Nobody Really Cares Which Car you Drive!
Ability to get up when you want, do what you want, do at your own pace is one sign of being wealthy. You are no longer on the treadmill. You can be stuck on that for all your life. It is important to know when to stop and start enjoying. If you cannot do it, you will always be miserable, all your life, even if you have stashed billions of dollars. The level is for you alone to decide. After a stage, money is just a number. Unfortunately most of us don't know when and how. Every time we hit a financial milestone, we create another one. It never ends. A bigger car, bigger house, bigger portfolio and so on. An average citizen of most countries makes double of what they used to make in 50s and is half as happy today.
Happiness is managing your expectations, it's within you. Chasing more money is dependent on external circumstances. Isn't it easier to control your mind then external circumstances?
If showing off and impressing people is any yardstick of being happier, stop. The brute fact is that other people don't care about you or the flashy car your drive and swanky house that you own. In reality people replace your image with their own mage in their mind and visualise themselves in your place. They are thinking about themselves and not YOU. If you think you will be happy by impressing people, take a pause. Nobody really care. Once you possess the thing you desired, it loses all its value.
99% of Warren Buffet's wealth was made after he turned 60, He started when he was 11 and continues to do for 80 long years. An S&P 500 index fund would have allowed any investor to turn $10,000 into more than three-quarters of a million dollars in less than four decades -- with the bare minimum of effort and expense. Easier to be patient than be smart and try and beat the market. In fact impossible to beat the market, most people fail and lose money. Some may make great money but not always. Endurance in systematic investment using money cost averaging method over a long period can make miracle. Just take out a fixed amount and put it away into long term investment. Savings with compounding of investment is the key to wealth. Keep the investments simple limiting to cash, home to live, car to drive, decent vacations, provident & emergency fund and rest in index fund. Bet on the larger economy instead of trying and picking up a racehorse. If you have to daily check your investments, you are doing it wrong. Real estate investments in most cases are flat or negative and least liquid.
On your death bed, what would you regret more, not buying that great car or house OR not leaving enough for your family to live well? Get your priorities right. Give to your children when they need it most, don’t wait for the inheritance. That in any case is inevitable but may be too late to make a meaningful contribution to their lives.
Most bad news is Big Bang and makes headline but good news is always slow and gradual, compounded over a period of time, they never make a headline but are equally impactful. Would it make a headline that we have raised life expectancy this year by 0.8 years? But done over the decades that have gone by, it is massive. We were living on average for 45 years in 1960 and in 2020 we are at 75 years! That’s is power of compounding, no big bangs, just slow and steady.
When things go wrong, it could be the worst thing to happen in your life, whether being laid off or relationship failure, but later in hindsight, that could have been the best things in your life.
Tiny events that you can never think, plan or predicts may have the maximum lifelong impact on our lives. A simple decision to cross the road and be a victim of a road rage can be life changing. Most of us could never predict Hamas, 9/11, Lehman crash or Covid, in fact nobody did. Don’t ever presume that things will be same tomorrow. The more prepared you are and better you will be. We need to start planning for future. Yesterday was the best time, today in the next best.
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