Keep fit. Everything else depends on it. If you hate exercising (like me), try to find some sports that are fun to play, and find some friends who are willing to drag you to play.
Also get your tests done regularly. Blood test, etc. are super important and can detect issues early on.
Health is the basic of everything else and you don't want to try to fix it when it's broken because it's going to be too late.
Another thing is try to find a passion. Could be part of work or part of hobby but one needs to have passion on something or he lives like a zombie. It can be anything from chasing girls to star gazing, but something you are so passionate at that you are willing to throw resources into it to get as professional as possible. Do yourself a favor and put up a blog and youtube channel about your passion and advertise yourself.
So now you are mentally and physcially fit, can't be better than that. The point is not to push yourself to do a lot of things in one day, but put a bit of extra care to yourself and invest a bit of time to your passions everyday for ten thousand days.
> Also get your tests done regularly. Blood test, etc. are super important and can detect issues early on.
In the US do you get some kind of yearly health checkup even if you're healthy with your blood tested and so on?
How come the NHS doesn't do this in the UK, I wonder? If I went to my NHS doctor and said I felt fine but asked for a general health-check and blood test they'd tell me to GTFO. Are we missing out on something that we should be getting?
And keep a copy of your own health records. You don't need to see the doctor's files, but you should know dates when different tests are done, and the results. A paper notebook is best, but I just email my wife with the subject "HEALTH:"
I'm turning 32 in 9 days. Here's what I would like to have said to myself, given the chance:
Start thinking about yourself. I mean it. Figure out what you like, what makes you feel good, what you can own and enjoy. Stick to that special something, don't forget yourself. Don't try to please everyone at your own expense. Take vacations, pay attention to your mental health. You are entering a new decade, that's going to feel shorter than the one already past you. Learn how to concentrate your efforts. Hindsight is 20/20, use that to your advantage, learn from your past mistakes.
- Don't be afraid to try new things. (this is tech, jobs, locations, people, everything...)
- Don't be hard on yourself if something you thought was going to be "cool" or "interesting" turns out to not be.
- Don't be afraid to do the things that no one else wants to do.
- Evaluate your work/life balance and DO NOT let your work over take your life in the long run.
- Companies don't give a *$%# about you as a person, only what value you bring to them as a company. In a lot of ways that is a good thing but understand that when push comes to shove you are expendable.
Personal:
- Save for retirement, as much as you can (gentle voice, as this can be very challenging at times). Compound interest is an amazing beast that will set you up for life.
- Every raise you get put a % in retirement, and keep the rest. You need a real time reward for your hard work as much as you need to save. "Treat Yo Self"
- If you need help. ASK FOR IT. Don't sit around and wait for someone to hand you the answer. People are there just waiting to give you all the help you need.
- If you ask for help and get a crappy response, file away that person's response and ask someone else.
- Record milestones and keep them safe. Then when you need (in the low times) review those milestones and recognize how much you've accomplished. Essentially try to step away from the canvas and get out of the moment in time problem you are stuck in.
Last and most important:
- Help others, without ego, where you can. You got here by receiving help from so many people, pay that forward.
Also, setup automatic funding every month and never sell anything. Buying is easy, selling is easy, holding is hard but you'll be glad you did during every dip.
Vanguard has some nice funds for this for people who just want to invest and forget about it until retirement.
They have one targeting people retiring in 2065 (born 1998-2002), one for 2060 (born 1993-1997), and so on down to one for people who retired in 2015 (born 1949-1952), and one for people who were born before 1949.
Each of these invests in other Vanguard funds. As it gets closer to their target year, they decrease their stock fund holdings and increase their bond fund holdings.
The 2055 one, which would be the one aimed at someone who is currently 30, is 90% stock, 9% bonds. The stock fund portion is split about 60/40 between a Vanguard total US stock market fund and a Vanguard total international stock market fund.
Amen. I'm 43, and started putting money into Vanguard around the age of 40. I absolutely wish I'd started at the age of 30; even just a bit here and there. I have money in index funds, and a Roth IRA. I have seen overall returns of 20%, though I understand that's an anomaly from the past few years.
What's the alternative to vanguard for someone living in the EU? I looked into it, and in my country it doesn't seem possible to do anything with vanguard itself.
Instead of being obsessed by financial investments, try to invest in yourself, you are your best asset. Everyone already said about training your body, I can't agree more.
Train your mind too: learn to not being angry, to be more tolerant, to lower your ego, to reduce your anxiety, to understand yourself and others, etc. Read a lot about human feelings. Be an appeased person.
In addition, Learning high value and rare skills will probably bring more money to you than random BTC buying, in addition of making you feel proud.
If you don't like exercising or aren't able to do so conventionally, keep exploring until you find something you enjoy that keeps you fit. You lose what you don't use. The benefits are proven and unenumerable, everything from improved mood and better overall health, plus being strong or a good lover improve your well-being in non-obvious ways.
I would argue that the whole idea of thinking about exercise as something you have to enjoy is overrated.
Do you enjoy cleaning your house or doing your taxes? Do your enjoy taking your car in for maintenance?
Sure some people enjoy some or all of those things, but you still have to do them regardless. They're a part of being a responsible adult.
Likewise, regular exercise is a part of being a responsible steward of your own health and well-being. Establishing the habit, regardless of how much you enjoy it, is as important for your long-term well-being as regularly contributing to your retirement account.
Now does that mean you have to choose an exercise modality that you hate? No, of course not. But there are some tried and true modalities that are extremely effective and don't have to be torture. You might find them boring at first, but they're effective and if you could bottle their effects in a pill, you'd be the richest person on the planet.
Tremendous advice for any age, but especially for 30.
Why? Because at 30 you still have time to develop great habits that last the rest of your life. Also the time when you can develop good muscle mass to prevent additional stress on your joints and delay potential back/joint pain from say 40, to 50-55.
Without knowing anything about your personal situation, my specific advice will have little value. A better exercise would be this:
Imagine you could have a half-hour conversation with yourself 10 years from now. Once you're done with the "what stock is about to blow up?" and "who will win the world series?" questions, what advice would you seek? What do you think Older You would say in response? Bonus points for journaling it out.[1]
I've found this exercise especially valuable for certain problems and goals. You can draw some pretty remarkable insights by separating from the emotions of the current moment and reframing your perspective.
Think about if you want to have kids later. If you want and your path there is not obvious yet, now is the time for you to prioritize finding that special someone.
Keep in mind that the character traits that make someone an exciting one night stand might be the opposite of the character traits that you'll want in a long term term relationship where you live together all the time.
I know that covid makes this advice very difficult to follow :(
Take care of your body. Stretch. Warm up. 30 is the threshold where you start to really lose the ability to heal. You can injure yourself now and your body just won't heal back to 100%. Ever.
Can confirm this, sadly. I turned 30 right around the time COVID hit and immediately stopped my usual exercise activities due to restrictions. A year later and I’m constantly nursing stupid injuries from nothing. My body simply isn’t bouncing back like it used to
Don't spend 3 years without going to the dentist like a certain idiot who is commenting on your post. Just because you're not feeling pain it doesn't mean the little creatures aren't eating the insides of your teeth.
Not sure about that. I’m in my late 40s and have smashed the crap out of myself quite badly in the last 20 years. I’m sure it’ll catch up with me eventually but at the moment I am peak fitness.
What is important is being healthy enough to heal. That means you need to eat well, exercise regularly and give yourself time to heal if you have to.
Edit: to be clear the injuries are obtained through risky sporting activities not through general wear and tear and general exercise.
To clarify my point about healing, most people don’t give themselves time to heal properly at any age and end up with a compromised outcome.
Get your personal finances in order. Pay off all non-house non-car debt. Spend less. Start saving for retirement. Get a promotion and put all of that extra money in a boring low fee target date fund. You can expect to be able to live off of 4% of your investments for at least 30 years. For example, if you have $1M in investments, you can safely withdraw $40k / year from that. Plan accordingly.
This should actually be advice given to 20 year olds. Compound interest is magic:
If you put $5,000 aside every year and invest it at 7% p.a. from age 20-30 and then stop putting more money aside for the remainder of your life, you will have more money than if you started investing $5,000 each year starting at age 30 and for the rest of your life.
You are going to need to fight to maintain your physical fitness levels from your 20s. If you didn't need to do much to stay fit before you may suddenly find yourself having to do a lot just to keep the same basic level, and you may not be prepared for how much self-motivation will required to do that.
1h+ of moderate-to-heavy exercise daily for the rest of your life. get to and commit to remaining squarely in the middle of the healthy weight range for your height.
pick one high skill cap activity (so, any activity) separate from your work and commit to 300h a year of trying to get better at it for at least the next decade. do not directly aim to make money with this activity, just try to get as good as you can. (obv if you already have something like that that you enjoy, just keep going with that).
Commit to using the time left after carving out space for the above to doing whatever you need to become financially independent by 40, if you are not already. Make a 10 year plan for how you are going to get there and focus on carrying it out. This should be a very achievable goal given that you are on Hacker News.
Whatever you decide to do professionally, focus on craftsmanship, particularly when no one is looking. The people that focus on craftsmanship enjoy their work more and get better results.
Happy birthday! If you made it this far, your life expectancy is a lot higher now. That means you should probably start thinking longer term -- whereas in your late teens you thought about college, in college you thought about your twenties, and in your twenties you were busy with your career, in your thirties you should start thinking about retirement.
The two items that are going to dominate your retirement are your finances and your health. If any one of these suffers, the other will as well. So start saving if you haven't already, or increase your savings otherwise. Be mindful what you put in your body, not only drugs and alcohol but food as well. Stop "trying" to exercise, do both aerobic and anaerobic exercises, consistently.
That said: you're not done with life. So keep learning, keep growing, keep enjoying every day. Set goals and work on them.
Don't follow trends and hype, health and fitness is key, the sooner the better, find someone who makes you want to be better for youself, them and the world.
Spend less and save more.
And the great Kardnial Offishal has imprinted the following quote in my head for life.
"Half the bullshit I thought, I'm glad I never said it"
[+] [-] markus_zhang|5 years ago|reply
Also get your tests done regularly. Blood test, etc. are super important and can detect issues early on.
Health is the basic of everything else and you don't want to try to fix it when it's broken because it's going to be too late.
Another thing is try to find a passion. Could be part of work or part of hobby but one needs to have passion on something or he lives like a zombie. It can be anything from chasing girls to star gazing, but something you are so passionate at that you are willing to throw resources into it to get as professional as possible. Do yourself a favor and put up a blog and youtube channel about your passion and advertise yourself.
So now you are mentally and physcially fit, can't be better than that. The point is not to push yourself to do a lot of things in one day, but put a bit of extra care to yourself and invest a bit of time to your passions everyday for ten thousand days.
[+] [-] chrisseaton|5 years ago|reply
In the US do you get some kind of yearly health checkup even if you're healthy with your blood tested and so on?
How come the NHS doesn't do this in the UK, I wonder? If I went to my NHS doctor and said I felt fine but asked for a general health-check and blood test they'd tell me to GTFO. Are we missing out on something that we should be getting?
[+] [-] markwusinich|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artiscode|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antisthenes|5 years ago|reply
I'm 32 as well. Why does it feel like years go by quicker as you age? I can barely remember anything in my first 2 years of this decade.
[+] [-] cliff_badger|5 years ago|reply
- Don't be afraid to try new things. (this is tech, jobs, locations, people, everything...)
- Don't be hard on yourself if something you thought was going to be "cool" or "interesting" turns out to not be.
- Don't be afraid to do the things that no one else wants to do.
- Evaluate your work/life balance and DO NOT let your work over take your life in the long run.
- Companies don't give a *$%# about you as a person, only what value you bring to them as a company. In a lot of ways that is a good thing but understand that when push comes to shove you are expendable.
Personal:
- Save for retirement, as much as you can (gentle voice, as this can be very challenging at times). Compound interest is an amazing beast that will set you up for life.
- Every raise you get put a % in retirement, and keep the rest. You need a real time reward for your hard work as much as you need to save. "Treat Yo Self"
- If you need help. ASK FOR IT. Don't sit around and wait for someone to hand you the answer. People are there just waiting to give you all the help you need.
- If you ask for help and get a crappy response, file away that person's response and ask someone else.
- Record milestones and keep them safe. Then when you need (in the low times) review those milestones and recognize how much you've accomplished. Essentially try to step away from the canvas and get out of the moment in time problem you are stuck in.
Last and most important:
- Help others, without ego, where you can. You got here by receiving help from so many people, pay that forward.
[+] [-] mgranados|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisbennet|5 years ago|reply
https://ritholtz.com/2014/02/the-best-investment-advice-youl...
[+] [-] pcarolan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|5 years ago|reply
They have one targeting people retiring in 2065 (born 1998-2002), one for 2060 (born 1993-1997), and so on down to one for people who retired in 2015 (born 1949-1952), and one for people who were born before 1949.
Each of these invests in other Vanguard funds. As it gets closer to their target year, they decrease their stock fund holdings and increase their bond fund holdings.
The 2055 one, which would be the one aimed at someone who is currently 30, is 90% stock, 9% bonds. The stock fund portion is split about 60/40 between a Vanguard total US stock market fund and a Vanguard total international stock market fund.
[+] [-] girzel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zwieback|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oAlbe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluewalt|5 years ago|reply
Train your mind too: learn to not being angry, to be more tolerant, to lower your ego, to reduce your anxiety, to understand yourself and others, etc. Read a lot about human feelings. Be an appeased person.
In addition, Learning high value and rare skills will probably bring more money to you than random BTC buying, in addition of making you feel proud.
[+] [-] mgranados|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mywittyname|5 years ago|reply
If you don't like exercising or aren't able to do so conventionally, keep exploring until you find something you enjoy that keeps you fit. You lose what you don't use. The benefits are proven and unenumerable, everything from improved mood and better overall health, plus being strong or a good lover improve your well-being in non-obvious ways.
[+] [-] sn9|5 years ago|reply
Do you enjoy cleaning your house or doing your taxes? Do your enjoy taking your car in for maintenance?
Sure some people enjoy some or all of those things, but you still have to do them regardless. They're a part of being a responsible adult.
Likewise, regular exercise is a part of being a responsible steward of your own health and well-being. Establishing the habit, regardless of how much you enjoy it, is as important for your long-term well-being as regularly contributing to your retirement account.
Now does that mean you have to choose an exercise modality that you hate? No, of course not. But there are some tried and true modalities that are extremely effective and don't have to be torture. You might find them boring at first, but they're effective and if you could bottle their effects in a pill, you'd be the richest person on the planet.
[+] [-] antisthenes|5 years ago|reply
Why? Because at 30 you still have time to develop great habits that last the rest of your life. Also the time when you can develop good muscle mass to prevent additional stress on your joints and delay potential back/joint pain from say 40, to 50-55.
[+] [-] amundsentb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyriakos|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmd509|5 years ago|reply
Imagine you could have a half-hour conversation with yourself 10 years from now. Once you're done with the "what stock is about to blow up?" and "who will win the world series?" questions, what advice would you seek? What do you think Older You would say in response? Bonus points for journaling it out.[1]
I've found this exercise especially valuable for certain problems and goals. You can draw some pretty remarkable insights by separating from the emotions of the current moment and reframing your perspective.
[1] derived from this discussion: https://tim.blog/2020/02/27/josh-waitzkin-beginners-mind-sel...
[+] [-] hmmokidk|5 years ago|reply
2. Find a good therapist.
3. Speak with the therapist about inconsistencies between your thoughts, feelings and who you want to be.
[+] [-] dsauerbrun|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] werber|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fxtentacle|5 years ago|reply
Keep in mind that the character traits that make someone an exciting one night stand might be the opposite of the character traits that you'll want in a long term term relationship where you live together all the time.
I know that covid makes this advice very difficult to follow :(
[+] [-] foreigner|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bloudermilk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dyingkneepad|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uncledave|5 years ago|reply
What is important is being healthy enough to heal. That means you need to eat well, exercise regularly and give yourself time to heal if you have to.
Edit: to be clear the injuries are obtained through risky sporting activities not through general wear and tear and general exercise.
To clarify my point about healing, most people don’t give themselves time to heal properly at any age and end up with a compromised outcome.
[+] [-] always_left|5 years ago|reply
I know people are indifferent of sam altman, but I really like this article he posted https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades...
[+] [-] kingnothing|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saxelsen|5 years ago|reply
This should actually be advice given to 20 year olds. Compound interest is magic:
If you put $5,000 aside every year and invest it at 7% p.a. from age 20-30 and then stop putting more money aside for the remainder of your life, you will have more money than if you started investing $5,000 each year starting at age 30 and for the rest of your life.
[+] [-] catacombs|5 years ago|reply
Easier said than done.
[+] [-] chrisseaton|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wly_cdgr|5 years ago|reply
pick one high skill cap activity (so, any activity) separate from your work and commit to 300h a year of trying to get better at it for at least the next decade. do not directly aim to make money with this activity, just try to get as good as you can. (obv if you already have something like that that you enjoy, just keep going with that).
Commit to using the time left after carving out space for the above to doing whatever you need to become financially independent by 40, if you are not already. Make a 10 year plan for how you are going to get there and focus on carrying it out. This should be a very achievable goal given that you are on Hacker News.
[+] [-] hardtke|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iooi|5 years ago|reply
The two items that are going to dominate your retirement are your finances and your health. If any one of these suffers, the other will as well. So start saving if you haven't already, or increase your savings otherwise. Be mindful what you put in your body, not only drugs and alcohol but food as well. Stop "trying" to exercise, do both aerobic and anaerobic exercises, consistently.
That said: you're not done with life. So keep learning, keep growing, keep enjoying every day. Set goals and work on them.
[+] [-] mgranados|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 12bits|5 years ago|reply
And the great Kardnial Offishal has imprinted the following quote in my head for life.
"Half the bullshit I thought, I'm glad I never said it"
[+] [-] _Microft|5 years ago|reply
Happy Birthday! :)
[+] [-] mgranados|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mindcrime|5 years ago|reply
You can never know too much math.
Read The Four Steps To The Epiphany