The best advice I heard in my 20s don't spend your raise. If you can live of X and now you make Y, still live of X and put everything you don't spend in a few ETFs. Don't try to be smart en beat the market, don't buy stocks, etc.

Just 3 or 4 ETFs that cover the world. Or if you want to be smart read up on the permanent portfolio or all weather portfolio.

You don't need a more expensive car if your current car still works, you don't need a new phone every 2 years, etc. Buy what can't be fixed, don't pay for upgrades that are not really going to improve your life.

Also buy things that don't expire (toiletpaper, dishwasher soap, etc) in bulk when the offer it really good.

You don't have to live as a bum but you can still make sure you don't overspend.

Once we switch over to bottle caps as currency, I'll be both instantly rich and utterly distraught at the potential wealth I squandered over the years.

My retirement plan is similar but it's more that Climate Crisis is going to cook us all alive before I need to retire.

In all honesty, my retirement plan is to go out with a bang in an act of left-wing extremist terror. We have seen way too little left-wing extremist terror in the past few years.

It's a legitimate conundrum, do I invest for comfortable retirement or comfortable middle age

Man, a lot of you are going to be absolutely fucked if we somehow don't have societal collapse.

No wonder so many people keep pushing accelerationist rhetoric.