What's the best piece of advice you were ever given?

[ccmdfd]

Don't know what made me think of this this morning, but I need to take a break from all of the who is right and who is wrong with covid, politics, Etc threads.

What's the best piece of advice someone ever gave you?

Here's mine.

It's end of junior year of high school.It's time to start thinking of what my schedule for senior year will look like. I knew I wanted to go to college and almost certainly would do something science related but nothing specific at that time.

I was finishing up French II. It was required to do 2 years of foreign language at my school. My French teacher was an elderly woman, prim and proper. I was one of her favorite students, I got very good grades in her class. She was quite excited because in my senior year she was going to get her first chance ever of having french III. And this was going to include a trip to France for the entire class. She really wanted me in the class.

I discussed this one night over dinner with my parents. My father looked right at me and said, "Son, unless you take a hard left turn at College you will probably never use French another day in your life. You need to take typing. Your handwriting is as bad as it is and given the amount of papers you will need to create in college typing would do you well."

It should be noted that it this time the Commodore 64 had just been in production for a couple of years. Most people thought we would have flying cars long before we would all have personal computers in our households.

So I listened to my dad and took typing. Learned everything from how to insert and line up the paper, proper spacing, Etc.

Boy was he correct! I can't imagine how things would be like right now with me having to hunt and Peck at each key whenever I needed to type something on the computers at home, work, etc.

He did give me other pieces of good advice throughout his life. However this one really just sticks with me.

Oh, and I will never forget that the quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.

[blues]

"Plastics"





(I couldn't help myself. Okay...let's see...my father's advice when I went away to college was "Don't call me if you get arrested".)


Maybe I'll come up with a better one later.

[BehindBlueI's]

"Whatever you are making, somone is getting by on 10% less. Found out how they are doing it and you can save that 10% for retirement."

"The Richest Man in Babylon" along with Ric Edelman's "The Truth About Money" talk about that principal. It works.

[ccmdfd]

"Whatever you are making, somone is getting by on 10% less. Found out how they are doing it and you can save that 10% for retirement."

"The Richest Man in Babylon" along with Ric Edelman's "The Truth About Money" talk about that principal. It works.

That sounds about right.

I knew a couple, they were both doctors and residents in our training program where I worked at the time. At that time residents typically made roughly $30,000 a year.

When most doctors finally graduate from their residency and get a real job with real physician pay, they quickly by the big house, big car, fancy watch, Etc.

Well this couple didn't. They continue to live in the same place, Drive the same car, live off of roughly $60,000 a year while making a heck of a lot more than that. They retired after working only 10 years or so. In their early forties. Heck, maybe late thirties.

[Wise_A]

"Shut the fuck up and do your job."

Literally, it's brilliant. No matter how messed-up the situation, sitting around and complaining about it is not going to fix anything. Just shut the fuck up and get to work.

[RoyGBiv]

Maybe not "advice", but rather "perspective".

"When it comes to raising kids, the days are long but the years are short. Same for living life."

[RJ]

"Write every letter and piece of correspondence as if it might be published on the front page of the Washington Post."

-- My dad, while I was driving him to his office in downtown D.C., circa 1978.

Served me very well in business the last 30 or 35 years. Many was the time after writing a particular email, I'd reflect, you know, I don't think this is appropriate to be read out in public, and I deleted the draft and picked up the phone instead.

[peterb]

Don't know if it's the best, but certainly good: "Don't go to bed with anyone you don't want to wake up with."

[Welder]

There are many, but my ex-mother-in-law, of all people, is the one who first comes to mind. She would always tell people who were mentally locked up to just, "Do the next thing."

One of the things I can repeat in mixed company that my grandfather always said was, "Communication is the key to everything."

One of my uncles who had an 8th grade education and then dropped out to work on the farm, had a few:
"Get your hands out yo pockets!"
"Quit leaning on that! Stand up like a man!"
"No work, no eat!"

Universal in the family: "You're an [our last name]. We don't act like everybody else. Keep the family's reputation intact."

I know these are more than the requested one piece of advice, but I can't decide.

[JRB]

I was working on a longtime friend's Nissan D21 hardbody pickup - that old mid 80's to late 90's Nissan pickup that is basically indestructible. His was a '97 as I recall. We did a brake job and I realized that I didn't have the correct socket or tool for the bearing retainer nut on the front hubs. Typically these are very consistent but the later D21's got weird.
My friend and I went to every tool store in the city looking for one. We got to a tool store that was known to be expensive but generally had everything. I explained what we were looking for and the crusty old coot behind the counter just looked at me for a second, then he said:
'You know what your problem is, son? You've got too much money and not enough thinkin' goin' on.'
At first I was offended, then it registered that I didn't need much torque on this nut so why buy a fancy socket I'll only need the one time? The old coot smiled a little bit as he saw the light bulb go off, but said nothing more.
I bought a 3/8 impact wobble socket -mostly just to be a paying customer- thanked him for his time, and left.

My friend and I went home and I fashioned a makeshift 'socket' out of a section of old exhaust pipe and used a chain wrench to hold it. It worked perfectly.

Since that time, I've often asked myself 'is this the "too much money" approach?' before deciding on something. I also got a ton better at improvising tools and other things as needed, which carried over into my Army career quite nicely.