Ask HN: How to plan for a future when the advice is always to focus on the now? |
Ask HN: How to plan for a future when the advice is always to focus on the now? |
Today, this year, these are the good old days, if you write down a bit of what you're experiencing now, you might value it highly in the future.
Don't over think it... go outside, get away from the screens for a bit, and enjoy the day, your youth, and the wonder of it all.
With inflation where it is today - where a young person will pay $800/mo. making $75k/year for an apartment and $2800/mo. for the same exact place 10 years later with the same salary through turbulent hiring and layoff conditions - it makes saving an impossibly uphill climb.
Simply, unless your savings is perfectly continuous and outpacing that incredible inflation you are not actually saving - only penny pinching and still ending up behind.
The OP said "spend less than you earn". That's good advice, always will be. But yes, it's not easy. In a consumer-driven economy it takes effort and sacrifice to make it happen. And so many will just throw up their hands and declare "it's too hard".
Here's the thing - it has always been hard. It wasn't easier 50 years ago; it was hard then too.
Perhaps this will help; "When you leave your parents home, you will have a big drop in lifestyle. Their cars, their house, their eating habits, their vacations are products of 30 or 40 years of work and sacrifice. You are just starting out."
If it's helpful talk to them about their lives at the beginning. Did they stay in a fancy house? Drive a new car? Eat out multiple times a week? How much did they spend getting married or on honeymoon?
Today meaningful saving is easier not harder. Inflation-beating savings vehicles exist. There are lots of smart ways to invest.
What isn't easier is the personal decision to sacrifice something now for a gain later. Delayed gratification is not easy, it is a choice. Everything you buy is a choice. Everything you don't buy is a choice. Every time you choose the present over the future, or vice versa, you make a choice. YOU are in control here, not your circumstances.
Most people will take the easy way out. They'll whine a bit, consume now, rack up debt, and be miserable down the road. Simple advice is seldom easy to execute.
The core code is simple: discard those to be lost; chase those you do want, yet have not.
As a simple analogy: Do not focus on winning the lottery, when you cannot feed yourself today.
Save for the future but you must not starve today.