Whether you are 20, 40, or 60 years old right now, tell me some of the greatest things you know now that you wish you had known earlier in life.
I’ll start with one of mine:
“First you work for money, then you make money work for you.”
Basically, if only I knew earlier in life to up my investment game.
That Earth girls are easy. Should have watched that movie back then, might have changed my life.
I’ve learned that you can never save too much money for your retirement years. Invest money aggressively when you are young, and live comfortably when you are old. The end.
Get away from your parents as soon as you can!
Don’t mess with credit cards, those things are terrible.
That starter house is going to be the long term one. Get more land.
LabView is a hot mess. It’s only for fooling around in the lab, and it breaks regularly. Their own programmers are trying to escape. Don’t do anything important with it.
Whatever stupid shit you do when you’re in your 20s/30s will come back at you in spades in your 70s.
My regrets about my life mostly involve times when I wish I’d been kinder, more patient, more willing to listen than to talk, more generous of my time and resources.
All those big, grand things you wanted to do when you were younger, but couldn’t/didn’t scrape the money together to do? Find a way to do them, before the shackles of responsibility take hold. Yeah, when you’re older you have more money, but less time (and energy).
Travel and see the world on someone elses dime. It wasn’t until I was 40 that I lucked into job that had me traveling around the world to wonderful locations. I did not concieve at 22 that this was even an option.
Oh, and dont wait to travel until you are too old to enjoy your time there. Go out and get drunk in London, Paris, Tokyo and New York while you can handle it. Save the outdoors stuff for vacation with family where you can use your airline, hotel and rental car perks from your job.
Don’t overlook what’s in your back yard. Christ, I drove 2 fricken day’s to Banff National Park, which was great and no regrets. Then I figured out I haven’t spent enough time in the three National Parks in Washington State.
It’s great to go half-way around the world, but sometimes halfway around the State is even better. So, don’t think you have to kill yourself going around the world. This is someone that has a passport, knows how to use it, has backpacked solo in Tibet in the 1980’s, spent 20 years in Asia.
Oh, and take care of your knees and feet as much as possible. Get good shoes, use trekking poles, etc. You’re gonna need those joints when you’re 60 a lot more than when you’re 20. Jus’ sayin’
The dividing line between confidence and arrogance. It’s not exactly defined, but I wish I’d been more aware of the times when I’d obviously crossed it.
Also, it would have helped to know that some elements of family/childhood weren’t normal, and life would be easier later. (Note: this is not as dark as it may sound – just stress related stuff).
You will find that the notaries who shaped and influenced your opinions and outlook on life are all liars. You were just another mark to them.
You don’t always know who is giving you fantastic knowledge and insight, and even when you do know, they don’t always know that you are aware of it. It’s worthwhile to thank these people and acknowledge what they’ve done for you. Do it before it’s too late.
This is an impressively honest answer.
I wish I had known how much I would love fly fishing; I would have started decades earlier.
Well, he just admitted that back then he wouldn’t have done it. Now’s the time to ask him!
Hey QtM, can you lend me $1,000?
In my family, it was just taken as understood that you continued with education or jumped into a career. I had my heart set on movie-making, which was in a huge boom in Canada at the time. I graduated with a degree in Film & Communications, and so it was just taken for granted that I’d go on to grad/film school.
I never should have done that. I wound up living in Hollywood, a dumb 22 year old with no life experience, surrounded by people who’d actually gone and worked in the business. Not only that, but being a foreign student I couldn’t work legally without jumping through ridiculous hoops, and burned through my savings while all my classmates could take paying gigs and move up in the world. I should have stayed in Canada, used those savings to live in Toronto and work my way up in crews and make contacts there, and, were things to work out for me in any way, I would have gotten a much more hands-on education without INS hanging over me head.
I’m happy for the friernds and experiences I had in California, but I was far too young to be trusted to make it on my own out there.
Saving more for retirement
NO credit cards
One of my greatest regrets was not asking my grandma more about her life. She came to the US from Italy. I have so many questions and it’s too late to ask. I also wish I would have asked her to teach me to speak Italian.
“Experience is a cruel teacher; she gives the test first and the lesson afterwards.”
Christianity is bad at delivering results, but great at giving excuses for why it can’t deliver results.
A “normal, average, ordinary” life is great. Like, staggeringly great and enjoyable. Don’t ruin it by doing dumb stuff.
The power of compound interest. I wish that I had started an IRA and invested in employer retirement plans when I was still in my twenties, rather than waiting until my mid-thirties. The only reason I have anything like a decent retirement waiting for me is that I eventually started working for state government, which enrolled me in a pension plan automatically, without my having to do anything. Having an IRA alongside it still would have helped, though.
Rather than NO credit cards, I would say the responsible and intelligent use of credit cards. If you have the discipline to use credit wisely, it can help you build a good credit history, which will be helpful for SO MANY things later on. Plus a lot of credit cards will earn you rewards, either cash back or free travel. What I wish I knew was the discipline to: A.), not use a credit card to pay for anything I wouldn’t have bought anyway, and B.), pay off the bill completely every month.
That woman I wanted to ask out was not going to laugh in my face. And even if she did, guess what? The world would have gone right on spinning.
I wish I had started saving for retirement earlier. Over all, no regrets because I have my two beautiful children, but I do wish I had joined the Navy as I planned and not married so early.