Every year seems a little much? Maybe at young age, but 21/22/23 doesn't really make that much of a difference, or even 40/45
The advice should be written for the perspective of the reader not the writer:
"Hey 13 year old, don't stop learning how to play piano"
How would that help a 13 year old? Something like "Hey 13 year old, I stopped playing the piano at your age and now I'm regretting it very much. I often dream how well I could play if I didn't stop and I also could teach my kids"
Obviously you do not control the text. A short description with tips would maybe help.
Hey thanks for the feedback - really appreciate it.
I struggled with the idea of creating a page for every age. I eventually settled on the idea that people could take the platform anywhere they wanted to, whether it was passing generic advice along, or sending themselves a very specific message at a specific time in their life. That being said, it's kind of cool to see the ages that mean the most to people.
I like your idea with the short description - do you mind if I quote your example?
Maybe instead of having one sub-page for each age group, why not transform the landing page into a chronological list of the five highest-voted entries for every age group, so we can seamlessly scroll from 20 to 21 to 22 etc. This allow for a much nicer reading experience with less clicks :o)
Another idea- if you get enough data, it’d be interesting to see who is up voting at what age. The advice I wanted to hear at age 18 is not what I’d give at twice that age.
I really like having a different page for each individual age. This separation distinguishes your site from the countless blog posts that pass on advice "to those in their 20s and 30s" or "to those who are still young". In my eyes, these pieces are often far too general. By this, I mean the following:
Thinking back on my life so far, the years 19, 20, and 22 were quite unique with respect to my then-current circumstances/knowledge/abilities (even though I was in the same undergrad program and had roughly the same job during these years).
If I had the opportunity, I would give 19-year-old me very different advice than 20-year-old me! 19-year-old me really needed it! And don't even get me started on the advice 22-year-old me needed.
Adding some pages that aggregate the advice submitted to similar ages (20s, teens, 18-35, choose your favorite grouping) wouldn't be bad for those who are interested, but I think taking the focus away from individual ages would minimize something quite neat that you've done here.
Treatments that can have seriously adverse side effects for some individuals or simply not work at all for others. Furthermore, most of the treatments do exactly what you said: they slow the progression, not halt it. It's not so black and white, unfortunately.
I'm pretty much bald, and have been tending that way since my mid twenties. Early thirties now. I'm plenty happy.
If you feel like your happiness is dependent on your having hair, then you should probably really ask yourself why.
If you feel like having less hair makes you less attractive, then I can tell you I've had loads of hair and now none of it, and I've met women that love or hate both.
Cultivating remaining flexibly young minded and and open minded is far more accurate than age. Closemindedness and fear exists at each age group.
On the other hand, age might be used as a way to self identify a spot in the site. As children we are raised by age and grade to measure where we are, should be and headed. It's a form of subtle conditioning we do not have a choice in until it begins to wear off in one's 20's or 30's.
I disagree. Having a targeted age makes the platform feel more relatable to where I am in life as opposed to general advice that can be applied to a whole age group.
> Is there any advice that applies at 13 but not 14?
I can think of some advice that is specific to an age. If you're going to apply for an overseas working holiday visa, you want that last chance reminder at age 28 or 29... because once you hit 30 you're no longer eligible.
But I agree in general about age ranges. I like the idea of the user choosing their exact age, but it'd be better if the person giving the advice could choose the range of ages their advice applies to.
I think it might also need some filtering / curation. The current advice at age 64 to "start saving for retirement" is, uhm, probably a bit too late at that point. I think they made a typo in the age fields somewhere.
"Canada and Australia have signed a mutual agreement that allows young Canadians between the ages of 18 and 35 to travel and work in Australia for up to 12 months. (The age limit used to be 30, but it was increased to 35 in 2018)."
Canadians appear to be a special exception though. If you're Australian, most countries still limit you to age 30 (and Cyprus & South Korea limit you to 25 or younger, apparently):
Amazing. I started this 10+ years ago, called WishIKnew. It was a project to learn Rails. I learned Rails, but never launched it.
Glad to see it's real - with curation, I think it could be hugely valuable. I'm 42 and wonder what people who were 50 or 60 would tell me they wished they knew at 42 as I don't have a lot of folks those ages in my life.
Thanks! I wanted to name it something similar but all the good domains were taken, so instead I settled for a veiled The Office reference.
Trying to get contributions from older generations is tough, but would likely provide the best advice. I need to find a few media sources to submit to that target this age group.
Where do old people hangout online? If my mom is any indication, Facebook and email.
I think getting advice is the hook to get people to the site. Once you get some valuable advice, the theory is that some of those people will be inclined to participate.
I'd think about this approach:
1. Seeding this with advice from people you trust. Don't even get them to register - just get the advice and input it yourself
2. Aggregate advice into posts e.g. "Top 10 lessons for peopel in their 40s from the future"
Hey thanks for the feedback. The registration form is a pain, I implemented SSO/oAuth with Google a few days ago in the hopes that more people would register.
Email and username is a good call, thanks. I had never thought about that kind of flow before, but that's interesting, encourage people to submit advice, then ask for registration. Think I might do that. Thanks!
Conceptually, this is really appealing, though I agree with sibling comments that offering some grouping would ease browsing.
What I’m finding interesting is the metacommentary on what your userbase (which I’m presuming is mostly HN at the moment) looks like. The advice for teens and twenty somethings is wide-ranging and pretty good. Almost everything for folks in their thirties is pithy and reads like it was written by someone younger. (My own bias: haven’t checked past age 40). So, presumably, there’s not as many people commenting retrospectively on their 30’s.
Would be neat to track the delta between a subitter’s actual age and how old they’re willing to advise.
Its the opposite lens of most the other advice. The others look at the mid 20s as a time to have fun, quit jobs you don't like, etc. This advice is purely fiscal - you earn in a prime position to earn money, so maximize that value while you can. All the advice agrees the mid 20s is a prime, but 80% is prime for fun/living while this one is prime for money.
Also that's only true for a narrow subset of people working in "rockstar" industries where the career decline is sharp after 30. Footballers, pop stars, models, some programmers. Everyone else expects to make more as they get older. Some industries (e.g. acturaries, medical) have really long qualification processes so you will only reach full pay after 30.
It might be "peak savings opportunity because you don't have a family", but that's not at all the same thing.
Hoo boy that's a lot of over-privileged suggestions right there. "hi, millennial who is working full time to make rent, now is the time to start your business!", "Why not take your family around the world?"
It's a nice idea and the site works pretty well on mobile, but it sort of grinds my gears.
Actually all of these things are more achievable than you think. I have a relative who has a family of 5 (as in two adults and three young kids) and they've managed to travel the world the past several years on a high school teacher's salary.
It's all about your priorities/tradeoffs and how much work you're willing to put into it. They lead a very no-frills budget-restricted life, keep very minimal possessions, put effort into finding overseas teaching jobs in low cost-of-living areas, finding dirt-cheap travel deals, and honestly I think the kids getting all this early travel and cultural exposure is probably a big net win (vs e.g. prioritizing things like buying them the latest video game consoles and fashionable clothing, etc).
You could say the same for starting most small businesses. There are loans available to get up and running if you have a solid business plan and don't have awful/ruined credit, and many viable businesses can be "pay my bills" profitable fairly quickly. You won't make as much excess cash as getting on the corporate treadmill and doing well, at least not earlier on, but you do reap the rewards of being your own boss and learning a suite of skills that's much rarer, and over time even the small business world can eventually become quite lucrative if you want it to be.
> all of these things are more achievable than you think
Perhaps one of them is achievable, but only at the cost of a very high level of focus - and giving up on the others.
Travel is certainly a lot easier to achieve when you're young, and in many places cheaper (e.g. Interrail tickets, which I would recommend to anyone looking to see a lot of countries in a short time)
I think that's the point of the application? This is advice from older people to their younger self, so a lot of it won't resonate with you (your nothing like them). Find the bits that do, and try to gain a bit of perspective from them
At the same time, advice from people who have unrealistic regret at missing out on all the options they didn't pick isn't very helpful. Life is a series of choices. Saying yes to everything is impossible. Good advice is for ideas are short-term sacrifices (at least in perception) for long-term payoff, not for grasping at everything desirable.
Well, first, getting to the point where you can maintain your lifestyle (even a relatively modist one) requires taking on quite a lot of financial and personal risk. Like the kind of risk that may exclude you from being able to buy your own house for the foreseeable future (already a challenge for many), or could drive you to living hand to mouth. The problem is at the average end of the income scale and lifestyle today, risk isn't just this nebulous, financial thing: it's not even an effort in the present risk, or the risk of emotional vulnerability - it's the risk of your next decade or longer being blighted with excess debt and possibly dependence on the state or family or whatever assuming even that you're lucky enough for those things to break your fall. In many places if your personal business fails after you quit your last job, you're voluntarily unemployed so, woops, too bad! Not to mention people who cannot just give up everything because they have dependents and all the rest.
>It's all about your priorities/tradeoffs and how much work you're willing to put into it. They lead a very no-frills budget-restricted life, keep very minimal possessions, put effort into finding overseas teaching jobs in low cost-of-living areas, finding dirt-cheap travel deals...
So how is their retirement plans coming along?
>...and honestly I think the kids getting all this early travel and cultural exposure is probably a big net win (vs e.g. prioritizing things like buying them the latest video game consoles and fashionable clothing, etc).
That seems to be a loaded assumption. I've known people who spent their entire childhood traveling, and rather than culturally rich they just couldn't fit into any culture - they were inappropriate and had difficulty functioning in a North American lifestyle due to having a mish mash of wordly exposure which has proven to be pretty career limiting. They can tell neat stories about their time in South America, but can't figure out why people don't want to hear outright that their ideas are dumb. There's this assumption that the more you travel the more well rounded you'll be, but you've just been you in more places, doesn't mean you'll be a better person.
Someone has been watching too many financial planning commercials. And is assuming life expectancy will continue to outpace retirement age a few decades out.
And struggling with the close-minded back home after travel isn't a good reason not to do it.
> is assuming life expectancy will continue to outpace retirement age a few decades out.
Here's the thing - if you can save enough, you can retire when you want, regardless of retirement age. I don't believe life expectancy will decrease, and I definitely want to be able to enjoy my golden years without working.
>>And struggling with the close-minded back home after travel isn't a good reason not to do it
Why is traveling now considered such an absolute good that it is impossible to criticize it, or to assume that it will automatically make people more open-minded? The parent posters point was that traveling won't make everyone well-adjusted and open-minded. I find it silly to claim that everyone will benefit, there surely must be some people who won't benefit.
Taking the parent's post in good faith, I find it reasonable to conclude that yes, in my experience there are people who, after extensive travel in their youth, experience difficulties adhering to local cultural standards. For a neutral example, I find the American puritanical reaction to sex & nudity frankly stupid, but it would be unwise to ignore these aspects of the culture.
Interesting point; travel does come across as rather unassailable.
By way of analogy: it's fine to take the first job you're offered and work there until you retire. If you took a new job, you'd have to learn new skills and deal with new coworkers, a new work culture. And should you return to your old company after the new one, you might try to incorporate skills, processes, or attitudes from the other place you found beneficial, changes which the old guard may not appreciate (but management should).
Well life expectancy depending on variations is well past 80, especially once you make it into your late 60's and i don't imagine much of the working public wants to be heading into work Monday morning at that age, so yes - it is reasonable to assume life expectancy will outpace retirement for several decades.
One does not have to retire to a first world country. Seriously, why would you even want to retire to USA? Health care, which old people tend to use, is stupid expensive.
I'm Canadian, so I have no desire to retire to a place with awful health care. How does health care in second/third world countries work? Are you instantly granted all rights to health care if you retire to another nation?
As you get older, and your time becomes short, you're not going to want to retire to some completely foreign place you've never lived in. You will want to be close to people that matter to you, and enjoy the comfort of familiar things. Exploring new things becomes less appealing as you age. Exploration is for the youth.
Optimizing life for retirement seems like the single most backward strategy one could have. I don't even mean that in some sort of counter-cultural way - it just seems deeply irrational.
> Optimizing life for retirement seems like the single most backward strategy one could have.
I'm not suggesting optimizing for retirement, but I am advocating being aware of it. Choosing to make financial choices where only today is considered seems irrational as well, considering that tomorrow can and will come.
Datapoint: an ex of mine is from a family which did this at the insistence of her mother. Her dad got a job in Bangladesh and that’s how they left Washington DC. They were only there for a few years, but followed it with a few in Paris and a few in Kenya (and in her case, a few in NI and England).
Yes, this adventure started in the mid-90s and lots has changed since then, and yes both parents have degrees; but if you’re going to take your family around the world, it’s not your currrent pay that matters, it’s what you’re offered in the place you’re going to.
Unless, of course, you can keep your current pay by working remote for a Bay Area company and move to Cheapsville, McFlyoverState for a few years and save enough to do whatever you want.
If you can work remotely, then you can save up while exploring the capital cities of any $-poor nation instead of wasting good years in the overlooked areas of a rich one.
"If there's one thing I wish I could do to improve HN, it would be to detect this sort of middlebrow dismissal algorithmically.
Unsophisticated people read an article like this and think: Gosh, I better eat honey for breakfast! People a little more sophisticated think: Hey, this is anecdotal evidence! Yeah, we know that. But is that the most interesting thing one can say about this article? Is it not at least a source of ideas for things to investigate further?
The problem with the middlebrow dismissal is that it's a magnet for upvotes. The "U R a fag"s get downvoted and end up at the bottom of the page where they cause little trouble. But this sort of comment rises to the top. Things have now gotten to the stage where I flinch slightly as I click on the "comments" link, bracing myself for the dismissive comment I know will be waiting for me at the top of the page."
Could one not argue this comment itself is a middlebrow dismissal? I don't think it makes sense to discredit comments just because they're not positive.
I see where you're coming from, I'm not usually particularly good at farming for upvotes I just commented what was on my mind at the time. I think the solution to this isn't algorithmic, however, it's to say something that is genuinely more interesting than the middle-brow dismissal so that people upvote that instead.
Nice idea. But I feel like most things people wish they knew at a younger age aren't the sort of thing you can learn by reading a line of text. Most are behavioural things that you really have to experience.
Like you can't just say "be more confident" to someone. Or "do more exercise". Or "don't go into debt". No shit.
Nice idea, but who is to say the future advice is any good? The TNG episode http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Tapestry_(episode) is a poignant counterpoint to the idea that your hindsight perspective is always best.
Genuine advice is often coloured by a person's own bias and experience, and if another takes it without taking that into consideration, they will be misled by the same faults.
In this case, the advice about baldness is a joke based on a negative stereotype for baldness, and not genuine advice at all. The default response in this post appears to be along the lines of preventing or reversing hair loss, showing support for the stereotype, and that people are taking the content at least a little bit seriously. I'm just here to say this particular piece of 'advice' is misleading at best and harmful at worst. Baldness will only affect your happiness if you let it.
I clicked on a few ages and saw advice from someone that was the exact age. To me, those are pointless in this context. Maybe restrict posting to posters that are >= 10 years older than the age?
10 years is too much. I'm 26 and am busting my ass to get a good GRE score, because I didn't care about GPA in college because I thought I'd never want to go to grad school. Left a comment for 18 years old to take college seriously.
Maybe. Just using 10 as an example. However, in 5 to 10 more years, you may have a clearer view of what you went through and why you made the choices you did. It sounds like you are still going through it and while I may agree with your perspective, I wouldn't put it in the same category of thoughts as those that have had time to marinate on the other side of the events.
This reminds me very much of the video How To Age Gracefully [1].
One thing I think is missing is a "From: a x year old" for each bit of advice. I think the advice to someone in their 20's would be quite different coming from someone in their 30's vs 70's, and that in itself could be very interesting.
Interesting video. Some advice seems person-specific over age-specific, as in, I wouldn't be surprised to hear them give the same advice five years prior or hence.
One area where I think future advice can be most helpful is in preventing hard-to-reverse mistakes. 18F's data release for college completion rates, employment rates, etc in 2012 may have helped people avoid bad decisions[0]. Another example could be increased wariness of using a drug after hearing personal stories of people trying to quit. Using the recently shared visualization of related subreddits[1] and looking at the "/r/askdrugs" graph, one can see Kratom and quittingkratom, phenibut and quitting phenibut, benzodiazapines and quittingbenzos, opiates and quittingopiates.
The only pieces of advice available for 60 and 64 are unhelpful - they both talk about starting to save for retirement.
I'm sure that the idea is that these things will fall off the bottom if the site gets more popular, but pretty much by definition, there will be less advice at the older end, so there will be less to push off the rubbish.
IMO the most valuable sections are always going to be < 19 years old.
Unfortunately, the hard thing is that when you're < 19 years old you don't want to listen to anyone because either you know everything already or they wouldn't understand.
I'm 18 lol, super confused and trying to gain something from older people. However, they always seem to say the same thing, and it's mostly just common sense, along the lines of stay in school and work harder. I guess I could say the same about my high school years, but I feel like I've heard the advice on this site a thousand times over.
I could give a lot of concrete advice to my 18 year old self. But, I don't think a lot of the advice I'd give my 18 year old self would apply to much of anyone else. (Get a side part haircut, you'll look better. Your mom wasn't right about a lot but that haircut you got as a five year old worked. Stop wearing baggy hoodies - you look stupid. Wear better fitting jeans and shirts, it'll take some effort to find ones that fit. Fix your acne, go to a dermatologist 3 years ago. etc... It's not all looks related but I needed a lot of help.)
I think that's why you hear so much of "work hard and stay in school." People are trying to be as broad as humanly possible to appeal to as wide of a net as they can.
Things are newer than you perceive. What I mean is, look around at technology. You'll find it looks "already done" but it's not—it should require a second and third look by you to see what you can add. Be strong.
Secondly and related, I'd do a quick study of every single bit of general tech around you as for how long it's been in use. This will open your eyes to what has been and ready for what is coming. Mentally track how long this and that has been in play—you'll be surprised and more importantly, you'll see opportunities. Go!
-Edit- Misread that title and added mine here. ^_^
I'd say life doesn't really begin until you're on your own, so around 18 for me, but I'd really say that life picked up around the late 20s, early 30s. So, at 37, if I look at everything that I've done in the last 10 years, and now knowing what I want to do, I've still got three lives to live.
> but I'd really say that life picked up around the late 20s, early 30s. So, at 37, if I look at everything that I've done in the last 10 years, and now knowing what I want to do, I've still got three lives to live.
Absolutely. Since I've turned 30 I've gotten married, found my career, and bought a house. I've really only figured out life in the last 5 years or so. I've got many lifetimes to live as well.
Life begins as soon as you can make conscious choices in what to think about. Things that look like adulthood to us used to start at about 10-12.
Maturity, focus, concentration, self confidence all ebb and flow with time and aren't guaranteed to be monotonic. Civilization allows us to do great things, but it also enables the individual to be a weaker total person while being particularly skilled in one area.
> Civilization allows us to do great things, but it also enables the individual to be a weaker total person while being particularly skilled in one area.
Is that actually the case? I feel like a hunter/gatherer society isn't particularly well rounded - it's just a couple of skills that one lives or dies on. I wouldn't say that a caveman was well rounded, instead they were just ignorant of everything outside of "find something to eat and kill, then mate with something else".
People who wish they lived their life differently when they were younger, are the same people who when they are older will realize their younger now self should have given different advice.
Interesting concept in this regard - Croatian artist Dalibor Martinis interviewed his future self, asking questions in 1978 and answering in 2010 on national TV.
:) The video from 30+ years ago was recorded in Vancouver, in front of a class of English speaking students. His answers on Croatian national TV were broadcasted to a Croatian audience.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 230 ms ] threadEvery year seems a little much? Maybe at young age, but 21/22/23 doesn't really make that much of a difference, or even 40/45
The advice should be written for the perspective of the reader not the writer:
"Hey 13 year old, don't stop learning how to play piano"
How would that help a 13 year old? Something like "Hey 13 year old, I stopped playing the piano at your age and now I'm regretting it very much. I often dream how well I could play if I didn't stop and I also could teach my kids"
Obviously you do not control the text. A short description with tips would maybe help.
I struggled with the idea of creating a page for every age. I eventually settled on the idea that people could take the platform anywhere they wanted to, whether it was passing generic advice along, or sending themselves a very specific message at a specific time in their life. That being said, it's kind of cool to see the ages that mean the most to people.
I like your idea with the short description - do you mind if I quote your example?
Thinking back on my life so far, the years 19, 20, and 22 were quite unique with respect to my then-current circumstances/knowledge/abilities (even though I was in the same undergrad program and had roughly the same job during these years).
If I had the opportunity, I would give 19-year-old me very different advice than 20-year-old me! 19-year-old me really needed it! And don't even get me started on the advice 22-year-old me needed.
Adding some pages that aggregate the advice submitted to similar ages (20s, teens, 18-35, choose your favorite grouping) wouldn't be bad for those who are interested, but I think taking the focus away from individual ages would minimize something quite neat that you've done here.
Other commenters mentioned that people grow at different rates, but there's nothing stopping you from looking at the advice for ages around you
“Don’t go bald, bald people aren’t happy.”
Maybe the advice should have been posted for 20 year olds and not 34 year olds. It’s still not helpful as is.
If you feel like your happiness is dependent on your having hair, then you should probably really ask yourself why.
If you feel like having less hair makes you less attractive, then I can tell you I've had loads of hair and now none of it, and I've met women that love or hate both.
Own it.
On the other hand, age might be used as a way to self identify a spot in the site. As children we are raised by age and grade to measure where we are, should be and headed. It's a form of subtle conditioning we do not have a choice in until it begins to wear off in one's 20's or 30's.
- Piece of advice
- Written by a {person's age}-year-old
- Background on how that advice affected them to this point in their life.
Otherwise, it kind of reads like a generic motivational quote.
Good site, thanks for the help.
I do love the idea of collecting wisdom. The hard part is getting the 14 year olds to believe it!
I can think of some advice that is specific to an age. If you're going to apply for an overseas working holiday visa, you want that last chance reminder at age 28 or 29... because once you hit 30 you're no longer eligible.
But I agree in general about age ranges. I like the idea of the user choosing their exact age, but it'd be better if the person giving the advice could choose the range of ages their advice applies to.
I think it might also need some filtering / curation. The current advice at age 64 to "start saving for retirement" is, uhm, probably a bit too late at that point. I think they made a typo in the age fields somewhere.
http://global-goose.com/travel-tips/working-holiday-visas-fo...
"Canada and Australia have signed a mutual agreement that allows young Canadians between the ages of 18 and 35 to travel and work in Australia for up to 12 months. (The age limit used to be 30, but it was increased to 35 in 2018)."
Canadians appear to be a special exception though. If you're Australian, most countries still limit you to age 30 (and Cyprus & South Korea limit you to 25 or younger, apparently):
https://global-goose.com/working-holiday-visas-for-australia...
Bang on about the 14 year olds believing it. I rejected any notion that I didn't know everything at that age.
Glad to see it's real - with curation, I think it could be hugely valuable. I'm 42 and wonder what people who were 50 or 60 would tell me they wished they knew at 42 as I don't have a lot of folks those ages in my life.
Trying to get contributions from older generations is tough, but would likely provide the best advice. I need to find a few media sources to submit to that target this age group.
I think getting advice is the hook to get people to the site. Once you get some valuable advice, the theory is that some of those people will be inclined to participate.
I'd think about this approach:
1. Seeding this with advice from people you trust. Don't even get them to register - just get the advice and input it yourself
2. Aggregate advice into posts e.g. "Top 10 lessons for peopel in their 40s from the future"
3. Share / pay to promote those posts on Facebook
4. Profit (?)
1. Registration form is too long. Lower the barrier to entry. Maybe only ask for email and username? Or just email with a default username?
2. Try lazy registration so the flow is:
- click advice
- enter advice
- hit submit
- get asked to login/register
Email and username is a good call, thanks. I had never thought about that kind of flow before, but that's interesting, encourage people to submit advice, then ask for registration. Think I might do that. Thanks!
Better to warn users that they must log in to contribute (why?), and to provide the sign-up and contribution in the same page.
What I’m finding interesting is the metacommentary on what your userbase (which I’m presuming is mostly HN at the moment) looks like. The advice for teens and twenty somethings is wide-ranging and pretty good. Almost everything for folks in their thirties is pithy and reads like it was written by someone younger. (My own bias: haven’t checked past age 40). So, presumably, there’s not as many people commenting retrospectively on their 30’s.
Would be neat to track the delta between a subitter’s actual age and how old they’re willing to advise.
Hey 26 year old, these are your prime earning years, make sure you're saving as much as you can
Still good advice, just a funny juxtaposition.
It might be "peak savings opportunity because you don't have a family", but that's not at all the same thing.
It's a nice idea and the site works pretty well on mobile, but it sort of grinds my gears.
It's all about your priorities/tradeoffs and how much work you're willing to put into it. They lead a very no-frills budget-restricted life, keep very minimal possessions, put effort into finding overseas teaching jobs in low cost-of-living areas, finding dirt-cheap travel deals, and honestly I think the kids getting all this early travel and cultural exposure is probably a big net win (vs e.g. prioritizing things like buying them the latest video game consoles and fashionable clothing, etc).
You could say the same for starting most small businesses. There are loans available to get up and running if you have a solid business plan and don't have awful/ruined credit, and many viable businesses can be "pay my bills" profitable fairly quickly. You won't make as much excess cash as getting on the corporate treadmill and doing well, at least not earlier on, but you do reap the rewards of being your own boss and learning a suite of skills that's much rarer, and over time even the small business world can eventually become quite lucrative if you want it to be.
Perhaps one of them is achievable, but only at the cost of a very high level of focus - and giving up on the others.
Travel is certainly a lot easier to achieve when you're young, and in many places cheaper (e.g. Interrail tickets, which I would recommend to anyone looking to see a lot of countries in a short time)
So how is their retirement plans coming along?
>...and honestly I think the kids getting all this early travel and cultural exposure is probably a big net win (vs e.g. prioritizing things like buying them the latest video game consoles and fashionable clothing, etc).
That seems to be a loaded assumption. I've known people who spent their entire childhood traveling, and rather than culturally rich they just couldn't fit into any culture - they were inappropriate and had difficulty functioning in a North American lifestyle due to having a mish mash of wordly exposure which has proven to be pretty career limiting. They can tell neat stories about their time in South America, but can't figure out why people don't want to hear outright that their ideas are dumb. There's this assumption that the more you travel the more well rounded you'll be, but you've just been you in more places, doesn't mean you'll be a better person.
Someone has been watching too many financial planning commercials. And is assuming life expectancy will continue to outpace retirement age a few decades out.
And struggling with the close-minded back home after travel isn't a good reason not to do it.
Here's the thing - if you can save enough, you can retire when you want, regardless of retirement age. I don't believe life expectancy will decrease, and I definitely want to be able to enjoy my golden years without working.
Why is traveling now considered such an absolute good that it is impossible to criticize it, or to assume that it will automatically make people more open-minded? The parent posters point was that traveling won't make everyone well-adjusted and open-minded. I find it silly to claim that everyone will benefit, there surely must be some people who won't benefit.
Taking the parent's post in good faith, I find it reasonable to conclude that yes, in my experience there are people who, after extensive travel in their youth, experience difficulties adhering to local cultural standards. For a neutral example, I find the American puritanical reaction to sex & nudity frankly stupid, but it would be unwise to ignore these aspects of the culture.
By way of analogy: it's fine to take the first job you're offered and work there until you retire. If you took a new job, you'd have to learn new skills and deal with new coworkers, a new work culture. And should you return to your old company after the new one, you might try to incorporate skills, processes, or attitudes from the other place you found beneficial, changes which the old guard may not appreciate (but management should).
Yes, those rights being the sole right to purchase health care. Which can be very good if you have money and doesn't exist if you do not.
But do all nations actually have that?
Family. Literally everyone wants to retire near their family, kids, and grandkids.
I'm not suggesting optimizing for retirement, but I am advocating being aware of it. Choosing to make financial choices where only today is considered seems irrational as well, considering that tomorrow can and will come.
Yes, this adventure started in the mid-90s and lots has changed since then, and yes both parents have degrees; but if you’re going to take your family around the world, it’s not your currrent pay that matters, it’s what you’re offered in the place you’re going to.
Unsophisticated people read an article like this and think: Gosh, I better eat honey for breakfast! People a little more sophisticated think: Hey, this is anecdotal evidence! Yeah, we know that. But is that the most interesting thing one can say about this article? Is it not at least a source of ideas for things to investigate further?
The problem with the middlebrow dismissal is that it's a magnet for upvotes. The "U R a fag"s get downvoted and end up at the bottom of the page where they cause little trouble. But this sort of comment rises to the top. Things have now gotten to the stage where I flinch slightly as I click on the "comments" link, bracing myself for the dismissive comment I know will be waiting for me at the top of the page."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692598#up_4693920
Like you can't just say "be more confident" to someone. Or "do more exercise". Or "don't go into debt". No shit.
> Hey 81 year old, You've got one good year left... maybe
Ouch! That one sucks
Well that was sure worth my time spent on the website. I’m not sure how I will best incorporate this advice into my life.
Don't go bald.
In this case, the advice about baldness is a joke based on a negative stereotype for baldness, and not genuine advice at all. The default response in this post appears to be along the lines of preventing or reversing hair loss, showing support for the stereotype, and that people are taking the content at least a little bit seriously. I'm just here to say this particular piece of 'advice' is misleading at best and harmful at worst. Baldness will only affect your happiness if you let it.
One thing I think is missing is a "From: a x year old" for each bit of advice. I think the advice to someone in their 20's would be quite different coming from someone in their 30's vs 70's, and that in itself could be very interesting.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sycgL3Qg_Ak 4m40s
One area where I think future advice can be most helpful is in preventing hard-to-reverse mistakes. 18F's data release for college completion rates, employment rates, etc in 2012 may have helped people avoid bad decisions[0]. Another example could be increased wariness of using a drug after hearing personal stories of people trying to quit. Using the recently shared visualization of related subreddits[1] and looking at the "/r/askdrugs" graph, one can see Kratom and quittingkratom, phenibut and quitting phenibut, benzodiazapines and quittingbenzos, opiates and quittingopiates.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Scorecard
[1] https://anvaka.github.io/sayit/?query=askdrugs
Each piece of advice has a little person icon with a number next to it. That's the age of the person that gave that advice.
I'm sure that the idea is that these things will fall off the bottom if the site gets more popular, but pretty much by definition, there will be less advice at the older end, so there will be less to push off the rubbish.
Unfortunately, the hard thing is that when you're < 19 years old you don't want to listen to anyone because either you know everything already or they wouldn't understand.
It's a paradox.
I think that's why you hear so much of "work hard and stay in school." People are trying to be as broad as humanly possible to appeal to as wide of a net as they can.
Secondly and related, I'd do a quick study of every single bit of general tech around you as for how long it's been in use. This will open your eyes to what has been and ready for what is coming. Mentally track how long this and that has been in play—you'll be surprised and more importantly, you'll see opportunities. Go!
-Edit- Misread that title and added mine here. ^_^
Don't need my coffee, found my morning anxiety!
I'd say life doesn't really begin until you're on your own, so around 18 for me, but I'd really say that life picked up around the late 20s, early 30s. So, at 37, if I look at everything that I've done in the last 10 years, and now knowing what I want to do, I've still got three lives to live.
Absolutely. Since I've turned 30 I've gotten married, found my career, and bought a house. I've really only figured out life in the last 5 years or so. I've got many lifetimes to live as well.
Maturity, focus, concentration, self confidence all ebb and flow with time and aren't guaranteed to be monotonic. Civilization allows us to do great things, but it also enables the individual to be a weaker total person while being particularly skilled in one area.
Is that actually the case? I feel like a hunter/gatherer society isn't particularly well rounded - it's just a couple of skills that one lives or dies on. I wouldn't say that a caveman was well rounded, instead they were just ignorant of everything outside of "find something to eat and kill, then mate with something else".
Has english subtitles.
https://youtu.be/3SCQiKDxmhk