Wisdom in the young is not appreciated by the aging, especially when cornered.

Here’s an awful example:

See, I worked with a man years ago that smoked cigarettes.

He was somewhere near 50, and I was 19, just keeping my parents appeased with a summer job.

Some comment came up about how expensive a pack of smokes was and I piped off and said:

“Staring at 18, at a pack per day, if you invested the money at 6% – instead of smoked it – you would have $1 million.”

Of course, my comment was not appreciated at all.

He didn’t want to hear about something he should have done 30 years ago. I think he was just glad to have a job and be at work.

Maybe a 19-year-old economics major is just itching to show people how much they know about the opportunity cost of compound interest.

Maybe I was just being a jerk.

Wisdom in the young is as unattractive as frivolity in the eldery.

-Nassim Taleb, The Bed Of Procrustes