What financial related decisions have you made in your life that you wish you did/learned in your 20’s?

10 comments

1. Don’t try to catch the falling knife.

2. If I ever feel like spending I throw it into stocks that I’ll hold onto for decades down the line

3. Should have learned personal finance and maxed my 401k. I basically missed the recent decade-long bull run.

4. Change careers into tech

5. Invest. Invest. Invest. Even if it’s only $5 a week at first.

6. I wish I had known in my early twenties that staying single was a financial decision as well as a personal decision. Probably would have still chosen it, but at least I would have known I was signing up to be broke as well.

7. Putting together a real (and realistic) budget and sticking to it

   Having a part of my budget be a certain amount of money that goes right into savings (even if it’s only like $3.00. It adds up)

   Making smart decisions with my credit card

   Learning to cook delicious meals for really cheap

   Learning to compost and then grow my own produce on my apartment balcony

   Washing and reusing plastic takeout containers, zip lock bags, and other single use items that can honestly be used many times

   Learning how to use my produce scraps to make home made broth for cooking

   Getting a coffee grinder to save a dollar or two when buying coffee (whole bean is almost always cheaper than ground)

   How to invest money for steady long term gain rather than gamble it all on a larger but sooner payoff

   How to properly shop for health insurance

   How to properly pick and buy good clothing that will look good and last rather than buying fast fashion clothing that falls apart in less than a year

   How to get dopamine and happiness from sources other than shopping and consuming

   How to drive in a fuel efficient way rather than accelerating and breaking hard all the time

   Walking or riding a bike when I don’t really need to be driving my car

   And finally, that every dollar counts. The amount of single dollars I wasted because it wasn’t that much money could have probably tripled my current savings account if I’d not spent those small dollar amounts or chosen to save a dollar on a cheaper product or something. It all ads up to be much much more than you probably think about

   Money sucks. It just sucks. The economy sucks. It sucks that you have to work so hard to understand how to be smart with your money. It sucks that money just doesn’t go that far anymore. And it sucks because you have to change how your whole life works sometimes. But it’s absolutely worth it. I’m not wealthy by any means, but I know for damn sure that I’d be a hell of a lot more poor and miserable if I hadn’t taken the time to learn those financial skills. I just wish I would have forced myself to learn those skills earlier. Could of saved me a whole lot of stress and struggles

8. put reasonable amount of money in retirement fund, and live on what’s left

9. Not get married. Fucked my whole financial life with that one.

10. Just because I can afford it, doesn’t mean I need it.