Things you wish you knew as a young adult

Kara L wrote:

Men are insufferable slobs

How odd - I'd say that most guys are a lot nicer than I would have thought. I was too busy trying to analyze their motives when I was younger. Now I find that giving them the benefit of the doubt gives you the opportunity to meet some great people.

jamin wrote:

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

Lol

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.

Saving for early retirement doesn't necessarily mean I hate my work. It means that one day I hope to work on my own terms.

I'm with ya there. engineering is stable and in demand compared to, say French Literature, but it still doesn't compare to medicine. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been a better move to get into business or marketing.

The stock market is going to collapse in 2008 and then rebound magnificently. I did OK, but it would've been nice to get in earlier.

I wish I had put more thought into my major. I chose mechanical engineering because it sounded interesting, and it is, but I actually love neuroscience. Oh well.

-Should have put more effort into networking and going to professional events in school. That stuff pays off like crazy.

How to be financially thriving and independent, while maintaining one's morals passion and ideals, while not being a pushover and sucker in romance and dating scenes.

I wish I'd known that I'd have to suffer through two extended live-in relationships in order to get to the lovely, sexy, spirited, kind woman I married a decade ago. It would have made the lonely nights and sense of failure at various points much easier to take.

As a twenty-something, I wish I'd known how to better read the cues when some new guy-pal subtly made clear that he wasn't really interested in being my friend. I could be clueless.

I'm thankful for the fellowship of wise older men at various points. That stuff is important. Most of life is about accepting yourself, all of what's in you, rather than rejecting certain parts, or running away from them. Love your demons! Don't necessarily feed them everything they ask for, but own them.

Know and accept yourself, and live your passion, one day at a time. Learn how to recognize your edge--and how to recognize when you and/or your situation is stale. When you're stale, figure out how to push the refresh button. Don't ever say "Well, it'll always be like this and I'll just have to suffer." That's just a story you're telling yourself.

At the right moment in a young man's life--or a middle-aged man's life--the perennial wisdom literature can be really helpful. I'm partial to guys like Sam Keen (FIRE IN THE BELLY), Robert Bly (IRON JOHN), that sort of stuff.

I agree with you. I also chose mechanical engineering because it sounded interesting, and it is. Fascinating, actually.

But retiring early would have been a lot more interesting.

Ah, and the money thing. I only ran into credit trouble once, waiting around for an employer to reimburse relocation costs, and it led to Amex drones from India calling at 6 AM saying "When are you going to pay this bill?"

That taught me the most important financial lesson I've ever been taught: pay your bills aggressively. Allocate whatever money you've got so as to pay off your debts in the most aggressive possible way. That is where your power is: clarity, honesty, and discipline. Save; buy with cash. If you've got a $900 credit card bill and $1200 in the bank, pay off the entire bill. Then you've got left what you've always actually had: $300. Don't imagine that if you hold on to the $1200 and avoid paying the bill, you've somehow got more than $300. You don't. You've got less than $300, in fact, because you've got $300 minus your own self-deception.

I've got two credit cards--Visa and Amex. I use Amex for travel expenses and Visa for everything else. If you've got more cards than that, you're on the road to hell--which is to say, self-delusion and confusion. You'll turn from the "hot" card to the card with less on it, somehow imagining that if you divide your debt between a number of different cards, you've got less debt than if you collected all your debt in one card. Wrong. You've got it exactly backwards. The best move I ever made was collecting all my debt from four cards onto Visa and then attacking that debt, Dave Ramsey fashion. I could see it all in one place. That gave me clarify of vision. It wasn't pretty, but it was honest.

Now I have no debt except my mortgage. Zero.

Living on credit rather than adjusting needs to income and saving for things is the biggest bad decision that most young people make.

Thedirty wrote:

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

But realize that if you don't get married there will be a precipice of depression and loneliness looming just out of spitting distance or engulfing you entirely for the rest of your life. (I am not married.)

What is it about runners where all they crave is a basic life with financial security? So many scared, boring white people in the distance running world.

That most women WANT to quarrel. And there's nothing you can do to please them. Corollary: I should have appreciated those few solution-oriented girls out there a lot more.

I wish I had known to make decisions based on probabilities rather than desires. I would have known better than to think I might become the kind of person who would find teaching in rural Thailand fulfilling. That was always way out on the tail of my probability distribution function, but it felt good to imagine that it was true.

jamin wrote:

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.

Your parents probably wish they sold you.

32 year old here. I am a high school math teacher (good job security, mediocre pay) and cross country/track coach. I have a hot wife and a great 2 year old son.

I wish I would have known that college grades were important. I came from a family and area where just going to college and getting a degree was considered good enough. As a result, I put forth less than 100% in my studies and received a lot of C's in college (never failed a course). I also didn't have any internships in colleges. When I graduated, I had a GPA in the low 2's, no relevant work experience, and no contacts.

I've since landed on my feet. I went back to school for a year to earn a teaching certificate and went into teaching. Financially, I'm debt free except for a house with $100K+ in equity. My poor choices in college led to limited employment options, especially 5+ years ago.

To stay out of debt and to live within my means. Also, to put money aside for retirement, even if it's only $100 a month - start doing this EARLY.

You don't need a lot of money to eat like a king

I wish I had realized that I wasn't ugly or stupid and I wish I hadn't spent the first 30 years of my life worrying that I wasn't good enough. I wish I had been honest with myself about what I wanted in life instead of trying to become who my parents wanted me to be. I wish I had known enought to go to physical therapy instead of just giving up when some no-name MD told me that I should stop running. I wish I had trusted my instincts and pursued my dreams. I'm 42 now so there's still time, but I'm so far behind...

Had a sit down discussion with my 95-year-old grandfather this Christmas and he told me that no matter what pleasures life brings, nothing is more important than your children. He encouraged me to have more children and cherish every minute with them. He stormed Normandy and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Came home and had a bad case of PTSD (they called it "shell-shock"). Was able to recover, went to Yale in his late twenties and excelled at business. Dude is a total boss.

Anyway, his advice differs from a lot of the posts here. Thought it might be a good addition to the thread.