I'd argue that there's little point in living a life of delayed gratification if you have children as well, you're just going after different gratifications. Your kids are only young once and it goes fast.

Point of order... Golf is always in. It's the best sport because all generations can play it together. It's one of the few sports you can literally play with your dad and your grandpa at the same time. I can't wait to get my son into it.

Also, it'll only get easier when you're older if you work hard when you're younger. Amoung my friends, it is clear that while we're more educated, we definitely don't work as hard as our parents did. There are outliers of course, but i'm talking about generalizations based on my friend group.

Yes indeed.................... then the next chapter begins. They enter adult life.

I concur on this one. Many people as they get older are starting to experience IBS-like symptoms, issues with their colon and stomach lining.

The modern diet must have a major play to this problem.

I think we tend to overanalyze life, who knows what such stressors contribute to ones physical decline.

We save, but we travel a lot. Would we be more ahead financially if we didn't? Of course, but I wouldn't change it for anything.

I'm happy I'm getting to experience so much of the world while in my 20's and now mid 30's, while I'm still relatively young and healthy. I see friends that miss out on traveling in order to only save, thinking they can have these experiences when they're older/retire.

The problem is you won't be the same person physically in those latter years. You may not be able to do the activities you once thought you would, perhaps they won't even interest you at that point.

At the end of the day we only get one life to live, you can't hit the reset button and do it all again, you might as well enjoy it to the utmost you can.

@mike. The fact that you travel a lot AND save means you have the salary to do so. One could say you're fortunate enough to be living within your means.

The problem maybe when you're traveling 'a lot' and you don't have the means or savings.

^When I say save, I mean that quite loosely :lol

5-6%, while paying off some debt.

After our next trip I’ll have spent approx 7 months outside of North American cumulatively at age 36. Travel is my #1 obsession. I would never consider buying a car etc. and and having that as a hobby because there isn’t a car in my price range that would bring me any sort of long term joy/excitement

To mikes point, and I may have told this story before but back in 2010 I went to Europe for the first time with my dad and uncle, had an amazing time and that hooked me for good (growing up I watched a lot of Pilot Guides, and loved the hosts etc. there really in a time before the internet opened the world to travel, and I credit that show and the amazing hosts for stirring it up in me) after my trip I went back to work and the old timer super I worked with was pretty interested in my trip. He was going into his mid to late 60’s and had never been anywhere. He went to like Panama or somthing for a body building competition and that was the extent of his travels.

He asked me tonnes of questions and finally decided himself to go seek out long lost relatives in Romania and Hungary I believe. He went for a couple weeks on a relatively basic trip to some fairly non-descript places. When he got back however he was legitamitely depressed and he even told me straight up that he had made a huge mistake in not seeing more of the world when he was younger and able. After that trip he made a couple more but he was touching 70 then and his wife wasn’t in the greatest health so I’m sure it became somewhat of a burden.

Seeing the world and different places and people, there’s nothing more exciting for me. That feeling waking up in some hot, dusty old European city and hitting the streets, there’s nothing like it.

@hondaracer, I'm assuming you don't have any children (If i'm wrong, I would be blown away)? Do you have a gf or wife?

Also, are you able to work from home? How do you travel >6months outside of Canada

Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to travel that much, and there's no chance we could do that with a child. I don't like the idea of being so transient because it doesn't allow us to settle roots in a single place.

The main reason for settling roots is so that my family can prosper "financially" because that's important to me. I have the old school asian mentality of wanting financial freedrom, but also have the new school mentality of having a loving communicative family that I never had while growing up.

7 months total over 12 years is what he's saying. Like 3 weeks a year.

No kids, married.

We are fine financially and have a single 10 year old vehicle. We live fairly frivolously but both work quite a bit and don’t have too much in terms of bills. We were beneficiaries of some generational wealth but we’d likely be travelling the same whether we had or not. Both of us were lucky enough to be in the market before we met and both had reasonable assets upon getting married.

Things are much easier to afford with 2 people lol

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Well, i'm an idiot. Thanks for pointing that out.. lol

3 week vacation every year is much more reasonable.

If anything travel early in life teaches you to be frugal and more importantly how to live with less.

I hated it at the time but as a tween/young teenager my parents took me and my brother travelling and lived abroad for 3 years in SE Asia, saw the depths of depravity and how people got along fine without the latest car or gadgets. At age 23 took up travelling again after shunning it for a while and haven't looked back since. I'll easily drop 4 grand on plane tickets every few months but hum & haw over spending a few hundred on a replacement phone or laptop that I've had for years. Is one thing "better" than the other? Of course not, it's all conspicuous consumption I realized. But I'm so glad I did go travelling when I did. I truly think the golden age of travel was 2000-2020. The world is now full of no-go zones now that would have been unfathomable even 5 years ago. Now so much more of the world is restricted with Inflation, COVID, Russia/Ukraine War, China/Japan lockdowns and Climate Change pushback. In my 20s you could pretty much go wherever do whatever, whoever, whenever you want. Age makes a huge difference on your body too. Even if you go in your 20s with your GF/Wife you'd have so much energy and could screw every night in a $20/night hovel. Nowadays pushing 40 we gotta splash out on a decent 4-star hotel room to get enough sleep just so we don't feel like zombies for a week afterwards.

I can always get the latest iPhone or lease an M3 next year (probably won't) but I'll probably never get to party in Moscow like, ever again.

This rainy Sunday put a damper on my overall cheerful mood. Kinda reminds you that hey the next 6 months are all gonna be like this.

Seriously, go live your lives. Fuck this place. Go travel, go buy shit, whatever makes you happy. If you can remotely afford it, go do it. No point in waiting.

Anyone have any recommendations for a sliding gate installer? It is for a car pad/back yard.

Ahh Pilot Guides.. I miss Ian Wright, best travel guide on TV, hands down.

Yeap, he was my favourite by far. An amazing guide in a time where you relied on contacts and guide books VS the internet. I envy all those hosts, what a life they lived

This is a very good point as well.

People tend to think the world is static, that the places they wish or want to visit will stay the same (guess what, they won't).

I envy the stories I heard from old heads about Thailand in the 80s/90s, so many places in the world are changing quite rapidly.

Heck I'm even happy I was able to visit Tulum numerous times in 2008/09 -- it was a very different place then that of today's yuppy version.

Many spots will be gentrified and changed irreparably or perhaps gone entirely in the future (Maldives for example).

Get a chance to visit some places that aren't popular now, as that can change in the future. I'm blown away by places we visited in the early 2010's that have changed completely for the worse due to social media, popularity, etc.

Going to any tourist destination is just ridiculous these days. Smartphones have made people insufferable. How many fucking pictures is enough lol, and do you ever actually go back and look though them all? Maybe it's because I don't have kids but I might take 3 pictures total on a week long vacation.

People are literally watching something cool right in front of them through their smartphone because they would rather watch a video of it than the real thing.

You mean that picture you took of the Mona Lisa on a 10 year old iPad isn’t hanging in your home?

I’m guilty of taking a lot of shots. But I enjoy photography and I just keep it in my own personal album for future viewing (we don’t use social media). But you’re right. People spend more time taking photos than they do actually living in the moment. I recall back in 08 when me and the wife went to Hawaii for the first time, we still had a film camera rolling around.

All this talk makes me wanna go on a big trip.

When I backpacked SEA back in 2016 for 3 months. I managed to do the entire trip staying at hostels, mainly street food, less than a handful of nights in hotel to reset. The lifestyle was great, wake up, eat cheap food, socialize with everyone at the hostel and try to rally troops for an activity, nap, then rally the troops to pub crawl at whatever city you were in.

Planning to do one more of this type of trip before I hit 30's otherwise my lifestyle creep would make staying in hostels more tiresome than fun. Only thing that sucks now is the opportunity cost of leaving for months is so much higher now than when you're in school. I was toying with the idea of a recession + layoff + severance = travel for a year

Lol, this is me. I'll go to Vegas for a week and when I get back my wife is like you got any photos? I'm like let me see, there's like a few photo's for the week.

I mean how many photos can you really take at a strip club?

So you're going to Vegas for a week WITHOUT your wife and you don't have any pictures??? haha yeah.. me too bro. me too!