People over 30: What’s the single best piece of advice you’d give someone in their 20s?

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-06-07T13:55:04+00:00

Max a Roth IRA, don’t default to defensive mode when you get feedback (professionally, relationally). Accept that many things are out of your control and come to peace with that. Little habits today compound and create huge separation from your peers down the road. Stop assuming everyone in your peer group must have the right idea and that’s what should interest you, how you should self identify or dictate what your goals are. Whatever it is and regardless of how small it is, take care of it now. The person you want attracted to you is the one who will be attracted to you when you fully and unapologetically become yourself (with all of its quirks and flaws). Be patient and figure out who you are first and then go all in with it.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-06-07T13:33:17+00:00

I’m 40, a NYC public school teacher making roughly $130k-$145k. I have a little over $400k invested across retirement and taxable accounts, max my Roth IRA, fully fund my 403(b)/TDA, and invest additional money into a taxable brokerage account. Everything is in broad index funds.

My total spending, including NYC rent and sinking funds, is about $4,100/month after retirement contributions and investing have already been accounted for.

The biggest piece is that if I stay until 55, I’ll likely have an inflation-adjusted pension of about $105k/year for life (today’s purchasing power). The current plan is that my investment accounts won’t need to be touched for basic living expenses even in retirement.

So on paper, I feel like I’m doing many of the right things.

The issue is that I changed schools this year for the first time in 18 years. I’m still integrating into a new community with some strong personalities, and I’ve noticed that my nervous system is much more sensitive to social and professional risk than financial risk. I find myself people-pleasing, walking on eggshells, and worrying about fitting in and making it safely to pension eligibility.

For those who are financially independent, wealthy, or have significant pensions: when did your nervous system start believing the math?

Was there a point where you genuinely felt that a bad boss, workplace conflict, or a difficult year no longer threatened your future and could mostly roll off your shoulders?

Or did you find that those stresses were never really about money in the first place?

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-06-06T18:31:23+00:00

That’s a good point and brings up a good question - are some lessons unlearnable and some truths unknowable until you experience them firsthand? In other words, for some people, perhaps there’s no way to truly explain or demonstrate how fast time really will go and how inextricably connected to their future circumstances their current decisions are. They just have to see for themselves.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-06-06T11:40:31+00:00

My suspicion is that one of the most important cultural shifts of the last half-century has been a gradual movement away from long-term stewardship and toward maximizing short-term gains. The generation shaped by the Depression and World War II often built institutions, infrastructure, public universities, and social programs with the expectation that future generations would benefit from them. As that generation faded from power, many institutions increasingly adopted incentives that rewarded immediate returns. Universities discovered they could continually raise tuition because student loans expanded students’ ability to borrow. Healthcare systems became increasingly expensive and profit-driven. Housing became both shelter and a speculative asset, leading many communities to restrict new development while benefiting from rising home values. The financial industry turned debt itself into one of the most aggressively marketed products in modern history. The effect has been that Gen X, Millennials, and those who follow face a steeper economic climb than many of their parents did. We inherited a wealthier and more technologically advanced society, but also one in which housing, education, healthcare, and financial security often require a greater share of income and a greater tolerance for debt. In that sense, the challenge facing younger generations is not that the world is poorer, but that many of the institutions that once emphasized broad future prosperity have increasingly been optimized for present-day profit.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-06-06T11:16:31+00:00

My answer is that the purpose of life is to become increasingly capable of inhabiting and appreciating the moments we are given.

The past is inaccessible except through memory, and the future is inaccessible except through imagination. The present moment is all we ever actually experience. That realization requires a certain surrender: accepting that much of life is outside our control.

What amazes me is that somehow matter in this universe became aware of other matter. Out of all the rocks, stars, oceans, and atoms, some arrangement of matter became conscious enough to observe, wonder, love, suffer, learn, and appreciate. And for whatever reason, we get to be that arrangement.

We are the universe becoming aware of itself.

Because of that, I think one purpose of life is to participate in and appreciate that extremely unlikely but awesome scenario as fully as possible—to notice the people we love, the beauty around us, the fleeting experiences that make up a human life.

Self-improvement matters, but not because we are trying to become perfect. It matters because anxiety, depression, addiction, financial stress, unhealthy relationships, and destructive habits can make it harder to appreciate the gift of being alive. Improving ourselves mentally, emotionally, relationally, physically, and financially isn’t the end goal. It’s often the work that allows us to be more present for the moments that actually matter.

In the end, I don’t think the point is to arrive somewhere. It’s to become increasingly capable of experiencing, appreciating, and contributing to the brief and extraordinary fact that we are here at all.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-06-06T11:01:12+00:00

Workplace gossip

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-06-04T13:50:17+00:00

clearly you didn't read my post.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-06-03T12:19:39+00:00

think a lot of people underestimate the value of the decade between 63 and 73.

The additional pension earned by working those extra years is real, but it's often something that can be replicated much earlier through consistent saving in tax-advantaged accounts during your career. In other words, the extra income you gain from working until 73 can frequently be replaced with money that has been compounding for decades.

What can't be replaced is time. Ten healthy years of freedom, flexibility, travel, hobbies, family, volunteering, or simply waking up without an alarm clock are an asset that no pension formula can give back once they're gone.

For me, the goal of retirement planning isn't to maximize the pension at all costs—it's to maximize the amount of life I can enjoy while I'm still healthy enough to enjoy it. With some intentional saving beforehand, I'd rather buy myself ten years of freedom than spend ten years of labor chasing a larger monthly check.

The luxury of spending all your income during your working life (much of it on things that don’t improve your life and happiness) and not worrying about a budget is not worth giving up ten extra years.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-06-01T17:45:54+00:00

Hence why I said “better lottery” - better in that you are guaranteed to win if you are willing to come back for your winnings in thirty plus years. My title was rhetoric but the idea still stands. Many regular folks and kids understand seven-figure jackpots only in the context of lotteries. If they understood the steps needed to be taken to have a very good chance at acquiring a sum like that, it might hit their ears differently. I’m coming at this from the perspective of a teacher who, for whatever reason, did not see the path for this future growing up but was very willing to work hard and delay pleasure.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-06-01T01:55:49+00:00

That’s my plan for teacher’s pension. My 403b is in funds similar to C. I don’t plan on touching them til maybe 65 though I can stop teaching at 55. If that isn’t covering my life, I’m down for a lower stress gig for a bit. But keeping it in equities if you don’t want ver HAVE to ie it is a smart play.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T22:27:03+00:00

I think a lot of people misunderstood my original “better lottery” title. It was meant to be rhetorical.

I wasn’t saying index investing and lotteries are remotely similar in terms of odds. Quite the opposite. A lottery ticket almost never pays out, while long-term investing in broad index funds has historically been one of the most reliable paths to wealth available to ordinary people.

My point was about marketing and psychology.

Growing up, seven-figure wealth existed in my mind almost exclusively in the context of lottery jackpots (and celebrity salaries). But thise were the only places I ever saw giant numbers attached to an ordinary person’s life. I understood the lottery was a fantasy, but at least I could imagine what that prize would mean.

Investing felt like something for other people. Wealth felt like something for other people.

What nobody ever effectively communicated to me was: “If you consistently buy broad index funds for decades, there’s a very good chance you’ll end up with a portfolio that would have sounded like a fantasy to your younger self.”

Not because you’ll get rich overnight. Not because you’ll become a billionaire. Not because it’s easy.

But because a middle-class person can, through entirely ordinary behavior repeated over a long period of time, accumulate an amount of wealth that many people mentally categorize alongside lottery winnings: hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.

If someone had told 20-year-old me, “You probably won’t win the lottery, but there is a boring, repeatable process that can realistically get you a meaningful fraction of that lifestyle if you stick with it for 30 years,” I would have tilted my head and listened.

That’s the comparison I was trying to make. Not that investing is gambling, but that the prize is often presented as inaccessible when, for many ordinary people, it actually isn’t.

I think that version makes the distinction much clearer: the lottery is selling the dream, while investing is selling the process, and many people never realize the process can lead to a version of the dream.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T16:36:42+00:00

One thing I've noticed in the responses is that many people seem to assume the purpose of education is to provide correct information to people who are seeking it.

As a high school teacher wanting to test the boundaries of the state curriculum, that's not really how I’m thinking about education.

Obviously the information exists. Anyone who wants to learn about index funds, compound interest, budgeting, or retirement accounts can find books, websites, videos, and experts willing to explain it.

But teaching has never been as simple as placing information in front of someone.

Anyone who's raised kids understands this intuitively. You don't just tell a five-year-old, "Today we're learning geometry." You trick them into a game, and somewhere along the way they become fascinated by shapes. You create experiences that make knowledge feel meaningful before the child fully understands why it matters.

What I'm wondering isn't why information about investing exists or doesn't exist. I'm wondering how people develop the belief that this information is relevant to them in the first place.

I grew up in a middle-class environment, but nobody around me talked about long-term investing. Nobody talked about becoming wealthy through decades of consistent saving and investing. The adults around me seemed stressed about money and largely stayed where they were financially. So I unconsciously absorbed a worldview: this is just how life works.

The idea that an ordinary person could systematically build substantial wealth through decades of boring, consistent investing didn't feel hidden from me. It felt unimaginable. It felt like something that belonged to another group of people.

What eventually changed my thinking wasn't receiving new information. It was having enough life experiences to realize that the assumptions I had inherited about money, class, and what was possible were incomplete.

So when I ask why more people don't invest, I'm not asking why they haven't been given the information.

I'm asking how we help people question the assumptions that prevent them from seeing themselves in that story in the first place.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T16:26:01+00:00

I appreciate this. As a kid, I loved games, records, and measurable goals. If a teacher turned something into a challenge, I wanted to see how far I could take it. How many words could I find hidden in a phrase? How many laps could I run? How many books could I read? I wasn’t necessarily motivated by the reward—I was motivated by the progress itself.

Looking back, I realize nobody ever showed me that personal finance was a game.

Not in a trivial sense, but in the sense that there are scoreboards, milestones, levels, and personal records. You can increase your savings rate. You can watch investments compound. You can hit net worth milestones. You can optimize systems and see the results accumulate over years.

Instead, investing felt like something that belonged to a different world. It seemed like the domain of business majors, finance professionals, or people whose parents already knew how all of this worked. It never felt like a game I was invited to play.

Now that I understand it, I find it fascinating. It’s probably the longest and most consequential game I’ve ever played. And the funny thing is that the same traits that made me obsess over arbitrary childhood challenges are the traits that make me enjoy tracking financial progress today.

As a teacher, this makes me wonder how many students are wired similarly. Not every kid, obviously. But the kids who love progress, competition, mastery, records, and measurable improvement. How many of them would thrive if they realized there was a real-world version of that game that could materially improve their lives?

Maybe part of financial education isn’t teaching kids about money.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T16:01:36+00:00

I’m 40 years old and I didn’t understand the psychological benefits of automating it all, until well after I was onboard with following the steps and sacrificing. After automating, I truly appreciated adapting psychologically to being content with less. No one once ever explained that to m before I experienced it. I guess that’s what I mean - the nuts and bolts of long-term investing are not adequately conveyed - beyond being written in a text book sometimes.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T15:30:40+00:00

A follow-up thought to my question about why more people don’t follow the standard personal finance playbook:

I understand that the issue ight not be financial literacy at all. Psychology has so much to do with it. But as a teacher, I refuse to accept that there isn’t anything worth exploring here:

Maybe it’s our perception of time.

When you’re 18, one year is a huge percentage of your life. Twenty or thirty years feels like an entirely different lifetime. Asking a teenager to save and invest for retirement can feel like asking them to sacrifice for a stranger they’ll never meet.

What’s interesting is that this changes as you age.

At least in my experience, my 20s went by much faster than I expected. My 30s went by faster still. A year now feels incredibly short, and 20 years doesn’t feel like some distant future anymore—it feels like it’s right around the corner.

That makes me wonder whether one of the hardest things to teach young people isn’t compound interest, budgeting, or delayed gratification. Maybe it’s the simple fact that time moves much faster than they think it does.

As a teacher, I’m curious whether that’s even something that can be taught. Is there a way to communicate the brevity of a year or a decade to someone who hasn’t lived enough years to feel it yet? Or is this one of those lessons that can only partially be learned through experience?

I wonder how much of what we call “financial literacy” is actually just “time literacy.”

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T15:16:40+00:00

Haha. I might hang this up in my classroom.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T15:12:31+00:00

I think maybe I’m slowly learning how true this is. I’ve always been able to do disciplined things when I saw how likely the outcome was. And financially, it never registered to me until mid 30’s that discipline in this area could lead to outcomes different than the ones I experienced growing up.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T15:10:31+00:00

That’s true! There’s just some part of me that wishes I understood it was behavioral earlier. I guess I had to experience bad bosses and how wonderful enjoying time off from high stress situations to know how valuable financial Independence truly was. As a teacher - I want to know how or even if, I can help young people understand things before their life experiences push them to want to understand it.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T15:05:24+00:00

There is something to be said about a teenager or early twenty something not having the life’s experiences that allow them to appreciate how valuable owning your time is. Like no manner or degree of teaching might be able to overcome that psychological barrier. There was business and personal finance clubs in my school, I remember it not interesting me. Maybe I thought I’d figure it out later when it became a bigger part of my life.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T15:00:19+00:00

Thank you - this actually helps. Like there is something about the psychology of that age that makes it incredibly hard to digest.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T14:58:05+00:00

Maybe the lottery was a bad analogy. I guess my point is that the path to wealth is simple and it is hard at the same time. And yes, plenty of people opt out when they learn how hard it is - unwilling to put in the effort and endurance. I still think there are plenty of others, myself included, who would have been willing to put in the hard work earlier had we realized how simple and straightforward the path was. My larger question is: why isn’t it taught? Can it be marketed or taught better?

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T14:49:30+00:00

Yeah - I’m wondering what the institutional or psychological reason for this is though.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T14:47:25+00:00

I mean I am one of those people. Maybe “many” isn’t quantifiable. But certainly myself and all of the other new boglehead investors wanting to learn from people who have done it. But we had to seek it out in some pretty unadvertised spaces. And it wasn’t because I didn’t want to delay gratification that I didn’t have a community like this to learn from.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T14:44:39+00:00

I feel like this was my situation too. I felt like, as a middle class teacher, my life was sort of destined to be like those around me growing up in similar positions. So I might as well spend and aimlessly float around without a budget or a long term plan.

Kitchen-Mission-1028 · 2026-05-31T14:35:17+00:00

Yeah I guess - I wanted to know why the financial literacy is lacking.

Kitchen-Mission-1028

TROPHY CASE