I was reading an article about a court case where a tech billionaire's musings had to be read in court. One of the sentiments that he made is that he "only" wanted to make a billion dollars, almost as if it was a foregone conclusion. I found that to be completely bizarre. Sure, people are wired differently, but I can't relate to anyone who believes that money is the goal.
With that in mind, I'm also not naive about the role money plays in everyone's lives. Having it can make a lot of things easier. Not having it can make life very hard. It affects everything from life expectancy to the ability to eat. But to me, it's always been a means to an end, and that end is to live in a sort of comfortable autonomy that allows me to positively impact people and the world around me.
I've told the story before about my 20's and early 30's, spending like a moron and saving nothing. I bought a lot of crap on credit, in the days when you could just keep moving balances around from one card to the next with 2 or even 0% APR's. Everyone told me that was dumb, but I didn't listen. So the last decade and a half has been me trying to be disciplined enough to make up for it. I was worth $0 when we moved to Central Florida, but that discipline has reversed the trend. I've even been able to judiciously budget for travel and some expensive hobbies. I've undone a decade and a half of fiscal irresponsibility, but I could have been much further along had I not erred.
Now, as I get more serious about playing out my third and final act, the goal hasn't changed. I still want that "comfortable autonomy" and ability to give. I'm ready to do all the things, like downsize the house and get as much as I can out of our cars. I also realize that saving enough money in just the right way so you run out when you die isn't a great approach. A better approach, and it's one of the things that my dad suggested when I didn't listen, is to essentially create your own endowment. You bank enough so that you can live off of the gains indefinitely. Of course, it's wildly improbable that there isn't a recession or market tank or something, so that means you probably need even more than you expect. But I love the idea of this.
It's strange how, when you're a kid, you think about how cool it would be to have a million dollars. That's not actually a lot of money in today's dollars, but it could be that endowment. The end game is to really live your best life, and not be stingy, but not be careless, when it comes to money. I don't think that's the kind of toxic relationship with money that the billionaire had, but it doesn't seem healthy either.
The bigger variable is if social security and medicare can hold. Regardless, we need better financial literacy in this country. Investing is treated like some illuminati shit that regular people don't have access to.
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