Depends on how much time I have to think about it. At least back to 04, but probably earlier. I have at least one life to save, one to ruin a little earlier, and money to make, and to tell myself Jesus is total bullshit way earlier than I figured it out the first time. But 04 is when I have to save the life, so definitely at least that far. Probably would like earlier for the other stuff tho.

But it would be hard to make money before that (by predictive means) because being 18 makes having a bank account a lot simpler.

Easy. My spouse is 5 years older than me. Go back 10 years to 2016. Make tons of bets and buy lots of crypto under my own name. Pull a Steve Rogers and show up older right after now me jumps in. Happily retire.

I’d either go a few decades in the past or several centuries in the future, depending on how adventurous I’m feeling at the time.

going 30 years into the past puts me in the mid 90s. Recent enough to have technology levels that I could live with and to remember what companies to invest in, but far enough back for non-digital identity records to be a thing, so it would still be possible (albeit difficult) to create an identity.

Skipping forward by 500+ years would also be really interesting. Changing technology would make that world nearly unrecognizable from anything we know today, and I’m hopeful for the far future, if not the near future.

I like my wife and son, but if I had to go, I’d pick the civilization we call the Minoans in Crete. They had malls that were ancient ruins before the pyramids went up, women in positions of power, tits consistently out, sunny beaches, and IIRC two thousand years of mostly unbroken prosperity. Maybe I’d get to be some eccentric noblewoman’s pet scientist. Maybe I’d just fish for a living in a sleepy village.

2011 so i can get a head-start on some investments, OR 2020. To get a head-start on a different investment.

I’mma go the obvious answer to some maybe not to other’s. 1985, I wasn’t born yet (90s baby) and it gives me a decade to get a life together before the Microsoft boom assuming there’s no odd butterfly effect with my actions and things happen exactly as they did. Investments, get to know the right peeps of the era, etc. Boom. Set for life and I get to relive the 90s as an adult.

Somewhere in antiquity, like classical Greece or bronze age mesopotamia. Not a rational decision by any means, I’m sure I’d come to regret leaving behind all the amenities of modern life at some point. But I’m fascinated by the distant past, and wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to see it with my own eyes.

Someone has to go back to the primordial puddle and shit inside it or else humans wont happen

I’d probably get a monkey’s-paw trip to 3000-years into a bleak future* or straight-up non-existence.

The time portal, after I tried to explain it: “So you want a low-bureaucracy down-to-earth human life, in the far future where you’re a not-always-online symbiotic cyborg?”

* where I wouldn’t understand anyone, but they’re just speaking Swedish

Do I get to keep the interest rate on my bank account? Year 3000 sounds fun. Don’t know if I could live without the internet again in the recent past. May just as well gamble on the future.

Too many choices. My knee-jerk reaction is to seconds after the big bang (though I’d also need to be able to move through space since I think it was pretty empty here, if here even existed -er- here.

A second choice would be Kyushu around 300CE. There are tons of interesting places and times I’d like to see.

To the year I was born to move my family out of the suicide belt region of the US so I wouldn’t grow up there.

I just watched a movie that kinda sorta fits this, but it’s suspenseful and a little horror-ish. It’s called The Lost Daughter if you’re interested.

Honestly, they say it’s horror, but once you figure out what’s going on, it’s more like The Others. But it’s still really good.