Avoid Ruin First: The Decisions That Can Cost You Years

Don't permanently damage the machine

Your body and brain are productive assets.

Treat them accordingly.

I started taking college classes at 12, which put me around people from very different ages and socioeconomic backgrounds unusually early. By the time I reached my year at Middle College at Austin Peay State University, marijuana was everywhere socially. People repeatedly tried to get me to smoke with them.

I didn't.

My dad had drilled into me that using marijuana while my brain was still developing could permanently cost me something cognitively. His explanation was simplified. The evidence does not establish that smoking marijuana simply "kills brain cells that never grow back."

But the decision framework was useful.

I had worked extremely hard academically. Why introduce a potential disadvantage for the sake of fitting in or "living a little"?

CDC guidance is more precise: the brain continues developing into the mid-20s. Cannabis directly affects memory, learning, attention, decision-making, coordination and reaction time. Use during adolescence may affect the developing brain. The exact long-term effects are still being studied.

Nicotine deserves similar skepticism. Cigarettes, vapes, and nicotine pouches can look like different products, but nicotine remains highly addictive. For young people, the CDC warns that nicotine can harm parts of the developing brain involved in attention, learning, mood, and impulse control.

I've watched nicotine become a completely normalized stress-management tool in workplaces. That doesn't make it a good trade.

Alcohol creates another version of the same problem.

I have never understood the appeal of regularly getting drunk. I have had alcohol, but intoxication never seemed worth turning into an identity or coping mechanism.

I was also fortunate. I had a sufficiently stable childhood that I didn't spend every day desperately trying to escape my life. My unhealthy coping mechanisms were more likely to be too much gaming or television.

Those aren't free. Time has an opportunity cost.

But there is a massive difference between wasting a Saturday playing games and developing a dependency that can damage your health, finances, relationships, employment, and judgment simultaneously.

Excessive drinking is associated with injuries, violence, alcohol poisoning, risky sexual behavior, chronic disease, and alcohol use disorder.

The goal isn't purity.

It's recognizing when a coping mechanism can become a second problem larger than the one you were trying to escape.

Don't turn a moment into a permanent consequence

Some decisions have absurdly bad payoff structures.

Drunk driving is an obvious example.

In 2024, 11,904 people were killed in alcohol-impaired-driving crashes in the United States, according to NHTSA.

What is the upside?

Getting home without paying for a ride?

Compare that with the downside: death, disability, hurting someone else, arrest, legal bills, lost employment opportunities, higher insurance costs, license consequences, and living with what happened.

The math is terrible before you even assign probabilities.

Reckless driving has a similar problem.

I own a high-performance car. I enjoy performance cars. I'm not going to pretend I have never accelerated hard or enjoyed what the car can do.

But there is a difference between enjoying performance and pretending a public road is a racetrack.

After losing my first car in a weather-related accident, I actually became more risk-averse behind the wheel. There is probably a reasonable middle ground between never enjoying a performance car and driving like consequences don't exist.

If I genuinely want to explore a car's limits, a track and appropriate insurance are much better places to do it than a crowded street.

The same principle applies to physical conflict.

I've been around people who seemed eager to fight over almost nothing. My security training reinforced something I already believed: avoid unnecessary conflict.

Walking away from a pointless confrontation is not weakness.

It's downside management.

The upside of "winning" a street fight is usually ego. The downside can include injury, criminal charges, civil liability, escalation, or something much worse.

There are situations where defending yourself is necessary. Seeking out the situation is different.

Don't create obligations you aren't ready to carry

The earlier you are in life, the more valuable optionality is.

At 18 or 20, you potentially have decades of compounding ahead of you. Your career is flexible. Your geographic mobility can be high. Your expenses may still be low. Your future relationships, education, and professional path are largely unwritten.

That makes certain mistakes unusually expensive.

An unintended pregnancy before either person is financially or emotionally prepared can radically alter both people's choices. That isn't an argument against sex, relationships, or eventually having children.

It is an argument for taking irreversible consequences seriously.

The same applies to signing debt you cannot afford, cosigning someone else's loan, marrying the wrong person, accumulating legal problems, or making other commitments whose consequences last far longer than the decision that created them.

I think avoiding catastrophic mistakes before 25 can matter more than maximizing income during those same years.

Someone earning modestly while maintaining good credit, building skills, avoiding addiction, staying out of legal trouble, and keeping expenses manageable can enter their late 20s with enormous optionality.

Someone earning more but carrying destructive debt, legal problems, dependencies, and obligations they were never prepared for can have far fewer choices.

Your starting salary is not your trajectory.

Don't destroy financial optionality

I dislike high-interest consumer debt because the math is brutal.

I have never paid credit-card interest. My Credit Without Games framework keeps the benefits separate from expensive revolving debt.

That isn't because I think credit cards are bad. I use them. They can be useful tools.

The problem is carrying expensive revolving debt for consumption.

Federal Reserve data published in September 2026 show that commercial-bank credit-card accounts actually being charged interest averaged about 22%.

At that rate, you aren't just borrowing from your future self.

You're giving your future self a very high hurdle to overcome before building any wealth at all.

Payday lending can be dramatically worse. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau gives an example where a common $15 charge per $100 borrowed for two weeks works out to an APR of nearly 400%.

I would rather maintain some cash reserves and accept the opportunity cost of idle money than routinely put myself in a position where an ordinary emergency forces me into terrible financing or a forced sale.

That cash can cover a repair, an unexpected expense, or simply give me enough time to make a rational decision instead of whichever decision produces money fastest.

Expensive isn't automatically irresponsible

This distinction matters.

One of the most expensive purchases I made when I was young was a brand-new Tesla.

In hindsight, buying a new performance car that early was aggressive.

But it wasn't a purchase I made solely because I wanted to look successful. I considered the newly available federal tax credit, operating costs, fuel savings, insurance situation, alternatives, and how much I valued the features I was actually buying.

You can disagree with the conclusion. That's fine.

The point is that price alone does not determine whether a purchase is stupid.

A $50,000 purchase that you can afford, use constantly, research carefully, and keep for years can be more rational than repeatedly financing smaller things you don't need at terrible rates.

I care much more about total cost and retained value than whether something looks frugal from the outside.

Don't let dopamine become your operating system

A lot of bad decisions share the same structure:

Immediate reward. Delayed bill.

Gambling might be the cleanest example.

I occasionally gamble recreationally, but I decide what I'm willing to lose before I start, usually something like $100 or $200, and I don't chase losses.

The mathematics make it easier for me to view that money as entertainment expense rather than an investment strategy.

The danger starts when entertainment becomes a financial plan.

Gambling can cause severe financial, relationship, work and health harms. Having money does not make those risks disappear.

The same general problem can show up with alcohol, drugs, nightlife, gaming, social media, shopping, or anything else capable of consuming unlimited attention.

I still play games.

I don't think gaming is bad.

Spending a few hours enjoying a game is different from automatically surrendering every night and weekend to it. That becomes a problem when it crowds out training, learning, career progress, finances, relationships or creating something.

Leisure should improve your life.

It shouldn't quietly replace it.

You only get so many dollars and so many hours. Money can eventually be replaced. Time cannot.

Choose your environment without surrendering responsibility

There are endless sayings about becoming like the people around you.

The exact slogans aren't scientific laws, but the underlying effect is real enough to take seriously.

Research has repeatedly found that peers can influence adolescent behavior and risk-taking. A 2026 meta-analysis covered 79 independent reports and more than 9,500 participants. It found an overall peer-influence effect, with peer norms particularly important. Results varied substantially across studies; these adolescent findings do not quantify an adult friend group's influence.

The practical question is which habits your social environment makes easier to repeat.

Your decisions are still yours.

I was around people who smoked marijuana. I didn't.

I've been around heavy drinkers. I didn't become one.

Environment changes probabilities. It does not erase agency.

That is exactly why your close circle deserves some thought.

I've known people who seemed to have almost every structural advantage: supportive families, good careers, strong networks, favorable financial opportunities, and people willing to help them.

Some still managed to burn through their advantages with alcohol, drugs, reckless sex, reckless driving, gambling, or a constant need for stimulation.

I've also watched people start with very little, make mistakes, change direction, and build substantially better lives.

Your past matters.

It does not have to become your identity.

You don't need to abandon every friend who earns less than you or wants something different from life. That would be shallow.

But if the people closest to you consistently normalize behavior you are actively trying to escape, maintaining that environment has a cost.

Choose people who make your desired life easier to normalize.

Your partner is one of your highest-impact decisions

This deserves separate treatment because few people have as much influence over your daily life as a long-term partner.

I've learned this partly through experience.

I once stayed in a relationship far longer than I should have because I kept evaluating the person's potential instead of the trajectory in front of me.

Potential is not performance.

For a serious relationship, attraction matters. So do character, reliability, ambition, financial behavior, emotional stability, compatibility, contribution, and whether you actually make each other's lives better.

I don't want a relationship built around one person permanently subsidizing the other's lifestyle.

I want a partner.

That doesn't require perfectly equal income or a spreadsheet tracking every household contribution. People contribute differently and circumstances change.

But over the long run, both people should be trying to make the combined life stronger rather than turning one person into the other's permanent financial, emotional, or logistical support system.

A great partner can multiply what both people can accomplish.

A destructive relationship can consume money, time, focus, confidence, career mobility, and years you cannot buy back.

Choose accordingly.

Don't casually throw away human capital

There were plenty of times in school when I wondered whether all the work was worth it.

I did almost all of my formal education before generative AI became capable enough to shortcut much of the tedious work.

I'm glad I did.

Not because every assignment was valuable. Plenty weren't.

The value was partly learning how to sit with difficult problems, research something I didn't understand, finish work I didn't feel like doing, and delay gratification for an outcome years away.

Those skills transfer.

Education is not the only way to build them, and dropping out is not automatically a mistake if you have a credible alternative.

But abandoning difficult paths simply because they become boring or uncomfortable is a dangerous habit.

The labor-market averages still show a strong relationship between education and outcomes. In 2025, BLS reported median weekly earnings of $1,578 for bachelor's-degree holders versus $966 for high-school graduates. Unemployment was also lower for the bachelor's group. These averages show association, not what any particular degree will cause someone to earn.

Choose the education or training path that builds useful skills at a cost the likely career can support.

It means human capital has economic value.

College, trades, certifications, technical skills, experience, communication ability, reliability, and learning how to use new tools can all increase the number of ways you can earn.

The dangerous identity is not "I didn't go to college."

It's "I don't need to keep becoming more valuable."

Don't confuse caution with fear

After my car accident, some of my increased caution probably overshot the useful point. Zero risk is impossible, and trying to eliminate it carries opportunity costs.

Never changing jobs can trap you in a mediocre one. Never dating prevents a great partnership as well as heartbreak. Don't Avoid Long Odds. Avoid Bad Games. explains how I distinguish worthwhile uncertainty from a poor trade.

The Mr ROI downside filter

Before a decision with meaningful consequences, run this filter:

BUY: Calculated risks with meaningful durable upside, survivable downside, aligned incentives and a reasonable recovery path.

WAIT: Decisions with large or irreversible consequences when you do not yet understand the downside, cannot absorb failure, or are acting under emotional or social pressure.

PASS: Risks where the primary reward is temporary pleasure, status, convenience or peer approval and the downside can cost you years.

If waiting is warranted, name the missing evidence and a review trigger. The research-time stopping rule keeps diligence from becoming indefinite avoidance.