What's the best advice you've ever received?

"You can love the company as much as you like, but the company will never love you back." - My dad.
- In a similar vein, HR is not there to help you, they are there to protect the company.

The best I ever received? Start saving and investing when you’re young to benefit from compound interest over time. I didn’t take the advice, but I received it!
- Did you have money to invest when you were young enough for the advice to matter?
  
  If you worked for $8/hr and took 5% of your income and put it towards retirement (I know 5% is a lot when you're broke) from age 18-67 assuming you got a 2% raise every year, you could retire with ~$385,000 in the bank and it would last you until you were 79. That's using the default numbers from Bankrate. If you could bump your savings rate up to 15% using those same numbers (which is admittedly unrealistic) you would be a millionaire at retirement. The moral of the story is start early and be consistent.
- Saving and investing is also way easier if you don't give yourself the option to not do it. You won't manually move 10% of your money each month, but if it goes to a 401k or a separate account automatically it's far more likely to stay there.

As a young teenager: Do not start working until you have to. Once you start, you'll never stop.
- Depends on if you have found your passion. I found the career I was passionate about at age 14 and now have more experience than the vast majority of my peers. Until just recently, I had never managed someone younger than me, and I've been a supervisor for a very long time now.
- That's true. I started at the ripe old age of 12, and I haven't stopped since.

Don't give crazy a baby.
- Think long and hard before having kids. Understand if you actually have what it takes to give them a proper life.
  
  Yeah it is not a decision to be taken lightly! Very rewarding, but one of the hardest things you'll do.
- Don't put your dick in crazy
  
  Always stick your dick in crazy.
  Far away from where you live with a fake name and number.
- Never have children with your ex

Never commit more than one crime at a time
- There are so many laws that it's impossible not to break multiple at once if breaking a big one. Like planning and executing a heist requires you to break a hundred different laws.
  
  Well then don't do those, lol
  
  I think it’s more like “don’t drive fast with a tail light out” or “come to a full and complete stop at a stop sign if you have (illegal) drugs in your car”.
- Hahhaha

You're doing neither yourself nor anyone else a favour by being overly shy and reticent. You yourself will enjoy life much more when you are yourself and while not everyone will like you, the ones who don't often don't stay in your life long and it's easier to find people you vibe with if they can see you for who you are.
Granted, I very much did not take this advice as a teenager and even now I'm occasionally too shy. But looking back it was good advice and I really wish I hadn't wasted so much time and energy on not being negatively noticed by people I didn't really care about then and who haven't been in my life for years.
- On a similar note, learning to care less about what others think of you is incredibly freeing.

"Get off the drugs, dude."
Just needed a friend to care enough to say something so simple, and it changed my life. Sobriety is terrifying for so many, but in my experience it was absolutely worth it.
- I've never touched the stuff, but sometimes I wonder if life would be less horrible if I was numbed to it. What makes it worth it?
  
  Being myself, knowing myself without the dull edge of substances, actually being present in my life and in other's lives. Drugs were an escape, a place to hide and avoid. Facing reality, while difficult, was such a more fulfilling experience than when constantly running from my own existence.
  
  No, drugs only solve problems temporarily, very temporarily, and then they bring a bunch of additional problems into your life.

Survivorship bias is a thing. Just because someone is successful doesn't mean following their advice will make you successful. "I put all my money into lottery tickets and now I'm a multi-millionaire. Everyone should do what I did!"

Don't argue with stupid
- I like this as a way of rubberducking. Not on the internet though. Don’t argue with stupid on the internet.

Have an emergency fund and pay yourself first.
The emergency fund comes first $1000 or 6 months expenses tends to be the sweet spot. It keeps you from taking on bad debt like credit cards and pay day loans. 5% of your paycheck is a good place to get started, that's usually enough to build up funds fairly quickly without hurting too much.
Retirement doesn't have to be a ton of money each pay check, especially if you start early in life, but if you ever want to retire you have to start as soon as possible because the later you start the more money you have to put away. Take the company match on a 401(k) or 5-20% of your paycheck. Invest in a target date fund or S&P 500, Russell 2000 fund, or whole market fund (and look at the expense ratio, you want that to be as low as possible) and call it a day. Individual stocks are for suckers, but if you want to gamble with individual stocks use 1-5% of your portfolio to do it so it's not the end of the world if you pick a loser.
Finding your target for retirement is a big step to knowing what you need to save early. Play around with some retirement calculators and debt payoff calculators fairly often as your target number may change based on your lifestyle.
- pay yourself first
  Did you get this from The Richest Man in Babylon? I just quoted another part of that book for this thread. That's one of the core lessons of that book.
  
  Probably, I've read it before.
  
  I couldn't tell you the original statement. It's an extremely popular saying among financial advice people.

Shave with double edged razors. The razors are more extensive (compared to disposable anyway) but you'll save money on the blades.
I bought a razor for £30 and £7 on 100 blades. That was 12 years agoml. I'm 2/3 the way through my razor pack.
I found no difference in how close of a shave I got and while it takes a bit more skill, I got the handle of it after a few shaves.

The world and society is a complex game of house that went on way too long and everyone forgot they’re playing it.

- delete your creator

Quality follows where consistency leads

'C's get degrees.
It's not what you know, it's who you know.
You can teach the job, you can't teach personality.
If the world is going to shit, and you can't or won't do anything about it, why worry about it.
- It's both really. Knowing people when you know nothing doesn't do much for ya. But when you're known as a skilled person by people with opportunities, then that's a good position to be in.
- It’s not what you know, it’s not who you know, it’s who knows you.

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
Don't play rigged games
Try to do the right thing, but actually take some time to try to figure out if it's right or just feels right.
Being right and being wrong feels the exact same until challenged with facts.

Collect what you're owed as soon as you can. Pay what you owe as late as you can.
UPDATE: "Every accusation is a projection" is more universal than some of you would like to admit.
- Feels like that's how a lot of wealthy people/organizations operate
- Why? Seems to me paying debts early is good advice, less hassle dealing with those loan sharks.
  
  Depends on the point of view. If your biggest risk is you spending that loan money on gambling, then yes paying the debt early would help you get in less trouble.
  From an economic point of view, if you don't need that money at the moment, you should invest it, so that you can make a few bucks. If you get 1-2% more on every transaction that way, it really does stack up at the end, since this will make you exponentially more money.
- Not sure what context this is supposed to apply... But I cannot imagine any that would not leave me in an uncomfortable position or being a total asshole
- The asshole's philosophy
- Collect what you're owed as soon as you can.
  Ok, with you so far.
  Pay what you owe as late as you can.
  But if there’s interest, this is going to screw me over as I’ll have to pay more interest (on a CC / etc)
  What am I missing with the second one?
  
  It's more about non interest scenarios. If payment isn't due for 30 days, you wait 30 days to pay. If it's a place that won't fight you, wait 40 and then pay.
  Companies do this all the time.
  
  outlive your creditors in an unstable land?

If you can’t get out of it, get into it.

"Don't forget to breathe."

When in doubt, shut up.
The best way to make money in Vegas is to sell light bulbs.

When I was getting started in my design career getting jobs was hard. I had a good portfolio but not much experience. Met another designer one day and told her my dimena. Her response: Just lie. She told me everyone does to get work. So I took that advice. Next job I got paid me 2x the previous one and soon enough I wasn't lieing anymore. You think Musk got where he is today thanks to ethics and honesty? Jobs and Gates both stole either knowledge or actual products from others. I still have friends submitting resumes with large gaps, asking for help. They send it over and I embellish the hell of it, always works.
- Eh, Steve Jobs didn't steal his product. Steve Wozniak created it, and Jobs marketed it. Jobs bought the mouse technology from Xerox, who didn't understand the value of what they had. Jobs pushed for quality on-screen typography, and pioneered the windows based interface. I think you might be thinking of Bill Gates, who stole the Windows interface from Jobs. Apple was a truly pioneering company, which is why so many investors were interested in this company run by a few college kids out of their garage.
- What makes a good portfolio? I feel like I’m constantly lying and it’s a pain in the ass to find clients, even though I’m confident in my technical skills.
  
  This was the late 90s and I did a lot of experimenting with flash. It didn't take much to impress people back then. Yugop really inspired me so i did a lot of studies on interacting with the audience and it got me in the door with a prestigious ad agency and that made the rest of my career. Sometimes it's not just about client work. What is trending now? AI related projects. You could do a study for yourself about AI and marketing, Ai and web interaction or whatever. How do you think it will work? Show your creative problem solving. Get out of the conventional thinking and do something in an unexpected way. With design they love to see your progress so I always added that material. Every place you apply gets a lot of responses, it's hard to stand out but necessary.
- I'm fixing up my resume right now and I don't know how to lie (I'm a student with little experience trying to land and entry job). What did you lie about?
  
  Make the lie believable. Keep it simple so it's easy to remember.
  Give yourself a little experience. Maybe having done a small job at another company. Don't go over board.
  Protip: don't claim you are a Navy SEAL.
  
  If you have ever done something (even a bit, even just in the classroom): you are proficient in that thing. That's the lie.
  "Can you do this?"
  " Yup sure thing. I have experience with that. "
  Be warned, they may test you. Cram to refresh if it seems relevant.
  
  What is the entry level job for and is there anything school related you could attribute yourself to. I went to college for industrial design so I could have made up some lab supervisory role that included my experience with the tools, helping other students, fixing machines, etc. anything that made me look like I had tons of ambition.
  A specific example would be the time I applied for a web dev job. I knew front end and some backend but they needed a php person. I lied, said I had learned it at a previous job and could do whatever they needed. I counted on being able to research the solution but more than once I hired a php dev to do the simple fixes. 99% of the job was design related but I got that php issue solved at the beginning and there was no doubt from them what I could do after.

That which you consider to be your necessary expenditures will always rise to meet your income unless you protest to the contrary.
--The Richest Man In Babylon

If you want a scooter, get a bike instead. The bigger wheels make them more stable. -My Dad, not long before he was promoted to glory.

My brain gives me advice all the time. I don't know why, but I have all sorts of quotes, whether it's from me, or someone else.
"How can you be there for others, if you can't be there for yourself?"
"The most simple solution is often the best one."
"Judge someone not by what they are, but who they are."
"Don't chase ghosts."
"Effort is the most important currency."
And, of course,
"Stay hydrated."
- Effort is the most important currency."
  I like this one.
  
  I have a related quote:
  "People are focusing too much on how they're spending their money, and not enough on how they're spending their effort."
  
  Spending time is the most generous act
- Yes, none of those are original, but they're all good advice.
  
  Some of them did come to mind naturally, but it's pretty much impossible to create any sort of brand new sentence, unless you're eating spicy deep fried peeps, using a Yamaha DX-7 as a plate, at an Olive Garden in Kansas. That might be original. Maybe.

A wise person once told me don't commit misdemeanors while you're committing felonies.
- One crime at a time.
- Why is this good advise?
  
  Al capone was arrested for tax evation. I think one of the famous serial killers or mass murderers got caught because they were pulled over for something like speeding (granted, they probably would have been caught eventually anyways, but it happened a lot quicker).

I quote it nearly every day
There is no problem that can't be solved by getting off Twitter

Don’t panic.
It’s easier to apologize than to ask for permission.
We best lead by example.
Keep your mouth shut and your eyes and your ears open.
Don’t cheap out on the things that separate you from the ground (shoes / tires / mattress / etc)
Buy cheap, buy twice. Buy once, cry once.
- imho the 2nd and 3rd contradict each other a bitt possibly
  
  I could see that.

"We choose to go to the moon and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. This is just one of those other things." - My dad quoting JFK at me to get me to do the dishes as a teenager. I don't think he would remember even saying that to me, but has always stuck with me. Something said about something so monumental being applied to something so benign. But that wasn't the point, because it was hard for me.
- That's damned good advice about building a good home, environment, and life for yourself.

A small dose of selfishness is necessary to live life with sanity
- It's called healthy egoism

In the USA, money buys your freedom

Don't anticipate anything good from others.
Don't receive advice from others. You do what you think is right for you.
- I think I get where you are coming from here, though I question the certainty in it. There is too much nuance to humanity to never trust or always ignore.
  If you never anticipate good in others, you must be very lonely - never trusting, always defensive, waiting for the next attack. We all have different levels of trust shaped by our own experiences. Personally, I try to anticipate good until a person proves otherwise. I'd rather be disappointed occasionally than miss a possible connection to someone because I never anticipated goodness.
  As far as receiving advice, take it from anyone and everyone. We constantly do this, even if we don't notice. We take in the world around us. We decided if it was good, bad, or somewhere in between. If I see someone hit their thumb with a hammer, I learn not to hold the nail in the way way did. It's non-verbal, yet in its own way, is advice. Verbal advice works similarly. Take it in, listen to it, accept or reject it. Ether way, it is part of you. You will adapt it to your own view. If someone says that jumping of a bridge is the best thing ever, you can ignore them or you can do it. Ignoring them shapes a picture of that person as irresponsible or dangerous while shaping you to be more conscious and risk-averse. Doing it shapes that person in your mind as someone to listen to in order to do something fun. I suppose what I'm getting at is a simple question, can you really ignore advice?
  I'm probably just thinking more into it than you intended.

"Don't trust her..."

You should never do anything that isn't fun. Everything is fun if you make it so.
- I can see where you're coming from but sometimes short term fun can have negative long term consequences.
  
  Long-term consequences can be fun if you make it so. /hj
  
  They're saying that you can and should make everything you do a fun experience. Don't like your boring machinist job? Make a game out of measuring everything. Beat your high score for the tightest tolerance.
  Don't like pulling weeds for extra money while you're in college? Pretend you're a homesteader cultivating the land.
  Your attitude and your perception of how things are can greatly influence how you experience things.
- Nice