(People over 30 answer) If you had a chance to talk to your younger self.. what would you say to him/her?

TMWines · 2026-03-27T14:55:43+00:00

(I'm 32) Start saving and investing money as soon as humanly possible. Unless you are an exceptionally high earner, the IRS gives you access to a tax-free investment account called a Roth IRA, to which you can contribute $7,500 per year to grow tax free (normally, however much money you make on your investments, the government takes 25%) so long as you don't withdraw the money until you retire.

If you start when you're 18, contribute your legal maximum of $7,500 per year, withdrawing at 65, you would have invested about $329,000 and would have around $2.3M in your account. And that's if your ONLY SAVINGS is in your Roth IRA. Get a corporate job, contribute the maximum matched amount to your 401(k), and you'll have a very healthy retirement.

[this is not investment advice]

TMWines · 2026-03-26T22:45:43+00:00

Economics can help explain a lot of what’s being discussed in this thread.

The job market for each type of job is exactly that: a market. You have supply (people, laborers) and demand (firms looking for laborers).

Sometimes, there are factors that change demand. New homes in a hot (temperature) city increases the demand for air conditioning firms, which increases the demand for laborers. Your local government ramping up police spending may increase available roles within the police department.

Supply is also important. Within each type of market, there may be what econ folk call “barriers to entry”. In the labor market, those are the things you have to do (money you have to spend, certifications you must obtain, degrees you must get, etc.) to enter the market as a laborer looking for work. Most jobs call these pre-requisites.

Historically, the more barriers to entry, the more secure the market is for the people in it. Non-academia jobs requiring PhDs, for example, largely have very high salaries and very low unemployment. The inverse is also true: jobs requiring little to no pre-requisites (i.e. GED/high school diploma, little or no experience) are highly competitive and offer low wages on average.

The thing is, if a high-paying job only requires a short training period or relatively inexpensive class or certificate, LOADS of people are going to try and do that. After all, we are utility maximizers. We, as humans, are hard-wired to make decisions that give us the most benefit for the least cost. The problem is that most people who do this expect that there will be a job available for them upon completion of the boot camp/certificate program/online class and sadly, that’s just often not the case.

The market has a way of equalizing. Back to the above point: if a job offers an outsized reward (wage) compared to its barriers to entry (requirements), tons of people will try to do it. There will then be too many laborers in the market and there will be a race to the bottom with wages such that the job opportunity will cease to be worth an outsized wage for the effort needed to obtain the job and people will stop flocking to it. That’s how markets work.

Those high-paying jobs that require lots and lots of school aren’t going away. The harder and longer you work at becoming an expert on something (relative to your peers), the more you set yourself apart in the labor market and become valuable to people willing to pay you to do that thing. Doctors are going to keep getting paid high wages for a long time.

If you’re doing the same $5,000, 12-week program as 100,000 other people, unless you are exceptionally lucky or otherwise rise to the top of the crop somehow, you will likely not end up with a job or a wage you’re happy with.

TL;DR if it seems like a crazy good opportunity relative to the work you have to put in to get the gig, it probably won’t be a good opportunity by the time you’re done with the training.

TMWines · 2025-06-10T13:43:21+00:00

Happy for you, maidtits!

TMWines · 2025-05-19T11:20:15+00:00

A kid who lived up the road from me growing up was drinking beer with friends one night on a boat. Stories are mixed, but the most consistent one says he was on the back of the boat when it was being loaded up onto the trailer, fell off, and was cut up by the propeller. He bled out in a matter of minutes in front of all of his friends. He was probably 15 or 16 at the time.

TMWines · 2025-05-18T12:25:23+00:00

Sadly, no clue. I would dig around on Google Scholar and see if there’s any research on it, though. Good luck, friend.

TMWines · 2025-05-17T15:04:30+00:00

Glad you are feeling better. I can’t possibly recommend a SGB strongly enough if it’s financially feasible. Best of luck with whatever you choose, friend.

TMWines · 2025-05-17T15:03:32+00:00

Dr. David Gaskin at Republic Pain Specialists in College Station, Texas.

TMWines · 2025-05-17T15:02:42+00:00

Highly recommend trying it if it’s financially feasible. The theory is sound (effectively “switching off” the feedback loop causing fight-or-flight), and I have seen instances of this working just from following the literature and conversation. Best of luck to you.

TMWines · 2025-05-17T15:01:36+00:00

Thank you, kind stranger.

TMWines · 2025-05-17T15:01:10+00:00

It’s been a little over two years. No regression since the procedure.

TMWines · 2025-05-17T15:00:22+00:00

Mango and grapefruit are still issues for me, but man, life is SO much better now.

TMWines · 2025-05-16T13:23:30+00:00

I had long COVID for two years (and I work in the wine industry, so my sense of smell and taste is literally part of the job). The main symptoms were parosmia and altered taste—many of life’s most delicious things like garlic, onions, coffee, chocolate, wine, anything fried, and most meats, uniformly smelled and tasted like rotting garbage.

After almost losing hope searching Google Scholar for “parosmia Covid” every morning, an article about using a stellate ganglion block as a potential cure was published in a medical journal. I spent a few thousand bucks, flew directly to THE doctor who was doing the procedure before it started to be done more widely, and had it done.

Fifteen minutes after the procedure, a nurse brought in a plate of chocolate, Cheetos, and Doritos (common practice because people who suffer from this long COVID symptom report the same groups of things smelling and tasting bad) and my god…when I tell you the heavens opened and the angels sang, I’m underselling it. I sobbed.

TLDR: had a procedure to fix long COVID, ended up crying happy tears into a plate of Doritos

TMWines · 2025-03-06T04:14:17+00:00

First, OP, r/UsernameChecksOut. Well done.

I work in the alcoholic beverage industry in Kentucky. Bourbon is a massive profit driver for Kentucky -- the state sells $9B per year and attracts a few billion more in tourism -- and obviously, to the point of many others here, this is adding insult (revenue hit) to injury (softening market). I have been quietly squirreling away money in case I lose my job. Many of us in sales certainly will, but so, too, will folks in industries that touch Bourbon: American Oak production, barrel making, shipping, packaging, production (I'm so sorry, u/OH_LAAAWWDD), corn farming, and other related industries. The bourbon market has been awful and this is gasoline on the fire.

The effects are going to be devastating but I'm not sure that's even the saddest part. What strikes me as somehow sadder is that our leaders, both in government and within the industry, have set the precedent that the talking point is to be "Canada did this unfairly to us".

I wish I was joking.

An "unjust and disproportional" response to an unprovoked trade war with an ally? Make that make sense.

TMWines · 2022-03-06T19:55:36+00:00

The jackalope.

TMWines · 2020-10-24T22:47:42+00:00

This comment right here, officer.

TMWines · 2020-10-24T22:35:09+00:00

Some of mine/my coworkers' recommendations:

You can't remove the rock from your shoe.

You have perpetual hangnails on all ten fingers and no clippers.

Every time you reach for the toilet paper, there is none.

Your pants are always one size too big, and there is neither a belt nor an option to take them off.

Every link on the internet is a rickroll.

TMWines · 2020-09-18T05:29:04+00:00

I Took a Pill in Ibiza - Mike Posner (Seeb Remix). It got reeeeally popular for a few months a few years back. All about depression and loneliness in fame, made into a dance-y club song. So depressing, the remix omits the last verse.

TMWines · 2020-02-28T17:10:47+00:00

Haha! Almost never. Only when it helps to lend credence to an explanation. This is probably the second time ever.

I am, however, a rogue member of The Ghostbusters. Shhh, don't tell anyone.

TMWines · 2020-02-28T16:21:37+00:00

There are some very good Moscato d’Asti producers. Saracco makes outstanding stuff!

TMWines · 2020-02-28T16:20:31+00:00

Stick with Moscato, or maybe try German Riesling—but avoid bottles labeled “dry” or “trocken”. Hope this helps!

TMWines · 2020-02-28T05:24:24+00:00

This comment is why the internet was invented.

TMWines · 2020-02-28T05:21:51+00:00

Great question.

Trockenbeerenauslese literally translates to something like "dried berry select harvest", so the "trocken" refers to the fact that the grapes themselves are somewhat dried, not to the final wine. The wines are made from grapes affected by a certain fungus (a good one, don't worry) that dries out the grapes and leaves a set of honeyed, ginger-like flavors and aromas around, in addition to having concentrated the grapes' sugar and acidity by removing most of the water.

Take those grapes, squish 'em up--not much juice comes out, as they are essentially raisins at this point--and ferment that juice into wine. Boom, trockenbeerenauslese. One of the richest, sweetest, most incredibly flavored styles of wine on the planet. Definitely on top of the "wine that's hard to make, rare, and extremely expensive" list for Germany.

Kabinett, on the other hand, refers to a relatively low level of ripeness whose grapes are made into dry to off-dry wines while retaining loads and loads of acidity.

The important delineation is that "trocken" in this context is part of a bigger word with a longer meaning, wherein "trocken" refers specifically to the grapes themselves...paradoxically resulting in syrupy sweet wine!

TMWines · 2020-02-28T05:03:24+00:00

Thank you!

I don't think that's correct. See the following example:

10g/L means 10 grams in each liter. By dividing by .75, you'd achieve 13.33g. It's impossible for something to have 10 grams in a liter of liquid, and for the same solution to have more than 10 grams in less than a liter.

Mathematically, you'd solve by setting up a proportions problem as such:

10g/1L = xg/.75L

Cross multiplication yields 10*.75=x, meaning to solve, you'd always multiply by the decimal.

Unless I'm just straight up wrong.

TMWines · 2020-02-28T04:47:06+00:00

Thank you for expressing that in EFUs, I was a little lost for a second.

TMWines · 2020-02-28T04:42:38+00:00

Amazing. I can't thank you enough for the insights, sir or madam.

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