🟢 Risky
What big bets would you take earlier in life if you could go back?
(2 min read)
Risk has been the theme of my week.
Katie and I ended up deciding to buy some more Bitcoin.
Then it quickly crashed 11.4%! 🙄 Oh well. We have a long-term view.
I decided to splurge and deplete my savings further by booking a trip to visit siblings even though I have no income.
Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins helped me think about life decisions differently.
We’re still thinking about the irreversible decision about whether to have a kid.
Die With Zero
The book’s title is intentionally extreme.
The point isn’t to try to calculate your spending such that you have zero assets by the time you die, leaving nothing to your kids.
The goal is to help people question convention.
Typical approaches to life don’t make sense.
Financial gifts
Why is it so common for people to leave a lump sum of wealth to their kids when they die, which is often not until the kids are in their 50s or 60s?
Those kids would have appreciated windfalls even more back in their 20s or 30s when they were trying to figure their lives out.
Plus, for the giver, being appreciated when you’re alive probably feels better than after you die. 😉
Bucket lists
Many of us kick the can down the road.
“Someday I’ll run a marathon.”
“Someday I’ll go on a safari.”
“Someday I’ll backpack through Europe.”
“Someday I’ll go skydiving.”
People make this mistake of postponing activities that older people can’t or won’t do.
Would you really sleep on bunk beds in a hostel when you’re 60?
Do you really think your knees will allow you to run a marathon at 65?
We can have much fuller lives if we sort our dream activities appropriately.
The ones that require certain physical fitness should happen sooner.
Same with ones that require less fancy tastes (e.g. camping at Yosemite).
Other activities might as well wait until later:
Mastering chess, going to lots of concerts, learning extra languages for fun, taking cooking lessons, volunteering.
Risk-taking
The tip that stands out the most:
Young people can take risks with minimal downside risk and maximum upside.
They have less to lose!
In your youth, if you take a big gamble when starting a company or making an investment, a win could change the course of your whole life.
A big loss would lead you to feel “I have a lot of work ahead of me”, which you probably already felt anyway.
Mark Cuban echoed this point in Lex Fridman’s recent interview.
He started his company at 25 when he was sleeping on the floor of a 3-bedroom apartment with 6 guys.
“I couldn’t go any lower. So there was no downside,” he says.
Looking back on my 20s, I can’t recall specific opportunities that I skipped where I could have swung for the fences.
But if I could live my early life over again, I’d look for them.
Instead, I played it so safe.
My investments were ridiculously diversified for a 22-year-old.
Maybe it would have made sense to learn how to borrow extra cash to invest (to jack up the leverage of that portfolio).
Or maybe simply invest 100% in the S&P 500 instead of diversifying across asset classes and geography.
But I’m only 40 years old now… and will live until… who knows when?
Maybe exponential advances of technology extend our lifespans such that we are still near the beginnings of our lives.
What do you think?
How do you decide your tolerance for risk in various parts of your life?
🕙 What we learned in recent posts:
🟢 $20M profit by talking to yourself?
🟢 Bitcoin bullshit (+ the truth)
🟢 What’s BETTER than more profit?
👀 Caught my eye this week:
This video popped up in my feed, and this guy reminds me of my brother in law.
I like how he says:
“You just need to establish some good habits around a few important things.
The most important things.
The things that have always been the most important.
Good food, daily exercise, spending some time with your family and friends, getting outdoors, getting some fresh air and some sun, having fun, laughing, having a purpose (whatever expression that might take for you).
The everyday seemingly humble parts of our lives the power of which cannot be bottled or replicated and another one of those cosmic paradoxes that is worth paying attention to:
It’s the little things that have the greatest impact.”
For me:
basketball
neighborhood walks with Katie
bulk prep of easy, delicious, plant-based vegan meals 🌱
laughing at and cuddling Baguette 🥖, our cat
(3m10s video)
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I loved Die With Zero! Definitely helped me have a better relationship with risk at the point when I made the decision to start my company. Now or never. I knew it had to be now!
I know the book and it's spot on. A number of retirees are scared to death of selling their investments. They keep working part-time. That's insane.