If you want kids, don’t put it off for too long. I waited till my late 30s because I was never ready. Here’s the thing you will never feel completely ready. As long as your life is basically stable (job, housing, and no serious issues) you will be okay.
Kids are hard but super rewarding. If you have them young then you’ll get to see them as adults in your 40s. By the time my kids are adults I’ll be pushing 60 and hoping that I live long enough to meet a grandchild.
People have successfully (shades of grey here I know) been having kids for a long time. You’ll never feel “ready” but rest assured you’ll figure it out.
Invest in yourself.
Increase your skills, weather it’s university, an apprenticeship or on the job training. Your skills compound over time.
And as another poster said, take care of your teeth.
Don’t rawdog a rando
Wearing a rubber every time unless you’re in a committed relationship greatly reduces your chances of an STD or an unwanted pregnancy.
STDs are sooo much more common than people think because often they don’t even know they have them.
The starting gun has already fired. Don’t be idle and wait for life to come to you, you need to go get it!
Protect your back. Use proper form when lifting heavy weights. I let my back go round while pressing a few hundred pounds on an incline leg press in my 20s, bulged a disk, and ever since my mid 30s it has been my Achilles’ Heel. Goes out without warning. Completely lays me up when it does. Rubbish. Wish I could go back and undo that.
I came here to say that, and I’ll add wear ear protection if you’re anywhere loud. Who gives a shit if you don’t look cool wearing a headset or ear plugs. You know what else isn’t cool? That constant ringing in my ears because I was an idiot for years. I have to sleep with two loud fans now.
Omg yes the ear protection. I never paid attention to the warnings, it was just a loud club on a random Thursday after all. I was too young to realize the compounding effect. Even now I look back and feel like my partying and exposure to loud fun was mild, yet here I am with partial hearing loss and a portable white noise generator.
Man, I’m fortunate enough to not have any lasting/recurring pain (so far) but I was working harder than I should have and sprained some ribs. I didn’t even know that was possible.
That was the single worst 3 days I have ever experienced. It was like being water boarded with pain. It hurt to breathe. I couldn’t breathe deep at all and occasionally had spasms where all I could do was stand and focus on getting oxygen.
I couldn’t lie down either so I couldn’t sleep. What little sleep I got was sitting up on the couch with my arm propping up my head on the arm rest.
Compatibility is probably the most important quality to look for in a romantic partner.
Exercise more. Does not apply to all of the 20s, but to quite some.
It’s easy to believe you’re invincible in your twenties. Or “later me can deal with it.”. As that later version of me, I’m not a huge fan of that earlier version in a lot of ways. It’s fine, I’m who I am for what I went through, and I’m righting the ship. But the more cans you kick down the road, the more you have to deal with later and the harder they are to deal with. Physically, mentally, financially. It’s ok to try to live life freely, but definitely be aware of this and consider kicking one less can every chance you get.
So much this… Despite trying to drive defensively I have been involved in two major car accidents. The first one I walked away from, but the second one put me on Flight for Life. Despite the accident itself being pretty bad, the only physical issue was a broken leg that took a couple years to heal properly. However the REAL issue took longer to realize – something from that accident has caused me to have continued sleep issues since then. I’ll be on medications the rest of my life probably, and even then I still have trouble getting restful sleep if I’ve been physically active.
Yeah it’s easy to feel invincible when you’re young, and your body can heal from a lot, but just remember that those things can also fuck up your shit in ways you might not realize until years later. Things you take for granted now (like sleep) can really screw up your enjoyment of life when they don’t work right.
It’s ok to try to live life freely, but definitely be aware of this and consider kicking one less can every chance you get.
Got it.
Start saving for retirement now. You can make literally millions by putting away 10% of your income early on. Do it automatically so you never even notice the money gone.
If you are worried about making the wrong choice and your company doesn’t have a 401k, open an IRA somewhere (Fidelity if you need someone to make the decision for you) and pick a date targeted fund. Set up auto deposit. Never look at the balance.
You can always make it better later but for now the best thing to do is start. Don’t let analysis paralysis get in the way.
I don’t want to come off as insensitive, so I’ll try to phrase things carefully.
If you have even the slightest spare money per pay period, like $30, and a 401k or 403b is offered to you, you really need to do it.
That money comes out of your check before taxes, so you will be investing more money than what actually comes out of your check. By deduction 6% of a $15/hr full time job, you’re putting in $36, but your paycheck will only go down about $30-free money!
Many places will match you some, say half of that first 6%, so now you’re saving $54 while only being out $30. You’ve almost doubled your money in one week!
Come tax time, you’ve saved $1872, and you’ve been given a free $936. It doesn’t stop there though, because now you only are paying income tax on $29,328 instead of $31,200. If you get a tax rebate now, you will get even more back!
So now you’re saving $2808 a year at age 20. Let’s put that in one mutual fund, a SP500 index fund. Over the last 10 years, that has returned 12‰, but let’s be conservative and call it 10. If you never make a cent more per hour, by age 65, you will have saved $84,000 and your job has chipped in $42,000, over a year’s pay! But with that 10% compound interest, you have $2,000,000! You are a multi-millionaire for $30/wk!
If you get a raise or get a better job in the future, this number can be even higher.
Please keep this in mind. Even if you can’t do it now, do it ASAP. Here are the same numbers, but starting at 30 instead of 20.
Still amazing, but seeing this difference is why we older on ones tell you not saving earlier was our big regret.
I hope this was helpful and doesn’t get taken as a “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” thing.
Yes that’s cool and all but I have to pay rent and food and as things stand now the average salary is like enough to cover ⅓ of the rent
You entirely missed the point he was trying to make.
No, I understand what he’s trying to say. The point is: doing what he recommends requires having money to save up in the first place, and for a big portion of people in their 20s that’s not the case.
It’s valid, and it sucks. If you can even do $5, it’s worth it. But the world is absolutely against you right now. A lot of older folk don’t quite get how bad it’s gotten.
However, saving a dollar today is worth more than saving two dollars ten years from now. And having an emergency fund might actually save your life.
Hopefully something happens to shake up housing. These prices are absolutely criminal.
If 20 year old me put away 10% of her income, it would just mean borrowing more. Current me would just have more debt and be worse off than now.
Yeah a lot of people in there twenties can’t even spare 5%. I’m thirty and I can’t.
“Save money for retirement” Yeah so I can pick up painting? The only thing I’ll be able to paint is the ceiling if I want to retire.
Have you seen the price of emulsion?
Oh I was going to use the free stuff and use a 12 gauge brush
Question: If I had money saved in a 401k or Roth IRA, what if I died before I retired? What would happen to the money? Would it go back to the government or to a close relative?
You declare your beneficiaries when signing up - it goes to them, I believe.
You can (and should) assign a beneficiary for the account. They receive the money if you die.
Start a yoga practice and keep it up. In 20 years, you’ll thank yourself.
Or GMB or any other mobility-oriented practice!
Moisturize, use sunscreen. Protect your skin and you’ll look young even in old age.
Sunscreen sounds unmanly, but think about how you’ll feel with half your nose excised. Put it on your face especially!
I don’t know if this goes for all guys. Your balls will kinda drop again at some stage. If you have a desk job you could end up sitting on them for a while before realising what’s happened. Adjust the way you sit, what you wear down there.
I notice immediately when I sit on mine. And everyone else in the room notices too due to the sound I make.
Control your sex drive or it will be used to control you, and invariably very much against your own best interests.
I got lucky, and found my own partner quite early on (28 years together, now). But I did not stop observing other couples around me, and those men who failed to adequately control their own sex drive were the ones who almost always were taken advantage of and manipulated against their own best interests.
Ironically, RP (and to an extent, BP) information is a great base to understand how you can and will be manipulated, with MGTOW a good framework to insulate yourself against manipulation. Just understand that blaming others is a toxic and counterproductive path, seek to improve yourself to make RP/BP truths work with you and your best interests, and not against you.
Recommending Men Going Their Own Way doesn’t bode well in regards to your opinion, so… OP, please disregard.
Recommending Men Going Their Own Way doesn’t bode well in regards to your opinion
So working on yourself and improving yourself, building self-respect, setting personal standards that you refuse to compromise on, and focusing on intrinsic motivation is somehow “not boding well”?
What a weird way of punching down.
And for decades now, women have been screaming at men to “leave me alone”, for men to not bother them or approach them or hit on them or engage with them in any way unless engaged with first… yet you have issues with men who do exactly that? You have problems with men whose entire philosophy is to ignore women in exactly the ways that women have been demanding?
Again, what a strangely hypocritical criticism.
The entire point of MGTOW is to give men a path out of “incel-dom”, to show them that there is an alternative path to fulfilment and peace and effective happiness that is entirely self-achievable because it does not hang on the sharp hooks of female approval. That any man can fully divest themselves of this cycle of bigotry and external blame and the bigoted societal expectations of men to focus on what truly matters - themselves.
And in our society where ¾ of all suicide victims are men, we desperately need more men to focus on themselves, first.
So working on yourself and improving yourself, building self-respect, setting personal standards that you refuse to compromise on, and focusing on intrinsic motivation is somehow “not boding well”?
That is not what MGTOW means in reality, and you know it. Stop playing coy.
That is not what MGTOW means in reality, and you know it. Stop playing coy.
Ah, ignorance. It exists both as an innocent lack of information as well as an intentional rejection of facts. Yes, your cultivated ignorance is on full display.
Bye, Felicia.
What do RP and BP mean here?
Redpill and Blackpill, I’m assuming.
Incel-speak.
Redpill and Blackpill, I’m assuming.
Incel-speak.
Interesting how the first thing you reach for is the ad hominem of tying anything RP/BP to being “incel-speak”, in an attempt to silence any discussion in favour of the ideological narrative.
Yes, there are men in those communities who are despondent of ever having any “success” as society has defined it. That they face massive systemic barriers to success that they cannot affect, and extreme social punishments for failing to achieve that externally-imposed definition of “success”.
Throwing blame onto those who impose the rules is an understandable response by these men. An Immature, counterproductive, and inappropriate response, yes. But considering so many men have built their entire identity around societal lies and behaviours that were explicitly engineered to harm their chances of “success”, it is hardly a surprising response.
That’s why MGTOW exists - to show them that there is a path to life fulfilment and even happiness that does not hang from the sharp hooks of female (and societal!) approval. That there is a way to live that does not involve external blame and self-defeating hatred.
But most any RP/BP forum I have ever stuck my nose into has also had a fair amount of direct links to actual scientific research and/or real-world evidence which supports the female nature and behaviour that they have been experiencing and observing themselves. It doesn’t mean that they had any legitimacy in complaining or being upset about it, only that it wasn’t all in their head - it’s an actual IRL thing.
In other words, RP/BP is the “detox” from the societal brainwashing and psy-ops manipulation that most men have been subjected to all their lives, allowing them to truly understand why women do and act in the way that they do. MGTOW is the recovery that refocuses their attitude to intrinsic motivation and happiness, allowing them to live freely without any need for women.
And of course, a large proportion of women find that last sentence deeply frightening. A man who don’t need no woman? Who can live entirely on his own, happy and content? Heresy! It must be suppressed with all the social/verbal violence that can be brought to bear!
Hence, the derogatory term “incel”. It exists for no other reason than to shame men into compliance, as a thought-terminating cliché.
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Meet with a trusted financial advisor and plan your retirement ASAP
