What to do in your 20s to avoid regrets later?

[nidena]

Apr 19, 2023 20:46:14 GMT -5 Opti said:

Apr 19, 2023 20:08:26 GMT -5 nidena said:

Don't let people who don't pay your bills dictate your life decisions.
Don't talk yourself out of the things that you want to do but are scared of doing.  Do them!
Social Media is a highlights reel.  Don't strive for the façade that is seen on the little screen.
The person who dies with the most toys still dies.  Invest in experiences and memories rather than toys.

Those are the platitudes.

Real talk: Don't get drunk around people you don't know.
Don't loan money to anyone.  Give it without strings or don't give it at all.
Leave your hometown.  Even if you move back, still leave so you can see something other than the place you grew up in.

I will do loans, or would, but I would have a contract and be prepared to lose it.
I would say leave your state if possible, and live there or elsewhere for a minimum of a month.

Sometimes toys are experiences.    (Car enthusiast, I bought it for me not you. )

The people that I've given money to can't afford anything on an installment plan.  Life on the cusp of or below poverty will do that to you.

[Opti]

Apr 19, 2023 16:59:35 GMT -5 tallguy said:

I have plenty of regrets.

I don't.  Regrets don't help anyone.  Besides, I am always of the belief that I made the best choice possible with the information I had available at the time.  There are certainly things that didn't turn out as well as I would have expected or hoped, but that is not due to the decision-making process that I used at the time.  It is due to things that I either did not know or could not have foreseen.  To truly "regret" anything would be an indictment of the decision-making process, not the actual result of what happened.  Sometimes things just don't work out.  It happens.  

I do have "regrets" but usually because I wish I had taken the other path. I think it may have worked out better, but perhaps alternate universe Opti wishes she had taken my path. 

And certain mistakes showed me other possibilities or cautions. One of my sayings is:
When you can't afford to be wrong, don't.

Which isn't as hardcore as it sounds and was for working on large computer hardware & software projects.

[Opti]

Apr 19, 2023 20:52:23 GMT -5 nidena said:

Apr 19, 2023 20:46:14 GMT -5 Opti said:

I will do loans, or would, but I would have a contract and be prepared to lose it.
I would say leave your state if possible, and live there or elsewhere for a minimum of a month.

Sometimes toys are experiences.    (Car enthusiast, I bought it for me not you. )

The people that I've given money to can't afford anything on an installment plan.  Life on the cusp of or below poverty will do that to you.

Understood. I almost gave away a piece of furniture to another fellow unemployed person once because I felt she needed it more than I did. Hospitals, utility companies, etc. will put people around that poverty line on installment plans, or have expected payments that are impossible ... but you probably already know that. I know big swaths of this board though, do not.

Got you. 

[laterbloomer]

Apr 19, 2023 16:45:46 GMT -5 haapai said:

I have plenty of regrets.

I find the number of regrets I have is in direct inverse proportion to how content I am at the moment. Right now I'm in a really good place so I'm not inclined to change anything that might stop me from being here.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Don’t try keeping up with the Jones’s.  There is always going to be a Jones’s with a better purse, car or home.  Just don’t.

Disability insurance is very important.  You are not invincible.

However, at 20 I knew everything.

[bean29]

Apr 19, 2023 17:51:33 GMT -5 @pooks said:

Try to buy the house you want to stay in first.  Some of our friends are now retiring early and one thing I noticed is that they never upgraded housing.  DH and I have owned 3 houses and we still aren't in our last one.  I wish we had stretched the budget for house 1.

We also broke the don't date at work rule.  At least we were in different departments.  

I agree with this. Met DH at work. Married 31 years in October. We are also in our 3rd house. We built current house. I regret not building it just a bit bigger. I tell myself it will make a great retirement house. We might move once we retire, idk. We will see in 5-10 years.

[giramomma]

Apr 19, 2023 16:13:28 GMT -5 andi9899 said:

Apr 19, 2023 16:07:35 GMT -5 wvugurl26 said:

Andi had a much politer version of my brother's rule regarding that.

I would add be careful who you hang out with. Not everyone is going to have your best interests in mind.

Don't get laid where you get paid. It's pretty high up on my list of rules to live by.

I love this. Usually I just tell the kids don't shit where you eat.

[Regis]

Shut up and listen.

You have no idea what's really happening in somebody else's house.

Be grateful and generous.

Nobody is going to take care of you better than you take care of you.

Those who appear to have money probably don't - and the opposite is likely true, too.

Try to save one hour of your salary every day.

Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.

[giramomma]

The biggest regret I have from my early 20s is believing that my parents marriage was a good one.

If I would have understood that their marriage was unhealthy and dysfunctional, I would have never married my husband. After we had been dating for about 2 years, we were far enough past the initial stages of love/lust that I could recognize something was off. My husband engaged in 0 non-sexual intimacy with me. I knew it. And decided to brush it off because that's what my parents modeled, and they were married 49 years when dad died.

Which would have saved me so much emotionally.

And it would have prevented me from making choices that I knew I could not live with. 

Being in  a relationship with an addict, even a recovering one, was a line I would not cross. It goes against 99% of the fibers in my being.

Yet, hear we are.

My second regret is believing that people can change and giving second chances. People don't change.  They may soften, but you are wired to be who you are wired to be.

I also usually try to counsel my kids to stop digging when they make a hole. I wish I would have taken that advice. But, I was naive and thought folks could change.

[wvugurl26]

Apr 20, 2023 8:17:08 GMT -5 giramomma said:

Apr 19, 2023 16:13:28 GMT -5 andi9899 said:

Don't get laid where you get paid. It's pretty high up on my list of rules to live by.

I love this. Usually I just tell the kids don't shit where you eat.

This version is the one I've heard from my brother.

I'm pretty good with where I'm at. There are things I wish I would have done differently but maybe I had to learn the hard way. And then there's the whole butterfly effect.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I would also tell myself you know how you think you are odd?  You are right you are, you are neurodivergent.  ADD and dyslexia in particular.   Figure that out NOW and learn to adapt to it.  While I am not going to say it is never too late it is a hell of a lot harder when you have a job, a mortgage, kids and pesky things like health insurance you need to depend on having. 


Do it now when the worst thing that can happen is your GPA dips I can assure you in 20 years it won't matter.  Not getting a grip, trying to hide it from everyone and continuing to try to pull yourself up by your bootstraps is going to backfire in your face in ways you will not expect.  Save yourself some heartache and learn to embrace it.

Plus now you can stop feeling like you are stupid.  You're not stupid.  The system as you entered it wasn't designed to work for people like you and in a lot of ways still isn't.  You're going to face an uphill battle but at least know you know it's because you are wired differently not because you are too stupid to understand what appears obvious to everyone else.

Embrace who you are in all your weirdness.   Life is so much more enjoyable when you start living for yourself instead of trying to conform to others.   Life is incredibly short and fleeting you've spent your entire life trying to moderate yourself for others and be who you think they want you to be STOP IT.  It's not a habit that will go away, it will always be with you but recognizing it now is going to save you so much heartache and FOMO later in life.

[minnesotapaintlady]

Apr 20, 2023 9:23:16 GMT -5 wvugurl26 said:

Apr 20, 2023 8:17:08 GMT -5 giramomma said:

I love this. Usually I just tell the kids don't shit where you eat.

This version is the one I've heard from my brother.

I'm pretty good with where I'm at. There are things I wish I would have done differently but maybe I had to learn the hard way. And then there's the whole butterfly effect.

Exactly.  We learn more from our mistakes than our accomplishments.

I mean you can plan as best as you can, but in the end a lot of it is a dice roll.  For every person that had a horrible experience dating someone they worked with there are people that would say it was the best thing they ever did. I had two marriages that ended badly, but would I change things if I did them over?  I don't know.  Give up my kids? give up all the great years that were in there before the crash and burn?  For an unknown alternate life?

I also struggle with the idea of living my life in my 20's with the knowledge and wisdom of a 54 year old.  I had a crap ton of stupid fun in my 20's due to not worrying so much about the big picture. There's value in that too (as long as you live to your 30's )

[movingforward]

Apr 19, 2023 20:08:26 GMT -5 nidena said:

Don't let people who don't pay your bills dictate your life decisions.
Don't talk yourself out of the things that you want to do but are scared of doing.  Do them!
Social Media is a highlights reel.  Don't strive for the façade that is seen on the little screen.
The person who dies with the most toys still dies.  Invest in experiences and memories rather than toys.

Those are the platitudes.

Real talk: Don't get drunk around people you don't know.
Don't loan money to anyone.  Give it without strings or don't give it at all.
Leave your hometown.  Even if you move back, still leave so you can see something other than the place you grew up in.

Love these! I would also add to live by yourself at least once in your life for a minimum of 2 years. Even if you don't like living alone, do it anyway.

[haapai]

I would tell my younger self that she will never manage to save by leaving money in checking.  So set up automatic transfers to savings accounts with every paycheck.  Yes, you will need more than one.  One is for automobile insurance.  One is for your emergency fund.  One is for fun.  You may want more than that. 

I would tell my younger self that cars wear out, so you have to continually save for the next one. 

I'd patiently explain to myself that the advice to always set aside 10% in a "rainy day" fund does not mean that you can put 10% into savings and spend the rest.  You will need to save for retirement and new cars on top of that amount.

[Mrs. Dinero]

Apr 19, 2023 16:20:50 GMT -5 soupandstew said:

Don't confuse what you do for a living with your life.  You might need a job, but you are not your job, you are you.

I have yet to learn this.  I've been completely devastated after being laid off.  I am better than before but contributing to a team is everything to me.

[movingforward]

Anyone remember this...

www.songlyrics.com/baz-luhrmann/sunscreen-lyrics/

[giramomma]

Here's another one for me: moderation is key.

I was saving 30% of our gross income in my 20s. It wasn't much, because we were grossing 35K.

I thought I should be doing more, that it wasn't good enough.

Here's something else:

Surround yourself with people who think you are (good) enough. It gets lonely when you are the only person in your life that knows that you are enough as you are.

[Opti]

Apr 20, 2023 8:21:10 GMT -5 Regis said:

Shut up and listen.

You have no idea what's really happening in somebody else's house.

Be grateful and generous.

Nobody is going to take care of you better than you take care of you.

Those who appear to have money probably don't - and the opposite is likely true, too.

Try to save one hour of your salary every day.

Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.

[Opti]

Apr 20, 2023 10:26:11 GMT -5 Mrs. Dinero said:

Apr 19, 2023 16:20:50 GMT -5 soupandstew said:

Don't confuse what you do for a living with your life.  You might need a job, but you are not your job, you are you.

I have yet to learn this.  I've been completely devastated after being laid off.  I am better than before but contributing to a team is everything to me.

Even if you know with the core of your being what Soup said, and I do - timing and circumstances still can make job loss devastating especially if you are single and you are your own financial provider and there is no one else.

I was crushed beyond everything when my boss's boss set things up to have me fired and kicked off the island. I had worked there for a long time, maybe a decade? And I had seen both my boss and her level go multiple times. I lost Survivor whatever that year was and I also lost access to all the people I saw on a daily basis. It was a very people-oriented position.

And the kicker is, the you are fired really fired official notice pretty much forbids you from being on the property ever again unless of course you consider being a patient. This included even the parking lot, which legally should be public property. Made me understand now why when boss's boss level got fired aka administrator of one side of facility did not would not come into the building.

If I were a lawyer, it probably would make a great class action law suit just to get that thing less terrifying and more strictly legal. As in "Opti is now terminated and may not be on the premises for any reason ever again except for medical care as a patient. Unless circumstances change, clause of the first part will terminate a year from termination date.
Blah blah blah.

[haapai]

If you get into debt, knowing how to build a debt amortization schedule on a spreadsheet is handy. 

At first it only delivers the bad news regarding how long of a slog you're facing and the regret-producing amount of interest that you will pay.  It's probably better to do this work on your own because you will probably be in some form of denial or have forgotten an important expense that reduces how much you can pay.

Eventually, it tells you more - like how much applying a windfall to a particular debt will chop off the journey and when things will loosen up and become less scary. 

If you get into debt, there's a game that you can play with yourself that I found useful.  I call it the $100/$1000/$10,000 game.  The rules are simple, figure out the best use of that amount if it should come to you unexpectedly. 

[Opti]

Apr 20, 2023 10:26:11 GMT -5 Mrs. Dinero said:

Apr 19, 2023 16:20:50 GMT -5 soupandstew said:

Don't confuse what you do for a living with your life.  You might need a job, but you are not your job, you are you.

I have yet to learn this.  I've been completely devastated after being laid off.  I am better than before but contributing to a team is everything to me.

Its a major loss, I don't think its wise to pretend it isn't. I still resent possible husband #2 for not letting people from work contact me after a significant medical event. I don't know if was extreme jealousy or what, but he wouldn't even give me my L, former female coworker, who I had seen outside of work and were becoming friends. He dropped me off the grid, it was a contract job through small company and still till this day he has not coughed up that sheet or sheet of papers.

It was a very small team, maybe 4 to 5 people total?

[haapai]

Learn how to calculate your income taxes. 

20-something me had no idea how taxes were calculated.  Nobody explained deductions and tax brackets to me until I was 28 and taking an accounting class on federal income taxes. 

My dad was a CPA, my mother had majored in math.  I had scored in the high 700s on the math portion of the SAT.  You'd think that somewhere along that journey someone would have presented a "figure out the federal income tax" algebra question.  

Nope.  That never happened.  I don't think that I am alone here either.  I suspect that the constant indexing discourages anyone from attempting to teach this very basic stuff.  I have every reason to believe that this situation has not improved. 

[happyhoix]

Apr 19, 2023 19:19:32 GMT -5 soupandstew said:

As I have posted elsewhere, I am transcribing the autobiography of a 76-year-old friend for whom I used to work.  I'm approaching the end of his lengthy saga, so we spoke at length this morning about his core message in writing it; he said it was to share the story of a life where ultimately nothing happened according to any plan he created, where much resulted from things far beyond his control such as his parents' divorce, global financial crises, the dot.com bubble.  All of which he writes about in hindsight and all of which dramatically impacted his life, to the tune of many millions of dollars.  He has no regrets, no handwringing, he just looks back and sees that much that occurred, both good and bad, was actually outside his control.  

I could dispute some of his perspective, because there were definitely moments that keeping his trousers zipped would have made a difference, but I get his basic drift.  Perhaps resilience is an important message for the 20-year-old selves.

As one of my favorite authors, Carl Haisson said in a commemorative address at a graduation, ‘life is a shit blizzard.’

And as I told my son when he went to college and I handed him a box of condoms, you are 100% responsible for the babies you create. Even if the girl says she is on the pill, wrap it up.

[tractor]

There's no substitute for good Bourbon

[movingforward]

My parents always told me the following and I thought everyone's parents did but I later found out they did not:

*Always have health and auto insurance. Don't go one day without either of them even if it is a high deductible policy

*Keep up on car maintenance (regular oil changes, etc.). If not it will cost you way more in the long run.

*Always partake in the company retirement plan up to the matched amount.

These seem like simple things that I assumed all parents drilled into their kid's head. I definitely found out this wasn't true once I graduated college and go out into the world. Friends in my 20's were blowing out car engines because they never got the oil changed. They some how didn't realize they were supposed to do so. Almost none of them enrolled in their 401K and would drive around with no car or health insurance. I may not have been the most responsible 22 year old but I knew the basics of life.

[Tiny]

I didn't need to hear this as a 20 something but I think some could benefit from at least hearing it once:

IF the thing you do with your friends is drink alcohol and/or watch sports on TV (or at the bar) several nights per week... at some point your friends are going to find other things to do (they will get married, start a family, buy a house, get a better job - something that will make drinking/hanging out less of a thing they want to do (they don't have the time or the money).

I would suggest that teens and 20 somethings should try to cultivate some hobbies or interests that do not involve alcohol or watching sports on TV.


OK, watching sports could also mean playing online games (where you are scheduling multiple nights in each week.)



Yay, sure "Travel" is nice - but when you can't travel you will have a lot of hours to fill.    
(FWIW:  the people in my life who travel - mostly just spend their time at the pool bar or eat at "chain vacation" restaurants - they don't do or go anywhere when the travel... they just drink a lot and eat a lot.  But hey they can say they've been to all sorts of places.    

[TheOtherMe]

Apr 25, 2023 17:25:31 GMT -5 Tiny said:

Yay, sure "Travel" is nice - but when you can't travel you will have a lot of hours to fill.    
(FWIW:  the people in my life who travel - mostly just spend their time at the pool bar or eat at "chain vacation" restaurants - they don't do or go anywhere when the travel... they just drink a lot and eat a lot.  But hey they can say they've been to all sorts of places.    

I no longer travel with those people or the people that have the vacation planned so they are on the road all the time, stopping just to sleep and only spend an hour all day actually seeing something in the area.

[movingforward]

I have never understood that type of "travel" even when I was younger. I can lie in the sun and drink at home. I don't need to pay top dollar and do it somewhere else. Seeing and experiencing as much as possible is what I want to do when traveling.

[wvugurl26]

I guess it depends on where you live. There's maybe 3 months of really good warm days to sit outside in the sun and enjoy here. It's already been nice and warm in April and now it's cold and rainy.

So yes while I was in Florida last weekend one of our days was a pool day. It was 45 and rainy at home so I don't consider that a waste. There's also no beach at home.

[Opti]

Apr 25, 2023 17:25:31 GMT -5 Tiny said:

I didn't need to hear this as a 20 something but I think some could benefit from at least hearing it once:

IF the thing you do with your friends is drink alcohol and/or watch sports on TV (or at the bar) several nights per week... at some point your friends are going to find other things to do (they will get married, start a family, buy a house, get a better job - something that will make drinking/hanging out less of a thing they want to do (they don't have the time or the money).

I would suggest that teens and 20 somethings should try to cultivate some hobbies or interests that do not involve alcohol or watching sports on TV.


OK, watching sports could also mean playing online games (where you are scheduling multiple nights in each week.)



Yay, sure "Travel" is nice - but when you can't travel you will have a lot of hours to fill.    
(FWIW:  the people in my life who travel - mostly just spend their time at the pool bar or eat at "chain vacation" restaurants - they don't do or go anywhere when the travel... they just drink a lot and eat a lot.  But hey they can say they've been to all sorts of places.    

sorry to read that's your experience with people in your life who travel. Growing up, we did not have lots of money so all travel was by car and to relatives. Luckily some were ministers and/or moved enough we got to see different states and things like a rodeo in Wyoming and the Corn Palace in North Dakota. 

I do like beach vacations and often don't plan too much in advance because my biggest goal for vacation generally is to relax and have less stress than in my daily life. I like places with good food and accommodations, so one could veg in nice surroundings if needed or do some cool stuff. I do not hang out at the pool bar. I love eating at unique non chain restaurants and will only eat at chains if my budget needs it or that is what is available when traveling.