> There's definitely an argument for making hay while the sun shines.
Forgot that phrase, but that's exactly what I'm getting at. Also, make that hay in the morning. Because of compounding interest/returns, dollars (or pounds) that you save in your 20s are far, FAR more valuable than dollars you save in your 30s which are more valuable than dollars you save in your 40s. The advice you sometimes hear to go traveling and backpacking in your early 20s to self-discover is total financial lunacy. Every month you don't earn money in your early 20s probably results in extending retirement six or more months.
You can have other goals apart from increasing the balance of your investment portfolio or retiring early. It's not all about optimising this one aspect of your life.
It's a real shame that spending your youth fixated on money and a nebulous future retirement doesn't have a price tag attached to it.
You can calculate the opportunity cost of a dollar spent vs a dollar invested, but you cannot so easily calculate the cost of squandering a chance to have a memorable experience while you're still young and unencumbered.
> you cannot so easily calculate the cost of squandering a chance to have a memorable experience while you're still young and unencumbered.
Do people who do the whole "frontload a big hedonistic experience before you start working/living as an adult" actually end up with memorable experiences that often?
It's def good to sprinkle in a few periods or jaunts where you go out there and have a good time. Go for a Euro-trip with some bar crawls, go through a techno rave phase, etc.
Otherwise I'm pretty sure 80%+ of those who don't do it end up being squares in their 30's married to some girl who missed out.
I do know that maybe 20% of people aren't really in to the big party hedonism thing, and that's fine.
> The advice you sometimes hear to go traveling and backpacking in your early 20s to self-discover is total financial lunacy.
And life isn't only about min-maxing your financial situation at all times. Playing this game leads to a pretty bitter life, some are fit for it and thrive by squandering every cent they can during their younger years, others will simply be miserable.
Financial lunacy or not I don't believe that your life should be completely dictated by maximising your financial prospects when you are 40 or 50, each decade is a completely different life you live and missing out on your 20s while you are at your healthiest and less tired self is a personal development lunacy.
When you retire you aren't young and dumb anymore, you won't have the same experiences, you won't meet the same people, you will just coast into your later years. Might be successful by the metrics of the rat race but are you, as a person, really much better if you didn't experience much just to save money for later?
Everything is a trade-off, min-maxing your retirement funds on expense of your life experiences is just another option, financial lunacy or not, I'd love for more humans to not have to be trapped into lives based on what's financially sound or not.
This isn't so much every month not earning money but every month not putting money into a retirement account/savings. If you make a bunch of money in your 20s and don't adequately do these things (like, work for a startup that has no 401k and you don't open up and contribute to a Roth IRA to make up for it, for example), then it's not much different than going backpacking through your 20s.
Forgot that phrase, but that's exactly what I'm getting at. Also, make that hay in the morning. Because of compounding interest/returns, dollars (or pounds) that you save in your 20s are far, FAR more valuable than dollars you save in your 30s which are more valuable than dollars you save in your 40s. The advice you sometimes hear to go traveling and backpacking in your early 20s to self-discover is total financial lunacy. Every month you don't earn money in your early 20s probably results in extending retirement six or more months.