what advice was great when you first heard it, but has aged like milk since then?

My grandpa told me "always call your boss sir, and respond "yes sir", youll be promoted real quick."

First day at my first job my boss tells me "by the way you don't need to call me sir, just Brian"

Its actually insane that the world that boomers lived in was that simple.

"Find a job doing what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life."

I used to love software. Then all the Lumberghs took over.

Happy wife, happy life. Marriage is about compromise and sometimes I want to be happy too.

If you're a quiet dedicated employee your value will be recognized and rewarded.

Working hard will get you far.

Something along the lines of "don't ever go to bed angry at each other." Like, yeah, you should try to work it out, but if you fucked up real bad, don't push it. Sleep on the couch.

"Fully empty your battery before charging it up again, it increases the lifespan of the battery."

This was true before lithium-ion batteries became the norm. But for lithium-ion batteries, the opposite holds.

“If you love something set it free, if it comes back it’s meant to be.” Nearly cost me the best relationship of my life because I was a dumb, impressionable kid that believed in wise sounding words. If you love something, hold on to it. Work for it. Don’t let it go just to “see if it comes back”.

Same could probably be said for just about any seemingly wise sounding sayings.

Go to a four year college so you can get the best jobs.

My parents separated when I was really young, roughly 5 yrs old. As I grew up and had visitation with my dad he always drilled into me "women just want a man who can provide for them, in the end they all just want money." Being young and obviously not knowing how crazy my dad was yet, I believed him for a long time.

Turns out when you treat people like they just want you for your money, that's the only kind of people who will put up with you. Kinda self fulfilling. Found a nice lady now, happily married and caring about each other, not just money.

Ages like milk...

Drink a full glass of milk at every meal. Otherwise, your bones will turn to pudding and you'll get kidnapped at the mall because you'll be too soft to put up a fight. Or whatever scare scenarios Big Milk pushed in the US in the 80s and 90s.

Now everyone's drinking nut and oat milk because of health reasons and also drinking the milk of another mammal is kinda weird.

Find what you love, and then figure out how to make money on it.

It worked for me, but not my spouse. Sometimes you just need to find something you're happy enough doing to make the income.

Any dumb and vaguely open-ended advice. Like "just be yourself".

What if you're improving yourself because the real you sucked? Do you just give that all up and return to what you were? Whoever first said that piece of advice, obviously didn't think it through enough.

Effectively ALL of what I was told about what makes a satisfying and successful life. I was told the right thing to do is work hard, go to school, get a good stable job, get married, settle down, have kids, buy a house, own several depreciating assets.

Life is about being happy. Nothing else. Do what makes you happy, because that car, vacation, or other piece of consumer shit won't. Nor will living by scripts somebody else wrote for you.

I had my house paid off at 30 and was traveling 5-6 times a year. High-level in the gaming, lottery and promotions industries. Misery. Now I have a humble life and I paint and craft things and I go dancing. And I'm happy. I could pick up the tools again and make a highly successful Steam game, but I won't. I already proved my point in my career and creative output, and I don't want to anymore.

~2004. My highschool civics teacher told the class that real estate was always a good investment because it only went up. I didn't really trust him at the time though.

Work hard and do your best at work and you'll go places.

Yeah I got moved around several times in the office. That's about it.

Don't believe anything you read on Wikipedia.

"When you first move into a house dont make any improvements for at least 6 months."

I now see that its Terrible advice.

You can always find it cheaper on Ebay.

This is actually somewhat true again now that Amazon has gone full monopoly abuse, but for a while Ebay was nothing but 1:1 with Amazon sellers and a serious lack of auctions.

Although you can go much lower with Ali Express and Temu, albeit with risk invovled.

Its always best to compromise

you wont be alone everyone finds a lifelong partner.

Buy GME

The golden rule.

Don't talk to strangers on the internet

Circa 2012 my boomer parents had me job hunting in person AND hand-writing the cover letters. It got me two jobs so maybe it wasn't the worst advice, but i would spend every day driving around and penning half a dozen letters for employers that, a lot of the time, weren't even hiring.

Anyway, that (12 years ago) was the last job hunt i've ever done, it's been nothing but networking and freelancing ever since