I came to the conclusions long term investments are the best way to store and make your money work. But now the question is where do you invest them? An actual advice would be considered helpful. Of course under own judgement as mentioned above :).
Thanks for a nice sum-up.
My mistakes would be:
* keeping saving in the same currency in one bank but hopefully in a stable country and bank :).
* not categorizing money, and killing the expenses.
* I fail to learning to live on less than I earn
* Puting money into something that brings me back something.

There are several things I experimented with over the years:

- “Valori mobiliare de stat", as explained by Natan Garștea: http://natangarstea.blogspot.com/2011/11/unde-sa-ne-investim-banii.html. It was good while it lasted, but the situation has changed. The rates are lower, Moldova’s economy is weaker and “stability” is the last thing that comes to mind when I think of Moldova these days.
- Bank deposits - that’s better than nothing, but after the “billion dollar theft", I lost whatever confidence I still had in Moldovan banks.
- Bank deposits abroad - the rates are very low (at least if we’re talking about EUR and USD) and last time I checked, they were even lower than the expected inflation rate; which means that you’re still losing worth if the money stays idle.
- Cryptocurrencies - I like the concept, but the problem is that people are holding onto whatever they have, which means that bitcoins, for example, are not circulating like regular currency, i.e. they’re not “in use", which reduces their probability of becoming a successful currency. (there’s a book called “Insolence of office", which discusses this matter, I found it very helpful).
- Buying shares of various companies - that’s my current experiment and it is too early to make any conclusions. I must admit that at this stage I’m mostly pressing buttons without fully understanding the implications of my actions and all the statistical data that typical investment sites provide. There’s a lot to learn here.

As for the other points - now that you are aware of them, perhaps it will be easier to deal with it. Living on less than what you earn is probably the easiest thing to tackle - just ask yourself questions such as “do I really need it?", or “do I already own something that does the same job?” (this especially applies to clothing). Or [if it is a device] “where will I plug it in?", “do I have space for it?".

One of my personal favourites is cooking my own meals - that has substantially reduced the number of times I eat in a restaurant. I cook at home at “industrial scales", so I don’t have to do this often, because the batch will last for ~2..3 days (lunch at work + dinner at home).
Another low-hanging fruit is to always have a “thermos” with you - your own supply of a beverage will spare you from paying ridiculous amounts for a goddamn cup of tea :-)

Start thinking about these things early. The sooner you apply changes, the sooner you’ll get results.