24, $131k invested, following Lifecycle Investing. How do you balance investing with actually enjoying your youth?

Hello peeps,

I’m 24 and have about $131k invested between my brokerage account and Roth IRA. Around $30k of that is on margin through Robinhood Gold at 5%.

When I first got access to margin I definitely got a little carried away. Thankfully I’m in the green, but now I’m focused on bringing it back down. Right now I’ve been using most of my deposits as margin buy-down. For example, if I put in $1,000 for the week I’ll invest about $250 and use the other $750 to pay down my margin. My goal is to get margin down to around 10% of my portfolio and keep it there unless we get a major market correction in which I’ll use more of it to buy cheap stocks/etfs.

I watched a video from Ben Felix regarding using margin for investing (youtube gem of a channel) and he mentioned Lifecycle Investing by Ayres and Nalebuff which made me feel even better about the overall strategy I implemented.

My question isn’t really about margin though.
How do you balance investing for the future with actually enjoying your 20s?

I always see people saying things like “You’ll never be 24 driving your dream car again.” I know buying a car usually isn’t the smartest financial move, but I’d love to own a 1965 Mustang Fastback one day. I also want to travel more. I already travel for work (inside the U.S. mainland only), but I’d like to visit places like Puerto Rico and Guam. I’d specially love to travel internationally once I’m able to legally.

I don’t have kids, I drive an old Camry, and I’m already pretty frugal as I live with the fam. At this point the biggest thing I can do is increase my income, which is what I’m working on as I only make about 60k net. \*\*A higher income solves my problems\*\*, is always an easy answer but it’s not the answer. You might be able to save more, but if I have kids that’ll cancel out etc. So I’m looking for how some of you look at it.

I also want to include that I have other goals such as buying a house once I know where I want to go and live (which is a can of worms in and of itself but for now I’m bunkered down with family as I mentioned earlier.

For those of you who are older, how did you handle this? Did you choose one financial goal and stick with it? Did you set aside money every year for experiences? Did you just invest as much as possible? Looking back, do you wish you had enjoyed your younger years more, or invested even harder?