Feel free to share any life experiences or anecdotes.
Find a skill based hobby that you love and practice it every week. Stuff like a sport, musical instrument, art, etc. The hobby itself will be rewarding but there is no substitute for having decades of experience under your belt for these kind of activities.
Also, don’t have children.
-Life is too short for bad coffee, bad wine, bad shoes and bad people.
-spend the required money in a good bed and a good chair. When it comes down to it later, it is not negotiable for your back.
-you will have to have a lawyer involved sometimes such as drafting up a will. It’s worth it. Also: do your will and sort out your stuff even if you haven’t been diagnosed with a terminal illness.
-clean like you’re moving house once a year. Cut down on the hoarding.
-‘no’ Is a complete sentence.
-sometimes acceptance of a situation is what it is is the only closure you’re ever going to get.
-acknowledge your stuff <—//—> other people’s stuff. Others might not work on their own stuff but they aren’t your job.
-resentment isn’t always something someone gives you nor is it the reality of the situation. Sometimes a person invites it along. Eg: assuming such things as someone being late to dinner is a personalized slight to your energy and time.
-try not to confuse misunderstanding with malice.
-remember the good ones. It’s so easy to just count the nasty people in your life and have them as your comparison for things. Spending your energy this way overlooks all the good people in your life and that’s not fair to them and the effort they put in with you.
Don’t worry too much if you fuck up. You have more than enough time to fix just about any mistake. You’re still young, it’s OK.
People are attracted to people who are comfortable with themselves. Take the time to learn who you are, and friendships, romance, and relationships will follow.
Start exercising regularly and eating correctly now.
If you’re in the US or generally any country that’s becoming authoritarian, get a passport. You never know how bad it may get.
Drink more water.
Do not marry the first girl you fuck (or the first boy, either way, mixed ways too, anytype anyway).
Go live with him/her, share an apartment (do not buy together) for months, live together for some time.
Possibly, break up and meet more people, rinse and repeat until you understand:
- what you WANT in the other person
- what you EXPECT from the other person
And more important even, learn to understand the other person for what he/she is and not what you think he/she is.
Meh, sometimes you just know after seeing who’s out there. I wouldn’t recommend breaking off something good and risking not getting it back because of your insecurities.
Indeed, in fact, as soon as the above questions are satisfied, that’s when you stop.
My old boss once told me: “when you think you want to marry them… First live with them two years… And when you’re sure… Wait two more years.”
Until they leave you and find someone else who is ready to commit.
Sometimes if you expect the worst; you make the worst. Get out of your own way.
If you’re in a good relationship but they leave because they couldn’t wait 4 years to get married, then you fucking dodged a bullet. Jesus fucking christ.
Someone willing to put up with your shit and commit to you is a bullet to be dodged? Mmmk…
I was with my wife for 10 years before I proposed. We have the best relationship of anyone we know. I know plenty of people who married after a couple of years and are fucking miserable.
So you only count anecdotal evidence that ensures your paranoia about people and apply it to every situation. K.
Paranoia wtf? I’ve formed my opinions from my life experiences, are you trying to tell me you’ve done peer reviewed research to decide what makes a good relationship?
why do you see marriage as the only acceptable form of commitment? just curious. in my opinion it takes more commitment to stay without legal ties involved.
You talk about commitment but OP didn’t.
Be yourself, even if it means the people in your life currently will hate you. You’ll find people who love the real you and you’ll be much happier even if it ends up making your life harder.
(this doesn’t apply if your real self is a dick, work on that)
I spent my 20s pretending to be the person the people in my life wanted me to be and it was miserable, I’m unapologetically myself in my 30s even if I’m still figuring out who that is. Its so much better and I wish I did it a decade ago.
Start buying a few shares of VTI every pay period. Use any left over cash to buy SPYG. Ignore the gains or losses, the market has never not gone up (eventually). Thank yourself later.
Max out your 401k when you get a decent paying job. But make sure you hit every pay period to maximize your employer contribution.
Consider using mass transit where possible, bike if you can, more or less avoid a car/insurance. If that’s not possible get a cheap car like a used Nissan leaf ($7000 in my area, costs a few dollars a month to charge using a wall outlet and extension cord)
Minimize unnecessary expenses like using food delivery services. Meal prep on the weekends and make enough food for a week.
If you do all this for 10 years or so, you’ll be in a really good spot financially. Buying a house will be a decent prospect, your VTI and SPYG will be making money, your taxable income will be small and you will have built up the ability to splurge on things without it making much of an impact on your finances.
I’ve been following the YouTube channel Chris invests and he gives lots of similar advice like this.
Yo those stock recommendations are actually nuts. I just looked at their 5 year and lifetime charts and you’re not lying. It’s 45 degrees the whole way basically.
All sound advice, but coming across the extra capital to invest, much less in your 20’s, is a harder prospect than it sounds for most people these days.
I’m not sure if you can get fractionals of SPY or VTI, but $300-500 a paycheck or even a month of money you can’t use on the moment is a hard ask for much of the working class.
It’s less like “Stop the avocado toast and lattés and netflix” and more “If you stopped buying a new graphics card every month you could afford stonks that will be mature when you are elderly.”
Lol like, we aren’t living in luxury and frivolous with our money in the first place, it usually poofs away into food and rent these days. (And gas and the car, if you aren’t in one of VERY few places that are walk and bike friendly.)
But for people who have it. This is a sound strategy. On that note, I have a relative who’s got very few expenses, often broke…and they’re constantly buying new full-priced releases on Steam. This degree of resource mismanagement vexes me so. Lol
Yeah… Closest thing to set it and forget it I’ve found. I usually buy between 1-7 shares of VTI then a share of SPYG every other week. Been doing it for a long time now. Plus the dividend payout on VTI is really good.
Like everyone’s been saying, learn to take care of yourself. Cook and eat well and exercise and sleep. But also just fuck around a lot. Say yes to things. Try something new every time you can, even if it’s just a dish you’ve never had. Meet people and talk to them and have fun with them. It’s harder to meet people as you get older.
Travel if you can, but you don’t need to be a jet setter to have new experiences. Find trails and museums and go listen to live music. Try creating things, you don’t have to be good at it or keep doing it, just doing it is the point.
Aging comes with a certain amount of solidity, in your energy and mind and responsibilities. It’s amazing and it’s not something to fear, but it does mean you can’t just fuck around as much. And if you’re going to be a person for the rest of your life it might as well be a person you like.
Get therapy if you feel there’s even a remote possibility you could benefit from it, especially if you can check anything off the adverse child experience list. The way trauma impacts you and your relationships with everyone else, and even your body, is hard to understand when it’s normal to you.
How did you address your trauma? What methods did you find worked?
Therapy and medication has put me in the best state I’ve been in for basically my entire life. I’m not “cured” or anything, but between the meds and processing a lot of shit in therapy I’m at least better able to cope and interrupt my own negative spirals much more easily.
I’d been doing all the self soothing, meditation, etc techniques that people recommend for decades, and it was really only after dealing with underlying issues in therapy and getting on meds that those things actually started working for me.
I was kind of mad when I realized that because for so many years I thought I just needed to git gud, but it turns out most people can’t hype themselves out of the lingering effects of childhood trauma! Who could have foreseen this 🥴
Get accostumed to eat your veggies, once you hit you 30s your intestine starts revolting if you don’t give it healthy food
Don’t assume you have to get on the relationship escalator of “dating - exclusive - engaged - married”. There are other kinds of relationships, including no romantic/sexual relationships at all. Don’t stick with someone who’s not making you happy out of inertia or a sense of obligation.
Be social. Don’t burn yourself out socializing every night of the week, but if people are inviting you to be a part of their life make a good effort to show up. Video games or YouTube or whatever will always be there. Friends won’t. (This assumes the social stuff they’re inviting you to isn’t , like, insane. Skip on someone inviting you to do heroin or whatever.)
Pay attention to your spending. Some people like a dedicated program for budgeting, or their bank provides something. I’m a particular kind of nerd so I used Google sheets. Whatever you use, adding up what you’re actually spending every month can be illuminating. I don’t expect anyone to discover “if I stop getting avocado toast I can afford a house”, but knowing where your money is going is an important prerequisite for controlling it.
Don’t fall into lifestyle inflation. Like, a friend of mine started making good money and his budget grew. He was spending $1000/month on food because he’d just gotten used to dining out and such. His paycheck was bigger but he wasn’t saving any more. Another guy I used to work with told me his family “struggled too” despite a $500k family income. They had a big house, new cars, expensive memberships, extravagant vacations, designer clothes. You can just not do a lot of that and be happy, too.
Be social. Don’t burn yourself out socializing every night of the week, but if people are inviting you to be a part of their life make a good effort to show up.
This is a really good one. You never know where these things lead. Future lifelong friends. Future romantic partners. Future job opportunities. I’m quickly moving past my 30s and hearing about the “I’m so alone” people is really depressing, as our species are social animals. I also say this a introvert.
If you’re not being invited to parties or BBQs, then be the change in the world and make them.
Go do a trade. Computers are dumb.
