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If you’re 21 years old, fresh off the air with a college degree and ambitions to get your life going, you might want to turn to strangers online for advice. We’re kidding, kind of – but you can consult Reddit for any pointers you want if you’re eager University graduate recently in a thread that proves flossing is just as important as opening a Roth IRA.

The thread posted by you / brielleee99She asks about “Life Hacks,” but what she’s really looking for are some basic financial planning advice that Redditors are happy to offer. She says she and her boyfriend are trying to look beyond the kind of “rise and grind,” a hustle and bustle culture joke someone in her position might find while exploring the weighty question of how to get ahead.

She writes:

As the title suggests, I am 21 (f) and looking for “hacks” that I can implement into my life now so that I am prepared for the future. I work full time in the healthcare industry as an entry level data analyst (literally just graduated in April) and so far I’ve only read “grind / work” like crazy, but I want to know more. Shares, investments, other forms of passive income, certain types of savings (RSP, TFSA, etc.). My friend and I are interested in real estate that we can do in the future as we have heard it can be very successful. We are still learning, however, so I would love to hear any advice from anyone. Many Thanks!

Redditors stormed in with some excellent cores of wisdom that are worth your time if you are in their shoes too.

How to assess whether something really needs to be bought

Compensation U / Tveta offered a thoughtful exercise that can help you avoid costly and unnecessary purchases.

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They write:

For anything you want to buy. Imagine if you were still buying it if it was 5x more expensive. Because that’s how much it will ultimately cost you if you don’t invest that dollar.

Focus on today so you can enjoy tomorrow

Don’t get too carried away with your pursuit of building for the future – and you can do so by focusing on the little things in the present. That’s basically what u / MamaSheeba tries to mediate.

Don’t focus so much on the future that you don’t enjoy today. I don’t mean to spend like there’s no tomorrow, but to enjoy what you don’t have, what you don’t have!

Eat healthy, exercise, and avoid avoidable stress

This is more of a holistic approach, but feeding your mind and body what it needs to meet the demands of life is a pretty good thing for a young person to get used to.

the compensation you / I always take crap wrote:

Avoid avoidable stress.

Pick up a form of movement that is gentle on the joints and do it regularly, no matter what.

Eat fresh, whole / real foods.

Have a consistent sleep routine where you get enough sleep to keep you feeling refreshed in the morning.

Avoid avoidable stress.

Use your vacation time

This is a simple pearl, but an important one: don’t waste your free time impressing a boss or advancing your career. As u / alfith wrote: “Take all your vacation days and don’t feel bad about it.”

This is important! There is no point in ignoring the time you are legally required to spend outside of work and feeling guilty is doing yourself a disservice. Your career is a marathon, not a sprint, and you will need the mental energy in the long run.

Play the long game of investing

Don’t be caught thinking that you are a wise investor who has a knack for predicting the rise of unicorns, because you likely never will be that person. Instead, set up a Roth IRA and contribute as much as you can, and play the long game by investing in low-risk mutual funds from now until you retire.

That’s what u / Embarrassed-Cap-6825 conveyed in their entry:

Maximize your Roth IRA this year and every year …. just buy the s & p 500 index and don’t touch it until you are 60. Because of the magic of compound interest, it should be worth more than your lifetime income. The key is that you can’t touch it because then you fvck [sic] by panicking during the recession about starting a sale or paying the down payment on a home you cannot afford, etc.

Brush and floss your teeth daily

U / Sandome got the most upvotes for distilling what is probably the simplest piece of advice: “Actually, brush your teeth and floss.”

This is important not only for dental hygiene and the health of your oral bones, but also as a metaphor for the future of your life. Don’t lose sight of the little things and don’t use ambition as a substitute for self-care. For what it’s worth you / brielleee99She replied that she flossed and brushed “2x a day!” This is a good sign that she is on the right track.

Game Maker Studio 2 is the most advanced software on our list and can intimidate newbies. However, it is by far the easiest professional-level game engine to learn and has been used by many indie developers to create games like Hyper Light Drifter, Momodora, Katana Zero, and more.

The key to Game Maker Studio 2’s accessibility is its streamlined, object-based scripting. Instead of programming your games from scratch, the built-in editor lets you program character behaviors and game systems with simple drop-down menus based on Game Maker Studio’s unique scripting language. There are tons of tutorials out there to teach you the basics of the engine, as well as sample projects to get you started, and community-created assets to use if you’re new to creating your own.

The only downside is that the skills you learn while creating games with Game Maker Studio 2 don’t necessarily translate to other engines like Godot, Unity, and Unreal as they use popular programming languages ​​like C # which allow for greater complexity. However, since Game Maker Studio 2 supports 2D and 3D games, you can easily create all of your games in Game Maker Studio 2 as long as it suits your needs.

Game Maker Studio is free to download and use, but you have to pay to unlock certain features and publish your games. You can buy a one-year license for $ 39 that lets you publish to Windows and Mac, or a perpetual license for $ 99, the iOS, Android, Amazon Fire devices, Ubuntu, HTML 5, and the Adds publishing support for the Windows Universal Program. Game Maker Studio 2 also offers publishing tools for PS4 / PS5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One / Xbox Series X / S, but each requires a license that costs a whopping $ 700 a year – or you can get them for $ 1,500. Bundle dollars per year. That’s pretty high, but on par with the console release costs you’ll see with other professional software.

Photo: Ildi Papp (Shutterstock)

Coleslaw can be a tricky thing. Bad coleslaws are watery and boring, but a good one makes a perfect sweet and hot, crispy counterpoint to a variety of rich and salty grilled dishes, my favorite dish pulled pork. A good coleslaw depends on a good technique – which you can read everything here all– and the best coleslaws are usually the simplest in terms of ingredients.

My favorite salad, however, is the one my stepmother makes – because she puts a bit of pepper jelly in it. For those unfamiliar with this jelly, it is exactly what it sounds like – a sweet, tangy, shaky spread that is transcendent when Poured over a block of cream cheese and eaten with wheat thins. It also makes a great one Ham glaze, and, as you now know, a fantastic coleslaw supplement.

Like everyone else in my entire family, my stepmother doesn’t measure the amount of pepper jelly she adds to her coleslaw. For one, it depends on the jelly she uses. Their homemade pepper jelly is thicker and hotter than the store-bought stuff, so a little bit goes a long way. The sweet spiciness compliments the tangy vinegar and gives the standard side a certain spiciness. (She says she first came up with the idea of ​​a Southern Living recipe, but didn’t This one hereas she has never added cilantro to her coleslaw.)

Since pepper jellies can vary in heat and texture, it’s best to add them to taste just before serving, as too much can make your coleslaw watery if you’re not careful. (Pre-salting and dabbing your vegetables can also help keep your coleslaw from getting drenched.)

Otherwise, it’s just one thing to add the jelly to the dressed coleslaw, little spoons at a time, until you’ve found the balance between sweet and spicy. (You could whisk it with the dressing, too, but I don’t know what recipe you’re working with and I would hate to throw your ratios down.) Stack it on a pulled pork sandwich and eat it next to some BBQ chicken , or just shovel straight from the serving bowl into your mouth, the proper etiquette is damned.

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As you get stronger, you can lift heavier and heavier weights. That much is probably clear. But what beginners sometimes miss is that it’s kind of a chicken and egg situation: You get stronger because you lift heavier and heavier weights. This is the concept of progressive overload.

How does progressive overload work?

In any area of ​​fitness, such as strength, endurance or flexibility, you need to challenge your body to adapt and improve. As the National Strength and Conditioning Association explained, there are two parts: the “principle of overload” and the “principle of progression”.

The Overload Principle states, “To achieve a particular training adaptation, the body must be stressed by working against a stimulus or load greater than what it is used to.” In other words, you must work harder than Your body is used to it.

And then the progression principle can be used to build on: “In order to consistently achieve the desired training adjustments for a certain activity or skill, the training stimulus must increase gradually and steadily.”

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Or to put it simply: you get fitter if you work harder than usual, and if you want to improve further, you have to work harder than before.

How does it look in real life?

If you are stunned by the idea of ​​working harder and harder forever, don’t panic. You’ll work harder in absolute terms – say, by lifting heavier weights – but the challenge remains relatively the same. Your workouts will drop to what you might describe as “difficult but doable” levels of effort, and you will notice progress as your numbers increase. (The same approach applies to endurance sports. As cyclist Greg Lemond supposedly said, “It never gets easier, you just go faster.”)

When I first started lifting weights many years ago, 65 pounds was a decent bench press challenge for me. I remember taking pride in myself for being able to push out a rep or two with 85 pounds. Now when I do a bank training session, I don’t even bother to load those amounts onto the bar. My warm-up sets start at 95 pounds, and a heavy single would be around 150. Those 150 feel just as hard as 85, but it’s undeniably more weight.

How did I make this progress? Well, I kept lifting the weights that felt heavy to me. Over time, the same weights that used to be a challenge felt light, and I had to keep adding more weight on the bar to get something that actually felt heavy. (We have a guide here to find out if you are lifting “heavy”.)

Most of the time, I either followed a program that told me how many pounds to lift and slowly increased that amount over time, or one that told me what level of exertion to lift (a concept called RPE)which allowed me to choose a suitable weight every day. If you follow a program, you will usually make better progress than just spurring it, but as long as you use the overload principle and the progression principle, you will get stronger.

What if I can’t lift more every time?

That’s okay! You don’t literally have to put weight on the bar every time you lift it.

There is a wide variety of weights as well Rep ranges this can be effective for building strength and muscles. For example, if I do a bank workout today, I might do 10 sets of 110 pounds, or five sets of 130, or some heavy single sets of 150, or any combination of these. If I’m really tired or stressed out, I might decide to do the 10 sets with just 100 pounds. If I’m feeling good, maybe I can do them at 115. That’s what I mean by a broad spectrum: All of these are tough enough to stimulate my muscles to adapt and get stronger. (There are reasons you might choose one of these workouts, but we don’t need to get into those details for now.)

What would not be a progressive overload? Well, doing sets of 10 with just the bar wouldn’t help me get stronger. If I had a mini barbell set and maxed it out at 85 pounds, once I got to the point where 85 pounds is no longer a challenging weight, my strength would stagnate.

Even as your strength improves, you don’t have to do every single workout as long as you get stronger over the long term and your workouts are still in the challenging range for you.

Let’s say you are doing biceps curls with a 10 pound dumbbell. You can do eight or ten repetitions with it. Perfect. But maybe the only way to gain weight in your gym is to take a 15-pound dumbbell. If that weight is too heavy for you, that’s fine. Keep working the 10 pounder and you’ll be ready for the 15th in time.

You can make progress on more than one metric

While you may find itching to lift heavier weights, weight on the bar isn’t the only way to move forward. Sometimes you can’t add weight because of equipment problems or just because your strength is slowly improving. (Even if your beginner gains have been meteoric, any progress will eventually slow down.)

But if you’re smart, you probably don’t want to get better at just one thing. Many beginners start out with the squat, bench press, and deadlift in sets of five, trying to add weight with each workout. But you’ll become a more versatile strength athlete if you can lift heavy single sets and sets of 10 or 15 as well. Depending on your goals, in addition to squats, you can also consider front squats and also reverse hypers or kettlebell swings for deadlifting. There are ways to improve on all of these things, and it is normal for a strength athlete to simultaneously increase their repetitions on extra exercises, increase their weight on the bar for tough individual exercises, and increase the time they spend on conditioning.

What is double progression?

One easy way to combine goals is called double progression. That means you’re making progress on two metrics at the same time: repetitions and weight. It would look like this:

• Your program requires overhead presses for three sets of “8-12 reps.”
• You choose a weight that you can do for 8 reps.
• With each workout, you will see if you can add an additional repetition. (Maybe you can do 9, 8 and 8. Then another day you do 9, 9 and 9. Soon you will be at 10.)
• Once you can do sets of 12, 12, and 12 with that weight, move on to a heavier weight.
• Start again with the new weight in sets of 8, 8, and 8 and repeat the process.

A slightly more complicated version of this would be to add sets as well: after switching from 3×8 to 3×12, you can then move on to 4×12 and 5×12.

In addition to more weight, more repetitions, or more sets, progression can also mean:

• take fewer breaks between sentences
• do a harder version of the exercise
• Increasing your range of motion (e.g. crouching deeper)
• do the exercise in slow motion (for example, tempo squats, which take three seconds to lower yourself)

The key is to make sure you are moving in a direction that will benefit you. For example, if you can do 20 pushups, increasing the repetitions will result in better muscle endurance, while fewer repetitions of a heavier exercise (like the barbell bench press) will make you stronger. You can do both, but you should prioritize the one that means more to you. If your goal in life is to do 100 pushups, do more repetitions! But if you want to get stronger, it is better to gain weight.

Plateaus are normal

One last thing now that we’ve discussed what progressive overload looks like. It is important to remember that development is long term. Some competitive strength athletes test theirs one repetition max. outside of the competition, which means they only find out how much their deadlift has gone up once or twice a year. That’s not to say they haven’t made any progress in the meantime. If you run an effective program and constantly challenge yourself, you are still working.

Plateaus are a fact when you are a lifter. Sometimes it takes a while to get stronger. Sometimes you need to work on your technique to express your newfound strength. Sometimes factors like stress or weight loss or changes in your exercise can make you weaker in the short term, but if you continue to exercise in such a way that it challenges you, you will set new PRs early enough.