Things you wish you knew as a young adult

A message to all men: don't get married. You're welcome.

Men are insufferable slobs

I wish I had been more aggressive about professional advancement. A good comparison is Matt vs me. We're about the same age and started at our firm on the same day.

We were both laid off during the recession and he started his own company while I kept looking for conventional jobs. He has his own practice now and I still have a salary. There are risks to having your own business but he will probably always make more money than me and is further ahead in some other areas just because he had to figure things out on his own.

That most people are hot air.

That you don't HAVE to associate with your coworkers off the clock, develop hobbies and interests which absorb you.

Don't take out any credit cards.

Run without a watch; you don't need all the gear they sell.

Keep to yourself, fly under the radar, nod politely and smile.

yes

how babies are made

You're still growing, so just chill out!

There are a lot of professions out there don't have such tunnel vision.

All I had ever done was go to school and run track. I went to college and got a degree so I could teach school and coach track. Pretty stupid idea.

Ataglance wrote:

There are a lot of professions out there don't have such tunnel vision.

There are a lot of professions out there. Don't have such tunnel vision.

It took me a few seconds to figure out what you meant. I hope that you aren't an English teacher.

Yes!

Kara L wrote:

Men are insufferable slobs

Posted the poster who doesn't know what she wants or how to communicate it or how to compromise.

We know it's not about level of order you think you desire. You know it too.

As a man, most women do not know what they want.

aged folks wrote:

This has been a recurring theme in my life journeys. At the moment I reach a new level of wisdom or revise an old concept to be more efficient I immediately reminisce and ponder its applicability to an earlier stage of life.

What things do you know now that you wish you knew as a young adult?

The best careers are dentistry and in medicine.

Engineering is overhyped as a career.

signed, Engineer who's been laid off many times.

I wish I knew that when that hotline bling. That can only mean one thing

I maxed my 401k contribution out almost as early as I could, but that was still at age 27. I put in 20% and put the 10% we were allowed to into the ESPP. We got 15% off the market price for company stock, and were allowed to sell after 2 years, which I did. I did pretty well with that sale, like 40% gain in two years every time.

But for about 5 years I put 20% before tax into the 401k and 10% after tax into the ESPP and was living on just $1428-2160 take home over those years. $1428 in the beginning and $2160 later.

It has grown to $600,000 now and I am set for retirement. I knew back then (the late '90s) that the time the money is invested was the biggest factor and that is why I invested so much as early as I could fathom it and for as long as I could take that austerity.

I did not graduate college until I was 26, so I really could not have done it different, but I wish that I had known the future and started when I was 21-22. Every 5 years you add to your time horizon doubles the amount you have at the end.

I don't know if late 20s is still considered a young adult, but by now I know everything.

Perhaps the biggest misunderstanding I had as a kid was that there was any correlation between how money someone made and the lifestyle they lived. My family rarely ate out, took 1 vacation per year, usually staying the cheapest hotel possible, wouldn't dream of paying for a Honda Accord EX over an LX, and so forth, while so many of our family friends ate out all the time, drove fancy SUVs, vacationed to Hawaii several times per year. I assumed my dad didn't make a lot of money compared to other parents. Later I figured out that my dad makes 10-20 times as much money as those other parents do. Many of those other parents are now broke and in fact beg my family for money.

It sounds good in theory, but not everyone can have a stable career that allows this kind of savings and company match, etc...

Everyone is all concerned about saving for early retirement, but if you really loved your work, you wouldn't want to retire early anyways.

So they lived the "millionaire next door" lifestyle. It is great to be financially well off, but I think some people overdo it. Spend some money. Live a little.

A vacation to Hawaii is good for you once in a while. Otherwise you're just sitting at home scrounging money all the time. Buy yourself a $3 drink at a restaurant.

I know a guy whose family won't buy anything without a coupon. So they end up buying a ton of canned high sodium crap and no fresh produce.

I lived the extreme frugal lifestyle for a while trying to retire early because I didn't like my job at the time. In retrospect, I wish I had taken the vacations to Hawaii to go surf while I was young, and had more freedom and better health.

Saving money over living a little in your prime years isn't always the best path. How much surfing will you get done at 65? Buy some leather seats. You're commuting all the time anyways.

pay down my debt wrote:

It sounds good in theory, but not everyone can have a stable career that allows this kind of savings and company match, etc...

Everyone is all concerned about saving for early retirement, but if you really loved your work, you wouldn't want to retire early anyways.

I wasn't implying that it was right for everyone, just for me. That was the question "Things you wish you knew as a young adult". I had to pay for college completely myself and took two different two year periods off, to just work. So I worked, scraped and saved for about 13 years from 17 until 30.

I got decent scholarships, but my mom made too much for any govt aid, and I took out one loan as a frosh for $2500. It was a GSL (Stafford) and the guarantee consisted of you paying $350 on top of the principal you received and that was given to the loaner as insurance, you never got that back. I didn't want to take out $5000 each year and have a big debt load to pay fresh out of college, so I worked a lot to compensate for that. I also lived with a friend for free for years, to be able to make it through. That was not fun and not something I enjoyed.

I was not a high-roller either. I started at $32,000 a year and was only making $48,000 when I stopped saving at that level.

I also didn't say that I was saving for early retirement, or that I intend to retire early. I said that the investing TERM is what affects what you have at the end more than anything else. If you make $200,000 a year and save a little for 20 years you will be FAR behind the guy who makes $50,000 a year and save a little for 40 years ... that is all.