The Magic Time Machine?
On our way back from a 12 hour drive from Charleston, my sister-in-law and I got on the topic of the past. In particular, if you could go back in time somehow, would you try to change things about your life? Although our context was more on a general nature such as relationships, I thought it could just as easily apply to one’s financial life.
Think about it for a moment, if you could go back and tap that 18-year-old self on the shoulder, would you tell them to avoid credit card debt or racking up student loans? Maybe you would tell them to be more frugal or work a few more hours to save up some cash. Would they have really listened? Looking back upon my own life I can think of plenty of decisions I have made about my finances that I know now were not always the best ideas. However, to be honest, I am not sure I would change a thing. Would it be nice if I had less (or none) credit card or student loan debt right now? Sure! Ultimately, I had to go through all that stuff to learn my lesson to get me to the point that I am in my life now.
I have always had a good understanding of money and got the concept of debt is bad and saving is good, etc. Even when I was a lot younger, I could give people some solid advice and knowledge about money and personal finance, but did any of that stop me from doing many of the same things I could warn others about? Nope. I could rationalize why this is from so many different perspectives, have many good excuses and a few people that could share some of the blame but ultimately know its all on me. So did I make many mistakes along the way? Yes, but I also learned a lot from those mistakes and work at trying to avoid them again and maybe even help a few others avoid them. I still do some dumb things with money and I will have to pay for those as well, but I think I am doing better and will continue to do so.
Check out some thoughts that Single Ma had along these lines.
As a general thought about this topic, not just in the personal finance context, remember when you think about wanting to erase some crappy time in your life, think about what might have happened that turned out great for you. We never know how our decisions today will affect our lives later on. Maybe losing that job will open a door for you to get an even better one that you might have never tried for because you were comfortable (stuck in a rut?) in you old job? Maybe going through a bad relationship will cause a path for you to meet a great person for you later on that might have never crossed your path. I will admit that it works both ways and maybe your decisions could be altered so something even better or worse could have occurred, but playing what-ifs really just messes stuff up, so quit it already! =)