Posts in category "philosophy"
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Rich Or Wealthy?
I consider myself wealthy but not rich. While it sounds like they are two sides of the same coin, there is a subtle difference. One is related to contentment while the other is related to possessions. If you are investing money to buy more stuff, you are trying to get rich. If you are investing to buy freedom, then you are trying to be wealthy. I can keep going, but the Stoic philosophy has as much to say about wealth. The name of the game is to buy freedom not things. Of course everyone needs money, but it is important to understand that happiness isn’t always found in material possessions.
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How To Spend Time
While everyone understands the value of time, very few actually value time. We are careful with spending money, but not careful how we spend time. Have you ever wondered where you spend your time in a day? I read a very nice article on the perspective of time which got me started on writing this post. This is definitely not a repeat or summary of that post. While I touch upon some points written over there, I am going to do an account of how I spend my time based on what is written there. So please read that first.
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The Cost Of Ignorance
Neither mrs. reynd nor myself (especially myself), are good negotiators or bargainers. Not sure how that happened, but I have a hunch as to why that might be the case. I know this weakness very well and hence delegate almost all bargaining to my better half. She is slightly better in this aspect but not by much. We have seen this come up over and over many a times, to our detriment, but we are probably too lazy to correct ourselves. The re-discovery of our skills (or lack there of) came to light just a few days ago when we decided to get our house painted.
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Lessons From 30 Years
Charlie Munger passed away recently at 99 years of age, just 34 days away from reaching 100. His life lessons are timeless and worth learning. If you have any interest in finance and investing you surely must have heard of him. He is the business partner and a good friend of Warren Buffett. As a result you must have seen blogs or emails about his famous quotes and life lessons. I did not want to bore you again with the same quotes. Instead, I recently came across a blog post on 40 lessons from 30 years. I thought it was interesting and wanted to see if I agree with any of them and how I measured up in my life. You should read the post and see if it applies to you too.
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Over Planning and Under Planning
I am the kind of person who tends to over plan and execute according to it. I hate deviations in the plan. But since retirement I am trying hard to change this style. You see, early retirement is all about enjoying life as it comes, but here I am programmed to execute according to a plan. Don’t get me wrong, my incessant planning and careful execution is what got me to retiring as early as I did. So it is not like I am going to throw away this trait. It helped me a lot. At the same time, I don’t want to be a carefree soul without a plan. That would be quite careless if not reckless. Instead I want to try something different, a middle ground if I can call it that.
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Watch The Lifestyle Creep
Have you ever though about why your expenses keep going up year after year? Perhaps you say your expenses haven’t increased that much since last year. But if you compare your expenses today with expenses some 10 years ago, you will see a huge difference. Why is that? Well you can attribute it to inflation. However, that is not the only culprit. The other culprit is lifestyle creep. And because it creeps in so slowly you can be forgiven for not recognizing it. If you don’t watch the lifestyle creep, you are in for a surprise when you do your retirement planning.
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The Most Important Thing In Life...
The title was not meant to be a click bait. I did not want the title to be too long, so had to truncate there. Aristotle supposedly said that the most important thing in life is figuring out how you spend your leisure time. I am not sure if those were the exact words, but he does write about difference between work and leisure. In today’s world, we spend too much time on work and have very little time in leisure. And any free time we have, we spend on entertainment. Leisure, unlike mere amusement, involves pleasure, happiness and living blessedly – Aristotle.
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Where Are The Expenses?
When I write or talk about our expenses post retirement, many people want to know how I decide which expenses go into which category. Remember, I keep a record of all our expenses and categorize them. I bundle them into monthly and annual expenses. What some people have noticed is the absence of certain categories like spending on eating out or for buying clothes or shoes etc. So I thought I’d do a quick post on where those missing expenses go so there is no confusion. First lets check the categories I have for monthly expenses –
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Why I Should Spend More
We have been pretty careful with money since I decided to retire early back in 2014. Ever since, every time we get tempted to buy something, we think twice to see if it is really worth it. Not whether the object is worth the price, but whether we really need it. By practicing this kind of thinking we were able to limit our spend considerably and increase our savings. The twin effect of spending less and saving more helped us to retire early. But these habits compound over time just like money. Now, everything feels like it is probably not worth the money. The only real kind of expense we feel that is worth is the ones we spend on experiences, not objects.
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Why I Prefer Not Having A Backup Plan
Life is full of surprises. Many things are not really in our control, yet we live life like we have control. Take driving for example. We do our best to practice defensive driving to avoid accidents. Yet we have absolutely no control over the others and how in spite of being most defensive, we could end up in an accident. There is no backup plan here. If an accident happens, we have to deal with it as it comes. Most times a plan B helps, but in some cases, there is no plan B. Strangely, I have taken some decisions in life intentionally without a backup plan. These are no small decisions. They are some of the most difficult and riskiest ones.
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