Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Financial sweet spot

Money is such a crazy stressor. Life would be so much easier if we were all just hunter-gatherers :) we could trade supplies, eat good food, sleep long hours and not worry about mortgages, payments, 401ks, rents, etc etc.....

yes, we may have to worry about being eaten by a lion or a giant anaconda or something, but worrying about that seems like more fun. IMHO it's more fun to learn how to defend myself from a lion than to defend myself from a dying 401k!

When you have no money, you think about money, how to make more, how to save more.... how to "save for retirement" so that you can live well into the golden years... oblivious about the fact that some punk could blind side you on a tuesday afternoon on your 59th birthday so you never see your retirement $$$.... but still we live, we complain, we save, we spend and the cycle goes on.

What's fascinating is that we worry about how to get rich, then if we do get rich, there's a whole new set of worries....
Asset protection - how do I make sure no one sues me for my money and takes it all away
Capital preservation - how do I invest my money but guarantee that I don't lose what I already have?

Someone asked me recently, let's say you had 1 million dollars, would you be willing to bet it all on black at the roulette table. i guess it's hard to answer that question. I want to be in the position of YES. why? because If I win, I have 2 million. if I lose, then i'm back where I started - with all the skills and life experiences that could get me another 1 million...

I want to find that place financially and in life, where I'm comfortable, I have everything I need and want, yet would be totally at peace if I lost everything and had to start over from scratch. That would indeed be a blissful place, at least financially... don't you think?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

hmmh, true but trust me, once you got to that point you would still not be content. You would worry about myriads of things: If people like you, whether John down the road has more etc etc. And no, you dont really want the life of a hunter gatherer. Its easy to romanticize about that 'simple life' because you've never had to live without your daily comforts and conveniences! Do you really want a life without tapped water, electricity, easy availability of food, modern medicine. Do you really want to face saber-tooth tigers in your quest for food rather than write code and spend $10 for a decent meal at the end of the day? Think again! Do you want to risk having your head crushed on a rock if you approach a girl from a stronger band in the forest- Jasper