Thankful, Really

Posted on November 27, 2025 // 4 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving! I wouldn’t say this has been the best year ever, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still many things to be thankful for. I started keeping a text file of good things, and here’s what I have at the moment. Thank you for reading, whether you are new or old, as it is certainly one of the things I am grateful for.

Mornings when I can wake up without an alarm clock,

Hot showers on a cold day,

All showers, really.

Drinking coffee in the morning in the backyard, listening to the world wake up.

Cold drinks on a hot day, especially iced coffee.

Not having a job where you dread going to work,

Feeling externally appreciated for the work you do,

Feeling an internal purpose for the work you do.

Being able to pick up the kids after school and listen to them unwind a bit with a snack and no other expectations in the backyard before they have to start homework, sports, etc.

The eternal good attitude of dogs.

The feeling after a long run (without injury).

Moments when the kids are playing together harmoniously, laughing.

All laughter, really. (Baby laughs are the absolute best.)

Cooking a dinner that makes the house smell good,

Eating dinner each night as a family and sharing stories about our day,

Any food with friends and family, really.

Goodnight hugs when they don’t want to go to bed just yet and will put up with extra questions and longer hugs and deeper discussions.

All hugs, really.

Filed Under: Happiness //

FIRE is Not Beans & Rice. FIRE is Not Pink Lambos. FIRE is Life!

Posted on May 29, 2024 // 5 Comments

FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) is certainly a catchy acronym, but it always seems to confuse people because the word “retire” suggests a line between working and not working. What does it mean to “Retire Early”? What if you only work part-time? What if you like your job and have no intention of quitting completely? Beyond that, FIRE has been further hijacked. I’ve noticed that many mainstream articles about FIRE follow a similar template:

  • Create your own custom definition of FIRE. For example, FIRE is people who eat only lentils, use 100 coupons at the grocery store, and don’t have any friends nor fun. Alternatively, FIRE is just rich people who didn’t have to make any effort at all, they are just smug rich people.
  • Once this straw man is created, you can easily attack it. Eating only lentils is weird and you are a foodie. The person using coupons is that super-annoying person that spends 10 minutes at the cashier. This person did FIRE but now regrets never having friends or fun when they were younger. How sad. That person is rich and therefore you personally have no chance at it, so why bother unless you make $300,000 a year or enjoyed a million-dollar windfall?

On the other hand, I think pointing out the many possible paths as a good thing. One of those lifestyles will likely click with some specific reader. A recent entry is from the NY Times with Your Neighbors Are Retiring in Their 30s. Why Can’t You? Meet the schemers and savers obsessed with ending their careers as early as possible (gift article). Yet the cover, of course, is a pink $300,000 Lamborghini…

If we want to stay catchy and shiny, but make it broader and more encompassing, how about “FIRE is Life!” I am a latecomer to the Ted Lasso bandwagon (yay free Apple+ trial!), but this is how I interpret the catchphrase “Football is Life!” from the character Danni Rojas.

  • To be successful at football, you need to work hard. This is the variable that you can control, and thus should be your focus.
  • To be successful at football, you need be lucky. You need some natural-born talent, supportive people, and a few breaks along the way. Thus, you should act with humility.
  • Sometimes you start strong, but still lose. Sometimes you start horribly, but still win.
  • Sometimes you try your best, but you still lose a particular game.
  • Some people have a playing style that is very aggressive and risk-taking.
  • Some people have a playing style that is very defensive and reliable.
  • Some people follow the rules with good character, and others break the rules whenever they think they can get away with it.
  • There is great beauty in the game, if you step back and take the time truly understand it.
  • You are far from the first person to play football. People having been kicking around balls since before you were born. According to Wikipedia, the earliest known written evidence for a similar game with standardized rules was 2,000+ years ago (Han Dynasty, China).

Similarly, FIRE is not something invented in the 2000s. It didn’t even start with Your Money or Your Life in 1992. People have been pursuing financial independence since… there have been people. Sure, for about two million years we were hunter-gatherers. But as soon as people could gather enough wealth to not have to spend their time gathering food or working for food, they did. Well, a few of them did. Here’s a selection from my old FIRE books reading list.

The Quest of the Simple Life by William J. Dawson is a book from 1907 that talks about escaping the grind and spending less money to create a simpler life (sound familiar?). My review and highlights: The Quest of the Simple Life: Escaping The Work Grind in 1907 vs. Today. Here is a sample quote on the cost of “keeping up appearances”:

Money may be bought at too dear a rate. The average citizen, if he did but know it, is always buying money too dear. He earns, let us say, four hundred pounds a year; but the larger proportion of this sum goes in what is called ‘keeping up appearances.’ He must live in a house at a certain rental; by the time that his rates and taxes are paid he finds one-eighth of his income at least has gone to provide a shelter for his head. A cottage, at ten pounds a year, would have served him better, and would have been equally commodious. He must needs send his children to some private ‘academy’ for education, getting only bad education and high charges for his pains; a village board-school at twopence a week would have offered undeniable advantages. He must wear the black coat and top-hat sacred to the clerking tribe; a tweed suit and cap are more comfortable, and half the price. At all points he is the slave of convention, and he pays a price for his convention out of all proportion to its value. At a moderate estimate half the daily expenditure of London is a sacrifice to the convention or imposture of respectability.

FIRE is considering the possibility that you don’t have to spend all of what you earn. Considering what is “enough”. Considering how much (life)time to devote to work, and how soul-sucking that work should be. There is no black and white answer. The variables are infinitely adjustable.

Along the way, I’ve changed my mind on some things. I am not retired. I could try to live off what I have saved so far, but I was surprised to find that I do like some of the mix of purpose, money, community, etc. that comes with finding the right kind of work. I also cut back enough to make time to pick up my kids every day after school. Financial independence is the power to spend your finite time how you wish. Saving $1,000 helps with that. Saving $10,000 helps with that. Saving $100,000 helps more.

The most important lesson that I would tell my kids is that the pursuit of FIRE has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. My life is infinitely better for taking the time to make more conscious decisions about how I make money, spend money, invest, and so forth. Not only can I spend more time with loved ones, I am more present and happier during those times. FIRE is Life!

Filed Under: Frugal Living, Happiness, Inspirational //

Charlie Munger Acquired Podcast Interview w/ Transcript (October 2023)

Posted on November 3, 2023 // Leave a Comment

The Acquired Podcast has new episode with Charlie Munger. As usual Charlie was candid and dropped some truth bombs, although we never quite get to hear what he really thinks about venture capital… 🤐 If you scroll down on the page, you’ll also find a full transcript of the interview.

Here are a few selected highlights (slightly edited by me at times to match the audio):

The extra-wide parking spaces at Costco! I always felt they were a competitive edge.

Ben: What was it about Costco that made you realize this is one of those few moments in a lifetime?

Charlie: They really did sell cheaper than anybody else in America and they did it in big, efficient stores. All the parking spaces were 10 feet wide instead of eight or nine feet or whatever they normally are. They did it all right and they had a lot of parking spaces. They kept out of their stores, all these people didn’t do big volumes, and they gave special benefits to the people who did come to the stores in the way of reward points [via the Executive membership 2% back].

Rational people don’t risk what they have and need for what they don’t have and don’t need.

David: But your relationship with Warren?

Charlie: We were both somewhat similar. We both wanted to keep our families safe and take a good job for our investors and so on. We had similar attitudes.

David: Did it change over the decades?

Charlie: No. Warren still cares more about the safety of his Berkshire shareholders than he cares about anything else. If we used a little bit more leverage throughout, we’d have three times as much now, and it wouldn’t have been that much more risk either. We never wanted to give them the least a chance of screwing up our basic shelter position.

The three things.

Person: Charlie, if you started with Warren today and you were both 30 years old, do you think you guys would build anything close to what Berkshire is today?

Charlie: The answer to that is no, we wouldn’t. We had… everybody that had unusually good results… almost everything has three things: They’re very intelligent, they worked very hard, and they were very lucky. It takes all three to get them on this list of the super successful. How can you arrange to have just […] good luck? The answer is you can start early and keep trying for a long time, and maybe you’ll get one or two.

Climb the mountain once.

Andrew: I don’t think you’re saying there are no opportunities whatsoever. I think you’re just saying low expectations and fewer bonanzas.

Charlie: The beauty of it is: you only have to get rich once. You don’t have to climb this mountain four times. You just have to do it once.

It was a great interview, and prompted me to add these other Acquired Podcast episodes to my playlist:

Filed Under: Entrepreneurial, Happiness, Inspirational //

What’s Your Retirement Mindset? Escaping From vs. Escaping To

Posted on August 18, 2023 // Leave a Comment

In a recent Outside magazine article, the author examined research about how activities can be either positive or negative, not based on the actual activity itself, but your mindset while doing them. For example, exercising could be negative, while playing video games could be positive.

Stenseng’s view, which he first laid out in a 2012 paper, is that we should broaden our concept of escapism to include both negative and positive elements, which he dubbed self-suppression and self-expansion. The former is when you’re running away from bad feelings; the latter is when you’re seeking out good feelings.

Earlier this year in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, Stenseng and his colleagues published a study of 227 recreational runners, in which they tried to tease out the signs of self-suppressing and self-expanding escapism with a series of questionnaires. Runners who agreed with statements like “When I run, I try to learn new things about myself” or “When I run, I open up for experiences that enrich my life” were demonstrating self-expansion. Those who agreed with “When I run, I shut out the difficult things I do not want to think about,” on the other hand, were self-suppressing.

This concept also connects with the pursuit of financial freedom and retirement:

The most powerful message that I take from Stenseng’s work is the distinction between avoidance and approach—between escaping from and escaping to.

What is your primary reason for pursuing financial freedom? If you’re focusing on the negative aspects of your job – horrible bosses, annoying customers, long hours, stressful work, inadequate paycheck, then you are trying to escape from your bad job. That can be a good initial motivator, but it won’t sustain you for very long. You’ll be miserable and prone to burnout. If you do make it to retirement, you might still find yourself searching to ways to fill the day.

This research supports the idea that healthier approach is to start exploring and finding out where you want to escape to. Commit energy into finding a better job laterally and/or entire career switch. Connect with friends and ask about any opportunities. Look at the hobbies you enjoy and pick apart what you like about them. You have to find the “good enough” job that makes the saving phase more like auto-pilot. Even for very early retirees, you are looking at 15-20 years of work. Don’t spend it with people you don’t like or respect. In the end, it’s the retirees with engaging hobbies and friends that are the happy ones.

The August 2023 issue of Costco Connection profiles the second “what if” careers of several different folks. Bank executive turned woodworker. Teacher turned baker. TV producer turned college professor.

Filed Under: Happiness, Retirement //

Ranked: Things vs. Experiences vs. Things That Keep Creating Good Experiences

Posted on June 26, 2023 // Leave a Comment

You’ve probably heard the advice that you get more happiness when you spend money on experiences (e.g. vacation), not material possessions (e.g. watch/jewelry). But what about purchases that have aspects of both (e.g. a swimming pool or home remodel)? The study What Makes People Happy? Decoupling the Experiential-Material Continuum (via Klement on Investing) takes data from multiple studies and places hundreds of items along two separate continuums:

  • Material happiness qualities. Happiness derived from the primary intention of acquiring a material possession – a tangible object that one obtains and maintains possession.
  • Experiential happiness qualities. Happiness derived from the primary intention of acquiring a life experience.

Some items are low on both spectrums, like tax software or insurance (low-low). Some are high on one spectrum and low on the other (high-low, low-high). Finally, some are high on both scales (high-high). The study has found that the happiness derived from the experiential and material sides are additive and not dilutive, so you can get even more total happiness this way.

The chart below takes only the goods that rated in the top 10% of highest anticipated happiness (out of 370 total goods), and then plotted them on two scales of material vs. experiential qualities.

This excerpt summarizes the conclusions well:

Therefore, the experiential advantage advice is correct in that if consumers must choose between material and experiential qualities, they should choose experiential consumption. However, when consumers can seek both qualities, such as when “high-material high-experiential” mixed consumption is available, it can provide as much as or even more happiness than purely experiential consumption.

The benefit of material goods is that they don’t go away after the experience ends (food is eaten, cruise ends, etc). The best material goods are those that keep generating new positive experiences and memories. A swimming pool or kitchen/deck remodel where family and friends can gather for many years. Of course, these things are also quite expensive!? I suppose we could skip a vacation and save up to fix up the deck instead.

Filed Under: Frugal Living, Happiness //

Money vs. Happiness, Round 3: Higher Income Correlates to Higher Happiness (Unless You’re Just an Unhappy Person)

Posted on March 30, 2023 // 3 Comments

Mo’ money, mo’ problems? Or more money, more happiness? Over the years, the media has picked up on academic studies trying to establish the relationship between the two, and it seems we have a new result from two initially conflicting researchers. First, a bit of backstory.

Round 1: The $75k plateau? In 2010, Kahneman and Deaton found that happiness rose as annual income increased initially at lower incomes, but eventually it leveled off and happiness plateaued at between $60,000 and $90,000 annual income ($75,000 midpoint). From my post Happiness Is Earning $60,000 A Year?

Below 60,000 dollars a year, people are unhappy, and they get progressively unhappier the poorer they get. Above that, we get an absolutely flat line. I mean I’ve rarely seen lines so flat.

Here is a reproduction of the chart in that paper.

Round 2: No plateau. More money, more happiness. In 2021, Killingsworth found that happiness rose steadily with income well beyond $75,000 with no plateau effect. I wrote the post Happiness Keeps Increasing Past $75,000 a Year. Here is a reproduction of the chart in that paper.

Round 3: Adversarial collaboration leads to a bit more nuance. Kahneman and Killingsworth decided to collect more data (especially at higher incomes), and analyze it together. Here’s the chart of their findings from their paper Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved:

Looking at the chart, you can see the two major conclusions:

  • For the happiest 80% of people (most people), happiness continues to rise with income, even with very high incomes.
  • For the unhappiest 20% of people, happiness rises up to about $100,000 in annual income and then plateaus.

“In the simplest terms, this suggests that for most people larger incomes are associated with greater happiness,” says Killingsworth, a senior fellow at Penn’s Wharton School and lead paper author. “The exception is people who are financially well-off but unhappy. For instance, if you’re rich and miserable, more money won’t help. For everyone else, more money was associated with higher happiness to somewhat varying degrees.”

The paper also explores why Kahneman and Deaton may have previously overstated the flattening pattern and why Killingsworth failed to find it. I doubt this will be the last round of this debate.

I would simply point out (again) that they are saying happiness tends to correlate with log(income), not income. To illustrate what this means, in order to match the amount of linear happiness increase from $20,000/yr to $60,000/yr income, you would have to go from $60,000 to $180,000 year, or then $180,000 to $540,000 a year, and so on. That would look more like the sketch below.

My take. Getting a $25k annual raise will make a person currently earning $50k a much larger happiness boost than a person currently earning $150k. But, that $150k earner will still become slightly more happy (unless they simply tend to be miserable no matter what). Sounds about right to me.

Additional sources: WaPo, Penn Today,

Filed Under: Behavioral Economics, Happiness //

How to Live on 24 Hours a Day: Published 100+ Years Ago, Still Practical Advice Today

Posted on August 21, 2022 // 2 Comments

Either Jonathan Clements or Jason Zweig (both long-time, award-winning personal finance columnists) once wrote that personal finance writing was all about finding the 1,000th different way to discuss the same five basic concepts. Early in the book How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett, first published in 1908, is the following mention of their professional ancestors:

Newspapers are full of articles explaining how to live on such-and-such a sum, and these articles provoke a correspondence whose violence proves the interest they excite. Recently, in a daily organ, a battle raged round the question whether a woman can exist nicely in the country on £85 a year.

100 years later, we have the exact same debates. 100 years later, financial freedom is still whether you control how you spend your time. Work is still trading your life energy (time) for money, and financial freedom means creating a different source of money so you can stop trading your life energy (time) away. We are all given 24 hours a day.

You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions.

For remark! No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And no one receives either more or less than you receive.

This may also sound familiar:

Which of us is not saying to himself—which of us has not been saying to himself all his life: “I shall alter that when I have a little more time”?

I assumed that this would be a philosophical book, but was pleasantly surprised at the amount of practical and actionable advice inside. Please read the book for the full and original message; I am crudely paraphrasing below.

Notice that you want more out of life. I call this the “itch”. The “itch” is what makes people seek out and devour information about financial freedom.

If we further analyse our vague, uneasy aspiration, we shall, I think, see that it springs from a fixed idea that we ought to do something in addition to those things which we are loyally and morally obliged to do. We are obliged, by various codes written and unwritten, to maintain ourselves and our families (if any) in health and comfort, to pay our debts, to save, to increase our prosperity by increasing our efficiency. A task sufficiently difficult! A task which very few of us achieve! A task often beyond our skill! Yet, if we succeed in it, as we sometimes do, we are not satisfied; the skeleton is still with us.

And such is, indeed, the fact. The wish to accomplish something outside their formal programme is common to all men who in the course of evolution have risen past a certain level.

Realize that even with a full-time job, you DO have control over part of your day. Most of us will spend at least a couple decades working 8-9 hours a day, 5 days a week while building up those other income sources. However, even if you spend 10 hours a day working/commuting and 8 hours a day sleeping/eating/grooming, that still leaves 6 hours where you are free to do millions of different things. (Caregivers of young children and/or other family members: I know.) The point is, if you consciously spend even a fraction of that time on an invigorating activity, you can feel better about your entire life.

If my typical man wishes to live fully and completely he must, in his mind, arrange a day within a day. And this inner day, a Chinese box in a larger Chinese box, must begin at 6 p.m. and end at 10 a.m. It is a day of sixteen hours; and during all these sixteen hours he has nothing whatever to do but cultivate his body and his soul and his fellow men. During those sixteen hours he is free; he is not a wage-earner; he is not preoccupied with monetary cares; he is just as good as a man with a private income.

If a man makes two-thirds of his existence subservient to one-third, for which admittedly he has no absolutely feverish zest, how can he hope to live fully and completely? He cannot.

Spend 30 minutes each weekday morning doing meditation and/or mindfulness training. Either wake up a bit earlier, or use your commute. Training your mind is a worthwhile activity and strengthens it like a muscle. You will be more patient and focused with your co-workers, your kids, and yourself.

People say: “One can’t help one’s thoughts.” But one can. The control of the thinking machine is perfectly possible. And since nothing whatever happens to us outside our own brain; since nothing hurts us or gives us” pleasure except within the brain, the supreme importance of being able to control what goes on in that mysterious brain is patent. Hence, it seems to me, the first business of the day should be to put the mind through its paces […]

When you leave your house, concentrate your mind on a subject (no matter what, to begin with). You will not have gone ten yards before your mind has skipped away under your very eyes and is larking round the corner with another subject. Bring it back by the scruff of the neck. Ere you have reached the station you will have brought it back about forty times. Do not despair. Continue. Keep it up. You will succeed. […]

I do not care what you concentrate on, so long as you concentrate. It is the mere disciplining of the thinking machine that counts. But still, you may as well kill two birds with one stone, and concentrate on something useful. I suggest—it is only a suggestion—a little chapter of Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus.

Set aside 90 minutes per evening, three weeknights a week. During this time, you must find something that challenges your curiosity and makes you excited! If you pick the right activity, it will give you energy, not make you more tired. You might learn to rock climb, play tennis, rehearse for a community theater role, ballroom dance, read poetry, anything. You must consciously choose this activity and persevere with it for 3 months. It’s hard to break old habits, so that is why it is only for every other day.

But remember, at the start, those ninety nocturnal minutes thrice a week must be the most important minutes in the ten thousand and eighty. They must be sacred, quite as sacred as a dramatic rehearsal or a tennis match. Instead of saying, “Sorry I can’t see you, old chap, but I have to run off to the tennis club,” you must say, “…but I have to work.” This, I admit, is intensely difficult to say. Tennis is so much more urgent than the immortal soul.

On your commute home, spend some time reflecting. What are the principles that you chose to live by? Are your actions aligned with those principles? If not, how can we fix that?

What leads to the permanent sorrowfulness of burglars is that their principles are contrary to burglary. If they genuinely believed in the moral excellence of burglary, penal servitude would simply mean so many happy years for them; all martyrs are happy, because their conduct and their principles agree.

We do not reflect. I mean that we do not reflect upon genuinely important things; upon the problem of our happiness, upon the main direction in which we are going, upon what life is giving to us, upon the share which reason has (or has not) in determining our actions, and upon the relation between our principles and our conduct.

Bottom line. Give it some modern edits, a snazzy book cover, and a powerful media blitz, and the 1908 short book How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett could be a modern bestseller. Don’t wait until retirement to scratch those itches. By carefully changing how you spend specifically selected hours a week and consciously choosing activities that excite, strengthen, and invigorate you, you can improve your entire life today. (The book doesn’t touch your weekends.) As the copyright has expired, you can read it for free via Project Gutenberg (or search on Libby). A final spicy quote:

If you are not prepared for discouragements and disillusions; if you will not be content with a small result for a big effort, then do not begin. Lie down again and resume the uneasy doze which you call your existence.

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Happiness, Inspirational, Time Management //

The Gift by Edith Eger: Combat Victimhood. Be Ready For Change. Forgive. Take The Risk.

Posted on September 16, 2021 // 3 Comments

Edith Eger was only a teenager when she and her family were sent to Auschwitz. She never saw her father and mother again. While she showed amazing mental strength to survive those horrors, it took her decades more before should could fully process and heal. I’ve seen her book The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life on multiple reading lists, and now I understand why. She provides a new lens to view your own traumatic experiences and useful insights on how you can escape the prison of your own mind:

Eger explains that the worst prison she experienced is not the prison that Nazis put her in but the one she created for herself, the prison within her own mind. She describes the twelve most pervasive imprisoning beliefs she has known—including fear, grief, anger, secrets, stress, guilt, shame, and avoidance—and the tools she has discovered to deal with these universal challenges.

I should warn you that this book describes some very graphic traumatic events that she and her patients have experienced. It will likely trigger some emotional memories of your own personal traumas, so be prepared and choose carefully when and where you read this book. (Not a light beach read in public!)

This is not a finance book. However, money is emotional. Fear, guilt, shame, avoidance. Right now, there is a millionaire that is too afraid to spend any money. Right now, someone is buying something they can’t afford to impress someone else and not seem “lesser”. How many bills are sitting on a counter unopened, with the debtor just hoping that ignoring it will make it go away?

We spend money on food and shelter, but we also spend money to satisfy our emotional needs of affection and attention. Buying a house is an emotional purchase. Your job ends up being more than money for a task. In this context, here are a few selected book highlights:

We do not change until we’re ready.

We do not change until we’re ready. Sometimes it’s a tough circumstance—perhaps a divorce, accident, illness, or death—that forces us to face up to what isn’t working and try something else. Sometimes our inner pain or unfulfilled longing gets so loud and insistent that we can’t ignore it another minute. But readiness doesn’t come from the outside, and it can’t be rushed or forced. You’re ready when you’re ready, when something inside shifts and you decide, Until now I did that. Now I’m going to do something else.

Always replace a dysfunctional habit with a healthy one.

Change is about interrupting the habits and patterns that no longer serve us. If you want to meaningfully alter your life, you don’t simply abandon a dysfunctional habit or belief; you replace it with a healthy one. You choose what you’re moving toward. You find an arrow and follow it. As you begin your journey, it’s important to reflect not only on what you’d like to be free from, but on what you want to be free to do or become.

Take the risk! Why not?

I’d been teaching psychology at a high school in El Paso for a few years—and had even been awarded teacher of the year—when I decided to return to school for a master’s in educational psychology. One day my clinical supervisor came to me and said, “Edie, you’ve got to get a doctorate.” I laughed. “By the time I get a doctorate I’ll be fifty,” I said. “You’ll be fifty anyway.” Those are the smartest four words anyone ever said to me.

Honey, you’re going to be fifty anyway—or thirty or sixty or ninety. So you might as well take a risk. Do something you’ve never done before. Change is synonymous with growth. To grow, you’ve got to evolve instead of revolve.

Freedom is about becoming your true self.

Finally, when you change your life, it isn’t to become the new you. It’s to become the real you—the one-of-a-kind diamond that will never exist again and can never be replaced. Everything that’s happened to you—all the choices you’ve made until now, all the ways you’ve tried to cope—it all matters; it’s all useful. You don’t have to throw everything out and start from scratch. Whatever you’ve done, it’s brought you this far, to this moment.

Much of our suffering stems from our misconception that we can’t be loved and genuine—that if we are to earn others’ acceptance and approval, we must deny or hide our true selves.

Survivors vs. victims.

In my experience, victims ask, “Why me?” Survivors ask, “What now?”

Suffering is universal. But victimhood is optional.

We’re going to be affected by environmental and genetic factors over which we have little or no control. But we each get to choose whether or not we stay a victim. We don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we do get to choose how we respond to our experience.

I’ve skipped many more highlights for dealing with more personal issues. This a great book on helping you deal with your own mind prisons. It was hard to ask myself all these questions, and I didn’t always like the answers, but it definitely taught me some things about myself and my framing of past issues.

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Happiness, Inspirational //

Richer, Wiser, Happier: Notes From 40+ Super Investors NOT Named Warren Buffett

Posted on August 18, 2021 // 1 Comment

It was very telling that the first chapter of Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life by William Green was a profile of Mohnish Pabrai. In other words, not Warren Buffett! If you aren’t a student of value investing, then you probably have never even heard of him before. He is best known for a being a “clone” investor.

“I’m a shameless copycat,” he says. “Everything in my life is cloned.… I have no original ideas.” Consciously, systematically, and with irrepressible delight, he has mined the minds of Buffett, Munger, and others not only for investment wisdom but for insights on how to manage his business, avoid mistakes, build his brand, give away money, approach relationships, structure his time, and construct a happy life.

That descriptor always seemed a bit derogatory, but after reading more about Pabrai in this book, I grew quite a lot of appreciation and respect for his approach. If you also like collecting outside wisdom (especially about investing) and incorporating into your life, you will likely enjoy this book as well. Green is an excellent writer and journalist that has managed to interview over 40 of the world’s greatest investors (many of which I’d never heard of until now), and this became the most heavily-highlighted book in my Kindle. Here are a fraction of them:

Mohnish Pabrai

Rule 1: Clone like crazy. Rule 2: Hang out with people who are better than you. Rule 3: Treat life as a game, not as a survival contest or a battle to the death. Rule 4: Be in alignment with who you are; don’t do what you don’t want to do or what’s not right for you. Rule 5: Live by an inner scorecard; don’t worry about what others think of you; don’t be defined by external validation.

Cloning Buffett, who once showed him the blank pages of his little black diary, Pabrai keeps his calendar virtually empty so he can spend most of his time reading and studying companies. On a typical day at the office, he schedules a grand total of zero meetings and zero phone calls. One of his favorite quotes is from the philosopher Blaise Pascal: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” […] He says it helps that his investment staff consists of a single person: him. “The moment you have people on your team, they’re going to want to act and do things, and then you’re hosed.”

John Templeton

To his credit, Templeton was especially demanding of himself. Take his attitude toward saving and spending. “After my education, I had absolutely no money and neither did my bride,” he told me. “So we deliberately saved fifty cents out of every dollar we earned.”

Distrustful of debt, he always paid cash for his cars and homes. He also claimed that his wartime bet was the only time he ever borrowed money to invest. During the Great Depression he’d seen how easy it was for overextended people to come undone, and he regarded fiscal discipline as a moral virtue.

Howard Marks

“Look, luck is not enough,” he says. “But equally, intelligence is not enough, hard work is not enough, and even perseverance is not necessarily enough. You need some combination of all four.

He plans to work indefinitely because he finds it intellectually rewarding, not because he has an “unquenchable” thirst for money or status. He recalls his Japanese studies professor explaining a Buddhist teaching that “you have to break the chain of getting and wanting”—an aimless cycle of craving that leads inevitably to suffering.

Irving Kahn

Kahn became Graham’s teaching assistant at Columbia in the 1920s, and they remained friends for decades. I wanted to know what he’d learned from Graham that had helped him to prosper during his eighty-six years in the financial markets. Kahn’s answer: “Investing is about preserving more than anything. That must be your first thought, not looking for large gains. If you achieve only reasonable returns and suffer minimal losses, you will become a wealthy man and will surpass any gambler friends you may have. This is also a good way to cure your sleeping problems.”

Just think for a moment about those basic ingredients that helped to make for a richly rewarding life. Family, health, challenging and useful work, which involved serving his clients well by compounding their savings conservatively over decades. And learning—particularly from Graham, an investment prophet who, Kahn said, “taught me how to study companies and succeed through research as opposed to luck or happenstance.”

Joel Greenblatt

This raises an obvious but crucial question: Do you know how to value a business? There’s nothing admirable or shameful about your response. But you and I need to answer this question honestly, since self-delusion is a costly habit in extreme sports such as skydiving and stock picking. “It’s a very small fraction of people that can value businesses—and if you can’t do that, I don’t think you should be investing on your own,” says Greenblatt. “How can you invest intelligently if you can’t figure out what something is worth?”

These experiences have led him to an important revelation: “For most individuals, the best strategy is not the one that’s going to get you the highest return.” Rather, the ideal is “a good strategy that you can stick with” even “in bad times.”

Charlie Munger

Munger often preaches about the importance of avoiding behavior with marginal upside and devastating downside. He once observed, “Three things ruin people: drugs, liquor, and leverage.”

Asked for career advice, he opines: “You have to play in a game where you’ve got some unusual talents. If you’re five foot one, you don’t want to play basketball against some guy who’s eight foot three. It’s just too hard. So you’ve got to figure out a game where you have an advantage, and it has to be something that you’re deeply interested in.”

Survivorship bias! I would say that one of the dangers of this book is that it may make you want to be a stock picker. All of the people profiled are probably have a net worth of over $50 million if not much more. Many made a few bold bets, and they paid off big. I want an oceanfront house in Newport Beach, my own private jet, and a vintage car to drive across Asia too!

The rewards for investing intelligently are so extravagant that the business attracts many brilliant minds.

Beating the market means being different. Can you make “unconventional bets that the crowd would consider foolish”? Are you a good fit for the “bizarrely lucrative discipline of sitting alone in a room and occasionally buying a mispriced stock”? Do you have enough humility to make a good judgment, mixed with the self-confidence to bet big when you think you have an edge?

Even if you think you do, survivorship bias reminds us that there are many, many highly-intelligent, hard-working people who tried their best to apply these concepts, but did not succeed. They are missing from the pages of this book, and you’ll never read their stories.

The true goal is independence. The good news is that you don’t need be a great stock picker. Even if you just invest in low-cost index funds and can stick with it, you can do quite well and still achieve the ability to be independent and become in control of your time on Earth.

Buffett said, “If you’re even a slightly above average investor who spends less than you earn, over a lifetime you cannot help but get very wealthy.”

Howard Marks: “Most people should index most of their money.”

The pattern is clear. In their own ways, Greenblatt, Buffett, Bogle, Danoff, and Miller have all been seekers of simplicity. The rest of us should follow suit. We each need a simple and consistent investment strategy that works well over time—one that we understand and believe in strongly enough that we’ll adhere to it faithfully through good times and bad.

“You build capital and then you can do whatever you want because you’re independent.” For many of the most successful investors I’ve interviewed, that freedom to construct a life that aligns authentically with their passions and peculiarities may be the single greatest luxury that money can buy.

p.s. Here is a list of the people profiled in this book; I can’t guarantee I got all of them but it’s definitely close. A good source for additional research.

  • Sir John Templeton
  • Irving Kahn
  • Bill Ruane
  • Marty Whitman
  • Jack Bogle
  • Charlie Munger
  • Ed Thorp
  • Howard Marks
  • Joel Greenblatt
  • Bill Miller
  • Mohnish Pabrai
  • Tom Gayner
  • Guy Spier
  • Fred Martin
  • Ken Shubin Stein
  • Matthew McLennan
  • Jeffrey Gundlach
  • Francis Chou
  • Thyra Zerhusen
  • Thomas Russo
  • Chuck Akre
  • Li Lu
  • Peter Lynch
  • Pat Dorsey
  • Michael Price
  • Mason Hawkins
  • Bill Ackman
  • Jeff Vinik
  • Mario Gabelli
  • Laura Geritz
  • Brian McMahon
  • Henry Ellenbogen
  • Donald Yacktman
  • Bill Nygren
  • Paul Lountzis
  • Jason Karp
  • Will Danoff
  • François Rochon
  • John Spears
  • Joel Tillinghast
  • Qais Zakaria
  • Nick Sleep
  • Paul Isaac
  • Mike Zapata
  • Paul Yablon
  • Whitney Tilson
  • François-Marie Wojcik
  • Sarah Ketterer
  • Christopher Davis
  • Raamdeo Agrawal
  • Arnold Van Den Berg
  • Mariko Gordon
  • Jean-Marie Eveillard
  • Guy Spier
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Happiness, Investing //

Happiness Exercises: Take Action To Improve Your Well-Being

Posted on May 31, 2021 // Leave a Comment

As I reach the end of the 10-week free Yale Happiness Course, I definitely recommend this course if you are ready to commit time and effort into making yourself feel better mentally. One of the key points is the G.I. Joe fallacy, which is the false notion that knowing about a mental bias is enough to overcome it. Knowing isn’t enough! Taking repeated action is required to achieve lasting change.

As such, much of the course is based on “rewirements”, but I think of them as “happiness exercises” because they only work temporarily for me. When I do them, I feel better immediately and for a little while afterward, but the effect wears off. This is similar to my experience with diets, in that diets don’t work.

Once you go back to your original eating habits, you’ll go back to your original weight. Therefore, any changes you make should be something you can maintain for the rest of your life.

Can you really change your life to include these habits? Well, here are the happiness exercises, along with a short description from the Yale course. Try each one for a week and discover which ones work best for your personal situation. I found the prompts to commit acts of kindness and initiate social connections were the most helpful, and a really do hope to keep them up forever. (I’ve already been working on the sleep and exercise bits for a while.)

Savoring

Savoring is the act of stepping outside of an experience to review and appreciate it. Often we fail to stay in the moment and really enjoy what we’re experiencing. Savoring intensifies and lengthens the positive emotions that come with doing something you love. For the next seven days, you will practice the art of savoring by picking one experience to truly savor each day. It could be a nice shower, a delicious meal, a great walk outside, or any experience that you really enjoy. When you take part in this savored experience, be sure to practice some common techniques that enhance savoring. These techniques include: sharing the experience with another person, thinking about how lucky you are to enjoy such an amazing moment, keeping a souvenir or photo of that activity, and making sure you stay in the present moment the entire time.

Gratitude

Gratitude is a positive emotional state in which one recognizes and appreciates what one has received in life. Research shows that taking time to experience gratitude can make you happier and even healthier. For the next seven days, you will take 5-10 minutes each night to write down five things for which you are grateful. They can be little things or big things. But you really have to focus on them and actually write them down.

Random Acts of Kindness

Research shows that happy people are motivated to do kind things for others. Over the next seven days, you will perform seven acts of kindness beyond what you normally do. You can do one extra act of kindness per day, or you can do a few acts of kindness in a single day. These do not have to be over-the-top or time-intensive acts, but they should be something that really helps or impacts another person. For example, help your colleague with something, give a few dollars or some time to a cause you believe in, say something kind to a stranger, write a thank you note, give blood, and so on.

Social Connection

Our social connections matter. Research shows that happy people spend more time with others and have a richer set of social connections than unhappy people. Studies even show that the simple act of talking to a stranger on the street can boost our mood more than we expect. Over the next seven days, you will try to focus on making one new social connection per day. It can be a small 5-minute act like sparking a conversation with someone on public transportation, asking a coworker about his/her day, or even chatting to the barista at a coffee shop. But you should also seek out more meaningful social connections, too. At least once this week, take a whole hour to connect with someone you care about— a friend who’s far away or a family member you haven’t talked to in a while. The key is that you must take the time needed to genuinely connect with another person.

Exercise

Research suggests that ~30 minutes a day of exercise can boost your mood in addition to making your body healthier. For the next week, you will spend each day getting your body moving with at least 30 minutes of exercise. Set aside a location and time (write it in your calendar!). Then hit the treadmill at the gym, do an online yoga class, or throw on some headphones and dance around your room to cheesy pop songs. This isn’t supposed to be a marathon-level of activity; it’s just to get your body moving a bit more than usual.

Sleep

One of the reasons we’re so unhappy in our modern lives is that we’re consistently sleep deprived. Research shows that sleep can improve your mood more than we often expect. For the next week, you must get at least seven hours of sleep for at least four nights of the next week. I know, I know. You’re super busy this week. There are deadlines to meet, friends to see, errands to run, etc. But sleep is going to make you feel better— both physically and mentally. So pick four nights this week, note them in your calendar, and get ready to get some much needed sleep. Also be sure to practice good sleep hygiene too— no devices before bed and try to avoid caffeine and alcohol on the days you’re getting your sleep on.

Meditate

Meditation is a practice of intentionally turning your attention away from distracting thoughts toward a single point of reference (e.g., the breath, bodily sensations, compassion, a specific thought, etc.). Research shows that meditation can have a number of positive benefits, including more positive moods, increased concentration, and more feelings of social connection. For the next week, you will spend each (at least) 10 minutes per day meditating. Find a quiet spot where you won’t be disturbed while you’re meditating. If you are new to meditation, you can try one of three guided meditations available on SoundCloud. And remember— meditation isn’t about the meditation itself; it’s about building a skill that we can use later. Lots of people find it hard at first, but stick with it and see if it allows you to feel a bit calmer over the course of the week.

For all of these exercises, you should find a way to track them – physical notebook, Notes smartphone app, daily planner, or the unpolished-but-free ReWi app (iOS, Android). By keeping track, you make it much more likely that you’ll maintain a streak and eventually make it a life-changing habit like eating healthier foods or regular exercise.

Also see:

Filed Under: Behavioral Economics, Family, Happiness //

Are You Unknowingly a Time Billionaire?

Posted on April 30, 2021 // 1 Comment

The 2021 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting is streaming live on Yahoo Finance this weekend, and I am reminded of a lesser known quote from Warren Buffett about what is truly valuable. I believe he has said this elsewhere, but I found it repeated in a 2020 commencement speech (YouTube link) at the University of Nebraska:

There is nobody I would rather be than a young person graduating from the University of Nebraska today. […] I would say this to the current year’s class: ‘I would love to trade places with any of them.’ They feel they’re going out into an uncertain world and all of that, but there’s never been a better time.

During a Tim Ferriss podcast, investor Graham Duncan discussed the concept of a “time billionaire” and how it is hard to understand the magnitude difference between a billion and a million.

Graham Duncan: I was listening to a guy introduced a speaker a while ago. And he was saying people don’t really understand the difference between billionaires and millionaires. He said a million seconds is like 11 days. A billion seconds is 31 years.

This means a 20-year old is technically a time multi-billionaire. If you’re in your 40s or even early 50s, the odds are likely that you still have a billion seconds left as well. Have you considered how valuable that is? One of the richest people in the world would gladly trade places with you. I’m betting that nearly anyone with a billion dollars would trade it for a billion more seconds.

This Pomp Letter article and Wealest article both expand upon this idea of appreciating the value of time, including how young people should use this time to their advantage. Don’t take for granted the ability to throw yourself at something nonstop. I think short periods of crazy 100-hours-a-week focus is underrated. Take your shot. If you fail, so what?

If you fail, you have nothing, which is the same position you’re in right now.

You have no mortgage to pay, no family to support, and nothing to lose.

This makes you powerful. Your upside is many times greater than your downside.

Also mentioned is the Life in Weeks calendar from WaitButWhy.

Time is a limited resource, and just like with money, you have to spend it wisely and consciously. Don’t waste it without intention. Look at how many hours we spend on consuming media, via Visual Capitalist.

Bottom line. We can look up to certain wealthy people for knowledge and wisdom, but there are other important resources beyond money. Yes, it’s a cliché, but it is still so easily forgotten in this busy, competitive, stressful world. Many of us are extraordinarily wealthy in time, wealthy in love and relationships, and/or wealthy with a healthy mind and body. Someone out there would pay billions of dollars for what you have. I must remind myself to appreciate my wealth in all forms, and use it intentionally. I worry about running of out money, but also running out of time.

Filed Under: Career, Happiness, Time Management //

Free Character Traits Test: Identify Your Signature Personality Strengths

Posted on April 19, 2021 // Leave a Comment

I’m now in Week 5 of the free Yale Happiness Course, which focuses on finding things that truly make you happy, as opposed to the 5 Surprising Things That Don’t Make You As Happy As You Think.

For example, instead of equating a “good job” with high income, you should redefine a good job as one that allows you to express many of your “signature personality strengths”. When regularly using their specific signature strengths in daily life, people reported higher levels or happiness and lower levels of depressive symptoms. In another study, being able to use your strengths at work resulted in higher productivity and job satisfaction.

In the early 2000s, something groundbreaking occurred in the social sciences: Scientists discovered a common language of 24 character strengths make up what’s best about our personality. Everyone possesses all 24 character strengths in different degrees, so each person has a truly unique character strengths profile. Each character strength falls under one of these six broad virtue categories, which are universal across cultures and nations.

How can you identify your signature personality strengths? The VIA Institute on Character offers a free Character Strengths Profile that takes about 10 minutes and will list your strengths from highest to lowest based on your self-assessment answers. Here are the six broad “core virtues” and the 24 character traits that they measure:

  • Wisdom: creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning, perspective
  • Courage: bravery, persistence, honesty, zest
  • Humanity: love, kindness, social intelligence
  • Justice: teamwork, fairness, leadership
  • Temperance: forgiveness, humility, prudence, self-regulation
  • Transcendence: appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, spirituality

Everyone likes a nice graphic, so here’s one that adds a short explanation (source .zip file):

Character strengths are the core personality traits that define your unique identity and make you feel authentic, alive and engaged in life. Your free Character Strengths Profile below lists your strengths from highest to lowest based on the positive qualities that are strongest in you! Research shows learning about your strengths and how to express them can make you happier, less stressed, more productive at work and better connected to others. Interested in exploring the best parts of yourself? Check out our personalized, in-depth Total 24 or Top 5 Reports and use your strengths to build your best life.

Out of my top 5 character strengths, two were from Temperance, two were from Wisdom, and one was from Courage. The self-assessment does require you to be honest about your weaknesses, even if it may not feel great to admit them. I didn’t pay for a premium report, but I printed out the results and hopefully can incorporate them better in my daily life.

This activity reminds me of the #1 Thing People Regret The Most On Their Deathbeds:

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

Filed Under: Career, Happiness //
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