Save 15%. Even if it absolutely sucks to do so. If you have to dip in to the 15%, it better be for life or death. Skip meals to save that 15%.

1$ saved at 20 is like 20$ saved at 40.

Also, don’t cash advance from a credit card, ever, for any reason. I once bought a 6$ taco at age 18 on cash advance, and once I finally cleared it off, that taco had cost me almost 500$. I did the math.

Poop at work. Not only do you get paid to poop, you save money on toilet paper.

Go to party every day. Fuck everyone you can. Use all the drugs. You’re going to miss this time when your body could take it all without problems.

Your 30s will be better. Don’t get hung up on thinking your 20s are prime.

Can all the young people not smoke cigarettes please. It’s the one thing I regret in life.

There’s obvious reasons like health and money, but there are specifics that you don’t want, such as -

Emphysema. You don’t want that.

Receded gums. It’s not funny.

And you smell. Really bad.

Smoking kills, obviously. But it’s the things it can do to you while you’re still alive that are really horrible.

Install GnuCash, learn accounting, and start tracking your money and use proper financial language. There is a lot of good financial advice out there (budgeting, investments, debt reduction), and all of that is much more efficient if a) you know where your money goes and where it comes from, b) you are proficient with financial software, and c) you can talk to the banks in their own language.

If you start college (assuming you’re an American) do not under any circumstances drop out. This goes double for grad school. What will happen is the at you’ll still owe money on your student loan, but will not have whatever advantages you might have accumulated as a result of having a degree.

Here’s my highly specific (hypocritical) advice:

Don’t take advice from Reddit or Lemmy on any important matter. You don’t know these people, and they don’t know you. Some people have good ideas. Most don’t. The ability to think for yourself and determine what’s best for you is the best skill you can have. A review from Lemmy or Reddit on a product is fine. Life advice from internet strangers is almost always garbage.

Here’s some more highly specific meta advice: Change your socks every day. What the fuck people…

Stay off TikTok.

As an eastern European nearing their 30s in a situation much less extreme than yours - do not fall for “patriotism”. I do not mean the “go and fight for your people” type. That takes guts and mentality I do not possess.

I mean the “doing X is unpatriotic” type. Usually comes from “patriotic” formations who follow a certain narrative and work for the interests of other countries. Look for buzzwords like traditional values, us vs them, targeting a group of people as a whole, claiming to get back “what is ours” (territory lost centuries ago, not currently occupied land). Big social media presence coupled with self-produced “reports” and “news articles” (bonus points if they have their own mass media channels) are also a giveaway.

Thank you but I won’t let your aggressor, through puppet parties, dictate what about my attitude and views is patriotic and what isn’t.

Don’t repeatedly subject yourself to very loud music. Tinnitus is a bitch.

Go to another country for 1 year. A country with different culture and with a different language.

Do not fuck around with hard drugs.

Floss, brush your teeth daily and see a dentist at least once a year, eat less sugar and cut out soft drinks. Nothing worse than in losing or nearly losing one or two teeth in your 30s or 40s. Even without cavities, if you don’t take care of your gums, you can lose perfectly healthy teeth because the gums were eroded away.

Do some weight training and keep up an exercise routine … you can easily build muscle tone over the next ten years, after that you have to work a whole lot more to gain the same amount of muscle tone.

Eat less and eat healthy … learn to eat better and just eat less but better food … the sooner you learn this, the longer you’ll keep the habit and the longer the habit in your life, the longer you’ll live and the longer you’ll live healthier. What’s the sense of living to 80 when you end up sick and unhealthy for the last 20 years of your life?

Read, read, read … read the classics, read history, and read as much and as often as you can to fill out your knowledge and awareness of as much as possible.

Do all this now because you will never gain the time to do it all later.

Never assume that you can do things when you’re 30 when you’re 40 or when you retire because those times will either never come or when those times come, you won’t have the time or you will have so many other priorities that you won’t do these things anyway.

So do all these things now while you can because later may not arrive or when it does, it won’t be like you imagined it would be.

When it comes to buying furniture: Get secondhand furniture handed down by relatives, or found at thrift stores, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, garage sales, whatever. It’s more eco-friendly to buy stuff that already exists, it’ll probably cost less than brand-new furniture, and the older stuff is sturdier than anything you’re going to get at Ikea.

With the money you save buying secondhand tables and drawers and such, buy a GOOD brand new mattress. You can cheap out on a lot of furniture, but never cheap out on a mattress. Decades from now, your back will thank you.