Become financially independent
Markets crash. On average, the market falls 10% once a year, about 20% every four or five years, about 30% every decade, and 50% a few times during your lifetime.
I used to think weathering market downturns should be easy. The market always recovers and reaches new highs. As Charlie Munger puts it:
“You can argue that if you’re not willing to react with equanimity to a market price decline of 50% two or three times a century, you’re not fit...
Have you heard the story of Grace Groner?
She attended Lake Forest College, in Illinois, and after graduating in 1931 took a job at Abbott Laboratories, where she worked as a secretary for four decades.
In 1935 she bought three shares of Abbott stock for $60 each. Over the years the shares split many times, and she always reinvested any dividends.
Groner lived simply: buying clothes from garage sales, walking rather than owning a car, and living...
It’s Sunday morning, and every Sunday morning I walk down the street to this meditation center to sit and meditate for an hour.
You might remember that time I went to a 10-day silent meditation retreat. When I got back I was meditating two hours every day, because that’s what the instructor told us to do.
Well, you can probably guess that meditating for two hours a day doesn’t last very long unless...
At 26 I bought a little condo. I was going to live there five years or something like that.
That’s what most people do. They buy a “starter home” before upgrading to vaulted ceilings, walk-in closets, and double vanities. Why clean one sink when you can clean two?
At some point I decided more doesn’t mean better. That 1,000 square feet is good enough, and because I’ve lived here forever people ask me if it’s paid off. I don’t care if they...
Minimalism isn’t just for people who want to live out of a van or cram their life into a backpack.
This is what you usually think of when you hear about minimalism, but minimalism is really just a mindset.
When I was younger I was in a 12-step program, and a popular saying there was “take what you want, and leave the rest.”
That’s a pretty good description of what minimalism is. If something is useful or valuable you keep...
