A few weeks ago I asked the question in the title above, and now I have more questions lol. The majority said that money became more important as they aged, so now I want to know what would you have done differently? Follow your passions? Chase financial stability? Sacrifice dreams for salary?
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Less important. I’ve never been motivated by money.
More. I’d have more aggressively pursued my career, and invested in big unexciting things like index trackers early on.
I think that, maybe, when you’re no longer young, consumption is all you have.
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IDK what I’d’ve done differently, maybe I would have changed jobs more frequently for greater increases
Maybe I’d’ve started working remotely for employers on the west coast who’ll happily hire me in a low COL area and pay me less than west coast wages but more than local
This might sound complicated…. I’m still trying to buy a house and plan for retirement so in that aspect it has become more important
But for the day to day everyday stuff it’s become less important. I can go get lunch and not make a major decision on if I want an appetizer or not I don’t have To keep a mental tab when grocery shopping, not paying for gas with change ect
The good thing about getting older is that I bought everything I needed over the years for my place. I’m talking about electronics, clothes, and home goods. Once I reached that point I didn’t have the need to buy that stuff which means I save more of every paycheck.
Much less, the more money I have the more extreme distractions I can go for
More important, I have more responsibilities and retirement doesn’t seem quite so far away now.
Way less important.
It’s just a currency, and so long as I can take care of the family I don’t really care about it.
Money is less important in the sense I don’t feel the need to impulsively spend on things anymore. We always aggressively saved as I understood the importance of controlling expenses. We are a couple years out from retirement. I’m 42. I’ve been unemployed for the past six months. I have a third interview for a job next week. Unfortunately it pays half what I was earning the past five years. However we don’t need that additional income now.
More important. I have a mortgage and a child that I’m responsible for. Money did not matter much when I was in my 20s.
It’s hard to say what I would do differently. I was fairly frugal in my 20s but I was happy to pay for experiences.
I occasionally question whether buying a home (vs renting) was a good idea but at 2.8% I would also have regrets if I didn’t buy.
The one purchase that I look back on and regret was a new motorcycle. It wasn’t terribly expensive but (like all new vehicles) it depreciated very quickly in the few years that I owned it. Something used would have been fine
Way more. Houses have gone from expensive to unaffordable and I don’t have mommy or daddy to depend on for that kind of money.
I’d say more only because your earning potential deteriorates as you age.
Unless you count on working until you die (assuming there’s an employer that will take you) or you’ve already piled up your retirement fund, your income source isn’t going to be around forever. And things WILL come up – health, emergency fixes, love ones coming to you for assistance.
The people who say money is less important id bet are generally the folks who have enough stashed away. Otherwise I’d argue it’s reckless to think any differently.
My money has gotten more important and demanded more by everyone else. And I get less of it and do more with it.
It’s actually gotten more important just because I’m 40 and I don’t want to be old and poor so I have to prioritize savings
More. I look at a lot of money I absolutely wasted that I should have and could have saved quite easily. And my mindset about how to save has changed considerably, because just like working out and exercising, it doesn’t have to be a lot every time you put money away, just put some away. It will absolutely add up over time.
Financial security becomes much more immediate as you get closer to retirement age. Look, aging is something everyone will do. And being comfortable when you can no longer work, it’s something you start thinking about more and more as you get closer to your golden years. Let’s face it, getting older means things slow down- that’s just a fact of life for 99.9% of people. It’s as simple as that.
When I was younger, I always felt like I had time- I could still recover from financial mistakes. I could still just think to myself, I can fix this, I have time, my bank account number matters only because of the things I want. But I felt like if I wasn’t where I wanted to be, I still had time to fix it.
Now that I’m approaching retirement age, I no longer have that luxury.
It may not be any more or less important per se, but it does become more stressful, more immediate, if I’m not where I want to be financially.
What would I do differently? If I could talk to 21 year old me I would say, “Invest. Invest as much as you can. You don’t NEED a fancy new car, you don’t NEED A 3000sf house, you don’t NEED to keep up with the Joneses. You NEED to be planning much better for your future. And for fucks sake, control your spending impulses.”
Way way way way more. I want to buy a home and now SFH’s by me are $900,000 at 6.5% interest rates. I’m so screwed.
Money is always important but at 55 I have significantly more so life is much easier.
I’ve NEVER picked “quantity of money” over “quality of life” and I’ve ALWAYS turned out happier because of it.
Well, once you let the reality sink in that everything will cost more over time, and that you’re basically eating through your savings once you retire, yeah you’ll realize money is important.
It’s not only to completely control my life, but it’s vital to manage that according to the lifestyle that you want AND sustain.
Less important. Once I had enough to not work and still be able to pay my bills, the desire for more disappeared. Childhood dreams of being ‘rich’ seemed as silly as those of wanting to be a superhero.
More for me. I look back at all the money I wasted the last few years when I was making bank and now I’m bringing in way less wondering if I can pay all my bills this summer. Why didn’t I build up more of a savings when I had the chance?
On the plus side I guess I’m single and no kids
I should add my parents are screwed too… They’ve never been well off and dad can’t even work anymore. I mean at least they have a house even though it’s falling apart but that’s about it…
I would say less. I used to be really into the stock market day-to-day and granular budget optimization. I’ve since discovered things that I find more interesting. So I just do my index funds and mostly don’t pay attention to its movements. If I miss out on a few optimizations in exchange for things I find more fulfilling, I’d prefer that.
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When I first started out, I was a bright eyed scientist. My wife and I both have serious physical illness, but hers is worse. I fully support her. Always have. She’s tried to work a lot throughout the years, always ends in hospitalization and illness.
In 2018 I had three main career options upon graduation (I graduated at 28). 1) Software engineer at Amazon 2) bioinformaticist up in Cambridge, MA at an elite institution 3) data scientist at gov agency
I choose path #2. It’s only been struggles. I currently managed to pull off a once in a lifetime pivot, out of computational biology and back into raw tech. But I’m nowhere near the engineer I could have been. And I don’t have a PhD, so I can’t get on an elite team doing cool stuff AND get paid enough. But that’s like the once upon a time fantasy. Which I don’t even know if I’d want now
But wow did we miss out. No house. Can’t have kids, and no money to adopt. No car. Tons (80k+) of student loans still. Just landed a truly miracle job that will hopefully turn us around. If that sounds confusing, feel free to look up rent in Boston, and now imagine you need to support another adult. On a research scientists’ salary.
So yeah. Pursuing what you love is overrated. Because at the end of the day, being broke is worse than literally anything else. And being broke AND sick… I just regret so much and it’s the worst feeling. Not even for myself, for her
Due to inflation, each dollar is both more and less important
More at this point in my life because it’s what will enable me to have an early retirement and do what I want. I’ve always been an aggressive saver/investor so the faster I get to where I want to be the better.
We are early sixties. I retired mid fifties and my wife retired last year.
Money is somewhat less important now because the kids are grown. I spent a big chunk of my 20’s to early 40’s very anxious that there would be a market crash and I’d lose my job.
But the biggest difference is in how we use our money. When younger money was more about social status (big house/nice cars/stuff) than it should have been. Now it represents freedom:
– From anxiety and
– To travel
I don’t care one whit what anyone thinks of our modest rental home, but I really like getting to see more of the world while we are still healthy and mobile enough to hike our way through beautiful parks or walk for 10 miles around a new city.
I’d also like to leave a decent chunk of change to our offspring as I feel guilty about the state of the world we have handed them.
More. I have a wife and kids to take care of now.
less. i like having money, but it’s not what motivates me. in the last 4 years my annual salary has been 130k, then 45k, then 110k, and this year i doubt I’ll break 35k. while the 6 figure years were nice in terms of being able to buy stuff with abandon, the tradeoff of quality of life more or less ate the actual joy of those experiecences up, and in many ways the random shit i did buy was just an attempt to fill the void my career was causing.
Currently, my basic needs are met and secure, and I have the luxury of spending my time on pursuits I want to see through. Ideas, projects, new endeavors, essentially whatever I want to dedicate my time to rather than trading it to work on someone else’s ideas, projects, or new endeavors. that is much more valuable to me than currency – which is nothing more than an I.O.U. someone else hands you that will always undervalue what your personal time is really worth.
Once you realize that money is a construct you realize the only value it holds it the value you choose to give it. the only reason money has any sort of power is because we pretend it does. we all have decided to imagine that it has power, but it doesn’t. you have the power. not the money, it’s really just a matter of where you decide to focus that power.
This question is gonna be absolutely loaded with personal bias.
For example, I focused on my career early. So now I make around 400k a year in a job I’m exceptionally good and proficient at. It feels like most days I do nothing but play on my phone at work. So money has become less important to me because I have that available. I live a very easy stress free life.
However, if I hasn’t focused on my career early or had kids younger, I wouldn’t be in nearly as good a financial situation, I’d be making less money and I’d have people depending on me that I support. So money would be far more important.
Or even if I made similar lifestyle choices but still didn’t advance in my career, but was living to paycheck to paycheck, money would still be import.
In my case though, focusing on my career has led to a lifestyle where I can do basically whatever I want now. Even if I have kids and settle down (which is what I would like to do) I can still retire early. I never have to worry about my bills being paid. I don’t have to worry about the majority of my check going to living expenses. I’ll never have to tap into my savings unless I want something big, something catastrophic happens, or i retire early.
Money is import when it can remove stress and hardship from your life. Once you’re in a position where that stress and hardship is far removed from you, it becomes less import.