This post is not only about money but mostly about good life.

Trying to advise younger yourself is like little bit of stocktake of your right and wrong decisions, plus considering things, which you might have missed out for various reasons.

My early childhood and teenage years were pretty awesome. I grew up in small village in quite poor part of already poor country. But as long as you have enough food which we always had, I have never missed anything I thought I should have. The only things which money could buy, which had some value for me then, were things with which you could DO stuff. Bike, motorbike, ski, skates, hockey stick, soccer boots. All budget brands or no brands at all. I was absolutely ignorant to most of the material stuff and world chasing money until almost end of the University when I realised some had much more than me: cars, brand clothes or could afford to eat in restaurants.

I do have though some memories of myself in early teens stealing couple of very small things, sometimes even from close people. I have no idea why I have done it then, but the shame is still on my mind. Generally I was very honest kid. I wish I have never taken any of these things and I have definitely learned a lesson for my future life from the shame of doing such stuff. Do not take what does not belong to you, would be one of the advices.

In late teenage years I remember that first year of Uni we went hitchhiking with my mate to London (2000km) and I believe I had about $300 for the whole 3 weeks trip. We expected to eat mostly canned food from our backpacks (buying only bread), and sleeping rough on petrol stations and in city parks. I have still brought some cash back. And the road trip was awesome. Already then, I was searching always for experiences, not stuff. My best time spent by the age of 20? Holidays with parents, roaming around on push bikes and motorbikes with mates, ski trips, soccer, playing ice hockey on frozen lake, partying with friends. From 25 years of hindsight I don’t believe I would like to change much then. Maybe focus more on family and friends.

First large decision I would like to change would probably be to go to study Degree in international business in Prague. Though I had a time of my life and I have met many awesome people, I believe different degree would be more suitable for me. Firstly I probably should more focus on law. I have actually done entry exam to law school, but I have performed so badly that I have not even attended next exam in different law school. Somehow I have managed to go to reasonably prestigious economics university, but even there my picked degree was quite impractical. I had no idea what to study and International Business sounded as exclusive to the 17 years old. Problem was that the degree was extremely impractical and generic. It did not really prepare you for any career (maybe except diplomacy where I did not go). Once at the university, I could have at least picked finance degree in which I was always quite interested and which is reasonably practical for getting jobs with banks or investment and consulting firms. So at the end five years later I have walked away with a degree in international business and second major in Tourism. That’s why I got really surprised that there are almost no suitable jobs, once I have started searching for them.

Next mistake in my view was that I have not better prepared for the end of the University. At that time everyone had to go for a year of compulsory military training. I am definitely not military or nationalistic type. So to not to be part of it I have signed up for a replacement civil service. I have spent working 18 months in a library for no pay (as civil service was 50% longer than military). Meantime all my friends and classmates started up their careers. Almost 2 years after finishing Uni when I have started looking for a job, my degree was already bit “stale”. Wasted 1.5 years of career growth and earnings. Every single one of my classmates that I knew, managed to avoid it.

No point to think now if avoiding military service was good or bad. If I was better in preparation and planning and if I had another go, I would do everything not to blow 1.5 years of my life putting stickers on the books and being quite broke. And guess what? Just a few years later all military service turned professional and general compulsory military service was cancelled. There you go, 1.5 years of life. Not totally wasted as I managed to have fun and have good life, but the work was definitely not enjoyable or useful. I have just done what I was told and ticked off the days in calendar. And I could not even say “another day, another dollar” as I was not getting paid.

Next not very smart thing I have done for many years was drinking large quantities of alcohol. Problem was that this was so common and everyone else was doing it in my country (and most of the Eastern Europe). When I was in the middle of it, I haven’t realised that it is NOT normal. I cannot say I had alcohol problems, could not stop drinking, or commonly embarrassed myself as many others around me did. But level of Czech consumption that time was incredible. As student and worker in the library I used to party usually 3 times a week. Though luckily I have not enjoyed spirits too much, rarely we had a night under let’s say 4 litres of full strengths beer. At that time lots of conversation was quite drunken and topic was often alcohol. Only now I am thinking what was the point? Luckily nothing bad in these alcohol influenced period happened. I know of quite a few accidents to people around me in unclear state of mind.

I have extremely enjoyed the social part of it as in normally I was a bit shy person, but I believe I have missed potential addiction by not too much. So in this case advice to my younger (and then less experienced) myself would be avoid alcohol as much as you can. Now I am just hoping that the almost 2 decades of excessive drinking did not damage too much my body.

I had an issue with career but there were few things influencing that part of my life, which were not always under my control, so I cannot say easily I should have just changed this or that. Living in new country (Australia) at 26, getting another degree (accounting), and finding great life partner (my wife) turned out extremely well. But I have decided I could not stay in the accounting firm as I was not ready to note every 6 minutes what I was doing into timesheets. After 12 months I have realised my health was declining (at 30 years old!) and that the amount of stress is not suitable for me. I have started gaining weight, biting my teeth while sleeping and started to fear Mondays.

I have changed to public sector. But career path in that area was quite rigid and for me the interesting options were limited. By the time I have realised I would have to leave to grow my career, I had huge amount of stress from different source, and I was not ready to continue building career at that point. So I am not sure what actually would I advise to younger myself here. Have a plan, consider financial impact. Also when considering career as it is main source of retirement assets, keep an eye compatibility with financial independence. If you build enjoyable career, then there is no reason to retire. But financial independence gives you options when the enjoyment changes. And there are always many changes in life.

My favourite saying is from famous world boxing champion Mike Tyson something like “everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face…”. It is like that in the real life too.

One clear advice to younger myself is. If you want to have children, have them as soon as you can. I had great wife, financial stability and I wanted to have kids. I just thought there is so much time and we are having too much fun. Let’s have them later. They should have told me, that the main reason for infertility is the age. So due to my poor planning all my friends had kids and arranged their lives. By the time I have woken up and decided to have kids, we were in our late thirties. You still can have kids at that age, but there is much higher chance that you cannot, compared to your younger years.

We planned and 6 months gone and nothing. The warning bell started ringing after a year. We have started all possible and impossible routes towards family. National and international. The journey was harsh, long and expensive. At the end our twin boys arrived, but that was after almost a decade of the hopes. Even then we knew we were lucky. Main costs were the amount of stress we have experienced and missed opportunities due to the need of focusing all towards starting a family. It was hard, we have also met many couples going through same suffering and at the end they came emptyhanded. We did get lucky. So this I would consider as one of the reason why I had to sacrifice career. It was worth it, but there were costs. So again. Try to have kids as soon as you can. You might save yourself a lots of pain.

At the end, everything is pretty awesome. For now we are retired and living lean FIRE in one of the best places on earth on beautiful property with huge garden and swimming pool. So that’s why I don’t have that many complains about our lives. One of the minor things is that instead of the lean FIRE we could have enjoyed fat FIRE.

Mostly due to my fears or further debt, we have missed quite a few property investment opportunities. I would say at least 5-6 properties which we should have bought and we didn’t. Also we have sold couple of beach apartments, while appropriate thing to do was to rent them out and let the rent cover the interest. Many property books say that for property investor most suitable time to sell is never. I can agree with that.

I am pretty happy with most of my finance decisions in my teens, twenties and thirties. Reasons for it are as follows. I always made sure save a bit of whatever I had. So I usually had always some cash available if needed. I have never borrowed money for anything (drinking, holidays, things, etc). No loans or credit cards. I definitely wasted quite a bit of cash on unnecessary purchases and I have not invested anything until mid thirties, it did not really matter as the amounts of cash I was dealing with then were quite small (in library I did not get paid at all, my first full time job in Prague started with about AUD 700 per month which just about cover my living costs, and all the casual jobs in Sydney while I was student did not pay much and I had to pay education costs).

So even if I had done right thing and saved that little bit extra and invest it well, there would not be much impact on the value of our current assets. By the time I started making full time salary in Sydney, I have already read “Rich dad, poor dad”, stopped buying consumer garbage, started saving significant amounts of money and bought our first flat while working less than one year in my first full time job in Sydney. At that time I had Permanent Residency in Australia only for about 2 months. That truly put us on the path to financial freedom and much larger impact had earlier habits of saving and avoiding the debt. Impact of not investing couple of thousands which I could somehow put extra aside in my teens and twenties was negligible.