@afewbugs As someone from an excentric family, with not much future forecasting ("you won't have any inheritance, but you'll have degrees" dixit) I'm actually curious about the wrong advice you got, it you feel like sharing.
And the good advice too, of course!

@temptoetiam the wrong advice I think really came from my Dad's experience - he grew up on a council estate, went to Cambridge, walked straight into a civil service job in a completely different subject and then stayed in it for next 45 years apart from taking a few years off to work as a freelance translator which was his choice to try something different, not something he was forced to do. So that was sort of their model of how the world worked - you go to university and then you're set up for life.

@temptoetiam so there was no question I was going to university (don't get me wrong I'm glad I went because I discovered a lot of stuff I was interested in learning, but it would probably have been better if I'd gone a few years later when it was my own decision). I also wasn't allowed to have a job as a teenager so I could focus on studying to get to the good university that was going to set me up for life (although I did eventually manage to negotiate a couple of mornings a week cleaning a shop). In retrospect a job would probably have been quite helpful in teaching me how to do a job and also having my own money to manage.

@temptoetiam anyway to the surprise of no one but my parents university didn't set me up financially for life, in fact I caught academia and ended up doing a masters and starting a PhD which kind of did the opposite. Also they are very against the idea of debt, so when my Nan died my brother and I inherited some money from the sale of her house which they advised us to use to pay off our student loans. We did but would probably have been much better off using it as a deposit for a house