Regret not being better about my health (especially teeth). It's a lot harder now, and my teeth can't go back to where they were (some are missing, some have bridges or root canals).
Regret not prioritizing investing more, especially into a 401k (worked a lot of small jobs and startups that didn't offer them, and didn't do a whole lot on my own). Doing a much better job now, but I probably should have at least 300-400k more in a 401k than I do, for my age and profession (software engineer).
Regret not having kids then (still don't have kids, might be a couple of years still before my partner feels ready). It wasn't too much of a focus then but now I'm starting to feel a little too old yet still really want to have them.
Regret not jumping on more opportunities that I had back then. I have a bad habit of letting things slip until enough time passes that it's embarrassing to follow up on them (did it again for another possible opportunity earlier this year, trying to get myself to reach out but I've let several months pass and I really shouldn't have).
Regret not traveling overseas at all. Now it's so expensive and requires a lot of juggling of PTO, my partner's PTO, making sure the dogs are taken care of, etc. Most we can usually manage are weeklong trips, and that's not really worth it to go overseas. Hopefully someday.
But whatever. I'd be a different person today if I did all that, and no guarantee I'd be better or happier. Probably some other things I'd be regretting instead, and still feeling about the same I imagine.
Not all of it. I could have bought electric toothbrushes and a waterpik much sooner, I could have been brushing and flossing more frequently.
Also in my case, I was told I needed 3 crowns after my fillings popped out a couple times right when I was between jobs and had no insurance, and was told I'd need to spend $2500 each on them, which I didn't have $7500 at the time, so I ended up letting them rot to the point they had to be yanked, which led to me needing to get 2 bridges (which was even more expensive, but at least I had a job to pay for it then) which stripped 4 more teeth of their enamel to attach the bridges, which led to complications in keeping the anchor teeth and gums clean over time, which led to them needing root canals, which led to one of the root canaled teeth cracking and no longer sticking out of my gums enough to serve as an anchor for a bridge, which means I am now saving up the $10k+ to get two implants on that side of my face and get another new bridge made to put on those, and my other bridge I just had to get a root canal for an anchor tooth through my other bridge, and that's only supposed to buy me about another 5 years at most, so I'll need implants for those eventually as well, and I'm sure I'm in for more crap in the future, etc.
If I knew this was the path I was going down by not getting crowns I would have tried harder to find more options, either find a dentist that charged less for crowns (I just assumed that's how much crowns cost, but I've seen as little as $300 elsewhere since then), or asked my parents for help in paying for them and paid them over time, etc.
Regret not prioritizing investing more, especially into a 401k (worked a lot of small jobs and startups that didn't offer them, and didn't do a whole lot on my own). Doing a much better job now, but I probably should have at least 300-400k more in a 401k than I do, for my age and profession (software engineer).
Regret not having kids then (still don't have kids, might be a couple of years still before my partner feels ready). It wasn't too much of a focus then but now I'm starting to feel a little too old yet still really want to have them.
Regret not jumping on more opportunities that I had back then. I have a bad habit of letting things slip until enough time passes that it's embarrassing to follow up on them (did it again for another possible opportunity earlier this year, trying to get myself to reach out but I've let several months pass and I really shouldn't have).
Regret not traveling overseas at all. Now it's so expensive and requires a lot of juggling of PTO, my partner's PTO, making sure the dogs are taken care of, etc. Most we can usually manage are weeklong trips, and that's not really worth it to go overseas. Hopefully someday.
But whatever. I'd be a different person today if I did all that, and no guarantee I'd be better or happier. Probably some other things I'd be regretting instead, and still feeling about the same I imagine.