If you woke up 5 years old but with all your memories leading up to this day, what would you do differently?

Assuming this happens as a surprise, I'm not going to know a lot of things that would be useful like lottery numbers or who wins specific important sports games.

It'll be important to keep things under wraps because if news gets out of the five-year-old who knows things about the future my life is going to get unfortunate in a hurry.

The best thing for me and my family long-term would be to get my parents to invest in things that I know will end up being successful, so the first challenge is going to be to get my parents to believe what's happening and keep it under wraps.

I was five when the first Harry Potter book was released in the US so I could tell them a lot of plot details before it came out, get a copy when available, and show them. Similarly I could tell them much of the plot of Saving Private Ryan and predict Shakespeare in Love's upset at the Oscars. I could write down the lyrics to I'll Make A Man Out Of You before seeing Mulan.

Hopefully that'd be enough to convince them, along with some more technical knowledge from college. Unfortunately I didn't major in computer science or I'd be way ahead of the curve.

Then once they trust me it's the same answers as everyone else, but until you actually have someone with a non-zero amount of resources on your side your knowledge is pretty useless. Investing in future tech giants, betting on superbowls, etc.

/r/AskReddit Thread