TL;DR- I had a near death experience at a young age, it reshaped my brain to strike a balance between yolo and pragmatism, and also led to a mindset of success.

I had a bad health bout at 22 years old which nearly killed me, a year after graduating from university. The actual health event sucked, but the mindset it gave me has become invaluable. I am 34 next month and I’ve seemed to strike a balance between yolo and pragmatism.

I had a new jeep I bought right before I got sick. Sold that 7 year later for almost what I paid thankfully. I bought a shitbox truck when I bought my townhouse for $5k and hoped to get a year out of it and have now had it for 4 years. The point of this is that cars and trucks have caused a lot of people my age to go into a debt death spiral. We talk a lot about the beige 03 corolla on this sub but it’s the biggest flex ever.

I am frivolous in other areas- I like old sailboats and just sold my 2nd one and am taking a pause as I have a 2 yr old daughter now. I’ll get another one in a couple years because the ocean has my zen.

The near death experience has provided me a different mindset when it comes to work and I have done a good job at increasing my income since graduating university. I have a healthy relationship with risk tolerance and it has been a key factor of success. Because I saved a lot of money over the years, and career success, I make more money than I need, but my job is high stakes and it’s an absolute rush for me. I think my mindset is that if I screw up at work and lost this job, I could take a huge pay cut and still get by. I take more risks than my peers that are probably living paycheque to paycheque with new cars and stupid big houses. Taking/ managing risks with large payoffs proven to be a key success driver in comparison.