If you could do it all over, what would you change?

**btctony** · 12-12-2013, 12:52 PM

I would have delayed gratification and saved more, if I had been smarter about finance in my early 20's. I'm 29 now and have been on a very good path for the past few years, but my early 20's were a waste of time financially speaking, in my opinion.

1) Wouldn't have bought a new car twice, just because I didn't have a car payment any longer. I'm very happy that my current vehicle is paid for and should last at least another five years.

2) I wouldn't have wasted so much money on stupid things like going out to eat all of the time. Food budget is very minimal now and I cook at home all but once or twice a month.

3) Again, I wouldn't have wasted so much money on stupid things like that new TV I wanted or that shiny new iPod.

**cardtrick** · 12-12-2013, 02:57 PM

1. Max out 401K right out of college.

2. Fund a Roth IRA right out of college.

3. Stay away from credit cards when I was young. Or at least realize that most spending is not worth paying the interest on credit cards.

4. Sign up for HSA right out of college. I could have had 5 years of contributions + capital gains/interest in there right now. I only went to the doctor once in the past 5 years, and that too for a skin tag. I freaked out because I never got one before. He said that he needed to "surgically" remove it. I came back home and cut it off with a pair of scissors dipped in rubbing alcohol. I think the "surgery" would have costed me about $200 out of pocket. The gf was freaking out that I would bleed out. haha

**HalfDozenDaily** · 12-12-2013, 06:07 PM

Great thread!

1. I'd buy FAR less "stuff".
2. I'd have started saving earlier. Even if all we could afford was $5.00/week!
3. I wouldn't be so fast to replace/upgrade things that probably didn't need replaced or upgraded!

**LivingAlmostLarge** · 12-12-2013, 07:14 PM

Have kids earlier.

**cschin4** · 12-13-2013, 04:09 AM

To be wiser with money, I would have done the following:

1. Drive my cars a LOT longer. When I was younger, I caught to caught up in thinking I needed something I didn't. I didn't "need " to run out and buy a 7 passenger minivan when we had our first child, to transport one kid! lol

2. Homes. I spent too much on remodeling. Yes, the home the looks better and is improved. But, I did a lot of remodeling that really doesn't pay off. Oh well. Live and learn.

**feh** · 12-13-2013, 07:07 AM

I've been very fortunate; looking back at 25 years of working life, there isn't much I would change. We've always lived well within our means and saved, which are usually very large factors in achieving financial independence.

I will say I wish I had taken the boglehead route (own indexes, diversify, low expense ratios) earlier in life.

**kork13** · 12-13-2013, 09:00 AM

1) Focused more on my studies in college -- doing so would have opened doors for continuing education and even scholarships/sponsorships for certain degree programs.

2) Kept my college car in storage while I lived in Japan for 2 years (instead I sold it). I would have come back to a 5yr old '07 Civic with low miles, no car loan, and I could still be driving it today. Instead I bought a new car (including a small car loan). Although I love my current Golf TDI, I would have been perfectly happy to still have my Civic

3) Little things about my home purchase last year, but those are minor and yet possibly innumerable.

Otherwise, I don't really think I've had a chance to make too many mistakes yet...

Oh wait, one more -- I would have held on to my precious metals investments that I bought in Fall '05 (then sold in late '07... d'oh!)

**Ima saver** · 12-13-2013, 11:47 AM

One thing I am very glad I did. I bought my first home at age 21 and paid it off by age 32. I have never had a home payment since! I did not go into getting much "stuff" and still don't!

**twest** · 12-13-2013, 12:15 PM

For me the one thing I would change would be that I would have started saving for retirement in my early 20s. I wouldn't feel so behind now at the age of 37.

I think on most other things my husband and I have done fairly well. We have borrowed very little and paid off those things as quickly as possible, but our retirement may suffer some beacuse of not starting early enough.

**EEinNJ** · 12-13-2013, 12:16 PM

When my (now ex) wife finally told me about all the credit card debt she'd run up, I should have thrown her out then & there, instead of using our joint stocks to pay it off, only to finally divorce her a few years later. It was NOT cheaper to keep her.

**Like2Plan** · 12-13-2013, 01:26 PM

I started investing in individual DRIP stocks in 1987 using DCA. I added stocks whenever I received a pay raise. As time went by, I was getting a lot of paperwork (in most cases less than 100 shares per company.) I had to keep all the statements in order to figure out the cost basis when the shares were sold. Honestly, it was a paperwork nightmare. About 3 years ago, I sold almost all of them and put the proceeds into a target retirement fund.

I wish that I had transitioned over to a target fund sooner.

**MonkeyMama** · 12-13-2013, 01:35 PM

1 - Would not have bought individual tech stocks in 2000 - 2001 when we had no idea what we were doing.

2 - That reminded me, would have dumped big brokerage/investment advisor many years sooner. I don't have any regrets about it because we did kick them to the curb in our 20s, but I guess it would have been nice to do it sooner.

3 - If I had a crystal ball we would have sold our first home a few weeks sooner. It weas 9/11 so properties were only depressed long enough to royally screw up our (thankfully conservative) plans. Made us $100,000 poorer, when we were very young so was a LOT of money. I think our only real and true regret was that the possibility of all this never crossed our minds - living in a city where real estate was only ever on the uprise. This one is hard for me to pin my real regret on because we actually decided after 9/11 and after unable to sell first home to go ahead with second home purchase, and it was actually a fairly good decision. (We weren't stuck and could have backed out - our original plan was to sell home #1 first; just not soon enough). I actually don't regret owning two homes. But, I think we probably should have locked in our housing gains a little sooner and/or waited out the market to recover. We will be infinitely more wiser next time we buy/sell. Some of it is just you don't have a crystal ball and it is what it is. Some of it was being young and naive.

It's really hard for me to dwell on the mistakes. I think both #1 and #3 kept us extremely level headed in the subsequent real estate and stock market boom and bust. Maybe it is all a wash in the end...

**gogirlanime** · 12-13-2013, 02:44 PM

I am still in college and still pretty young (26) but I still have some financial regrets

1. Spending about 80% of the money I earned from ages 16-19 on eating out with friends.

2. Not saving for a car sooner (I still don't have one)

3. Buy less crap than I did. I didn't overspend too much, but I still bought a lot of really dumb crap that I either don't have anymore, never needed, or never used

**Thrif-t** · 12-13-2013, 04:58 PM

If I could do it all over I would've left my money in my 401k at my first job instead of rolling it over to my current job as soon as I left. I was in the midst of having kids and didn't really have a lot of time to spend on learning to invest. I wish I'd of just let the money sit in the old company's 401k and then 5 years later when I had more time and learned more on investing rolled it over into an IRA. Instead I rolled it to my current plan which stinks! And now that money is stuck there until I leave.

If you could do it all over, what would you change?