Financial writer Morgan Housel‘s 2020 bestselling
From The Psychology of Money
At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.” Enough. I was stunned by the simple eloquence of that word—stunned for two reasons: first, because I have been given so much in my own life and, second, because Joseph Heller couldn’t have been more accurate. For a critical element of our society, including many of the wealthiest and most powerful among us, there seems to be no limit today on what enough entails.*
Modern capitalism is a pro at two things: generating wealth and generating envy. Perhaps they go hand in hand; wanting to surpass your peers can be the fuel of hard work. But life isn’t any fun without a sense of enough. Happiness, as it’s said, is just results minus expectations.**
If expectations rise with results, there is no logic in striving for more because you’ll feel the same after putting in extra effort. It gets dangerous when the taste of having more — more money, more power, more prestige — increases ambition faster than satisfaction.
Savings can be created by spending less. You can spend less if you desire less. And you will desire less if you care less about what others think of you.
There is no reason to risk what you have and need for what you don’t have and don’t need.
Planning is important, but the most important part of every plan is to plan on the plan not going according to plan.
Karl Pillemer interviewed a thousand elderly Americans looking for the most important lessons they learned from decades of life experience. He wrote: No one—not a single person out of a thousand—said that to be happy you should try to work as hard as you can to make money to buy the things you want. No one—not a single person—said it’s important to be at least as wealthy as the people around you, and if you have more than they do it’s real success. No one—not a single person—said you should choose your work based on your desired future earning power.***
From Same As Ever
The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations you’re going to be miserable your whole life. You want to have reasonable expectations and take life’s results, good and bad, as they happen with a certain amount of stoicism.****
Everything worth pursuing comes with a little pain. The trick is not minding that it hurts.
The best financial plan is to save like a pessimist and invest like an optimist.*****
The asterisks above after certain quotes correlate with previous Minding Therapy posts.
* Joseph Heller’s Something Happened
** More quotes on happiness
****Stoicism
