For those of you who are asking "Why didn't you have an emergency fund?", please consider why you would say such a mean and thoughtless thing.
Are you asking because you want to learn something or are you asking because it makes you feel superior because you made different choices? Do you like it when someone asks you why you made a big mistake (esp when they don't actually care about the answer)?
Concrete example: a friend of mine graduated coding bootcamp and has been interviewing for her first job. After complaining to me about 2-3 interviews in a row where she bombed questions on the same topic (I think inner joins), I asked a mean and thoughtless question: "why don't you maintain a queue of topics you screw up on interviews, and study one topic each day". Her answer was "I've got no good reason for not doing that".
So she made a queue. Then she shrank the queue. The number of questions she messed up started going down. Now she has a job.
If I have a job I want, at this point, I actually try to schedule a couple of interviews at other companies for similar positions first, because then I'll know what questions are "in style" and can make sure I study up on the answers.
I'm not saying its useful to say those things. But I totally get why one would want to.
That is not a brag; nor is it a situation I want to be in. The point is that people need to be responsible and live below their means. There are trade offs to be made. I like sports cars, but I waited to get one until I could pay it off and not be carrying a huge loan. There is something to be said for delayed gratification.
It's kind of pointless to know enough to earn $100k/year, but not know enough to manage your money.
Yeah, but note these are not 'one event' choices, not opting to save and invest are a long term processes which pan out over months and years. And I would say any one who is doing this, is in full consciousness aware of the risks and melt down that would follow when things go south.
Keep this case aside, There are people as of now when we are having this conversation who make crazy salaries and are blowing it all away on gadgets, vacations, and generally things they can't afford/sustain to own on a long term. There are also people who do the exact opposite and save and invest. You shouldn't be surprised where the two kinds of people will end up on a longer run. Yet this is very basic common sense which anybody can understand with a little understanding of math.
I don't know of anybody(regardless of how much they earn) who can't bootstrap their their way to at least medium level richness. All it takes is a pen, diary, discipline to save and invest and track things at weekly, monthly an yearly level.
It isn't mean or rude. Its just supposed to remind people the next time they are having a nice patch in their life, they should save rather than blow it all away.
But it is probably also a good idea to not put such remarks in the second person, to avoid confusion.
Not that I'm not sympathetic, but the primary lesson people should be taking from this is "do not spend above your means if you can possibly avoid doing so".