Youth has a lot of advantages, not the least of which is a naive sense of indestructibleness, probably ideal health and a sense that you have all of the time in the world. I remember feeling so grown-up at the time, but look back at it as having only a few years of adult experience. What a weird thing.
I don't think that I would take back even most of the dumb decisions I made back then. I absolutely struggled in certain ways, and hurtling toward divorce at 32 was definitely rough, but overall I think I did a lot of learning, as one does. But I can't shake the fact that I ignored the thing that older adults and employers insisted was important, and that was investing for retirement. I didn't. I opened a Roth IRA when I was 35, and barely put anything into it. That was stupid.
In my defense, I didn't expect that social security would be under threat, and I could not have predicted any of the moves in terms of career and family. Still, I'm in a place now where I'm consistently putting away 20% into various vehicles, which is the amount that financial advisors say is the right amount. Last year, it ended up being over 25%, and I was very proud of that. And up until Trump blew up everything, I was on a solid trajectory toward reaching my goals early.
The other advice I always heard was to buy not rent, in terms of housing. This I actually did, fortunately. Despite making nothing on my first house after 13 years, mostly because of the 2009 mortgage crisis, we didn't wait to buy when we moved to Florida. In that respect, I've just been lucky, because I'm up over 150% in a dozen years, to the extent that when it's time to downsize, we should be able to get away with not having a mortgage at all. That at least partially makes up for my lack of savings, but is still contingent on there not being another crash. Supply and demand still vastly favors sellers, for now, and it doesn't look like anyone is doing anything to genuinely move things the other way.
I'm mostly zen about my youthful financial inaction, but I definitely have a little regret. I think I could genuinely be fluid about work now had I paid attention.
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