. And I definitely should have dated more. Sure, every boyfriend I ever had wanted to marry me…but I miss not having had a wider dating experience.
I’m OK with not ever taking up smoking, drugs, or serious drinking, though.
Just goes to show you get what you pay for. 
A previous landlord declared bankruptcy and screwed me out of just under a grand in deposit money (as detailed here, if you’re going “Bwuh? How?”) and frankly, even if I could go back in time and tell myself that, there would still be no legal way to stop it from happening. If there was, then that would be worth a couple thousand bucks (to adjust for inflation + emotional satisfaction).
I might, however, have [del]trashed the house[/del] left a tiny bit of cat and ferret poop in a litter box if I’d have known, and that would likely also be worth a thousand bucks’ worth of satisfaction.
Getting two more years’ of job experience instead of a worthless MA would probably be worth … well, two years’ worth of salary, assuming I’d have been able to find a job.