I attribute my personal finance success to essentially other people. Over the years I learned so much from people who had higher net worth, education and success than I had but I equally learned as much from people on the other end of the spectrum.
I came across this video that shows some personal finance lessons from older Americans that is very informative especially to younger generations.
Sadly, most of these people are ill prepared for retirement and have a long list of struggles in their current old age with few solutions. The key lesson is that you can’t make up time. The long established relationship with money is time and you’ve probably heard the expression “time is money” because it literally is that way.
If I had to write a younger letter to myself I would change a few things but overall I think I had a great balance of saving and spending over my lifetime. Could I have saved more? Yes but it would have meant sacrificing a lot of things that I probably I can’t do as I get older.
For example, I had wanted to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with my son for a long time however we kept putting it off in favor of visiting other places like hiking some mountains in Canada or visiting New Zealand. Sadly, I don’t think I can climb Mt. Kilimanjaro anymore because I probably won’t be able to keep pace with my son and I don’t want to hold everyone back. In a way it’s a regret but we did get to do other things so I’m not really sad about it.
I’ve visited every continent on the planet except Antarctica and we plan to do that soon over the next year or two and it’ll probably be one of our more expensive trips but I don’t want to put it off till I’m 70 years old because I have no way of knowing if I will be able to travel or be alive so the time to do it is now. Sure I could invest that money ($30k?) and have a nicer payoff when I’m 70 but that age isn’t a guarantee nor are the returns a guarantee either.
Share The Wealth
If you had to write a letter to yourself, what would it say? Let me know in the comments below.