The most mispriced asset you own.
Expanding the definition of rich beyond finances.
This piece might be slightly more abstract than some of my previous pieces. We won’t cover any tax nuances, investments, or even any calculations today.
Rather, I’d like to make the argument that life is like a loan.
It is something that is borrowed. From day one, we start crossing off days until suddenly, we don’t anymore.
Throughout that time, we focus so much on money. It quietly drives many decisions we make throughout life.
Which car to drive, apartment to rent, restaurant to eat at. It goes on and on. Money is a constant throughout our borrowed time.
Yet we slowly lose track of life itself. We live for a weekend, book vacations to look forward to, and continue crossing off days.
So, if life is like a loan, that’d mean we might be able to pay it off early.
I came across a TikTok one day in which someone offered another person $10,000,000. Of course, it was hypothetical.
They followed the offer with one caveat. You’d receive $10,000,000 today, but there would be no tomorrow.
Almost everyone, and I’d bet 100% of my younger readers, wouldn’t put a present value on their future life experiences. There’s just no sum of money that’d be reasonable for someone to cut it short. I’d argue that $10,000,000 is a wildly significant amount of money to about 99.9999% of the globe, but who would take this deal?!
What resonated with me is that if our last day was worth more than $10,000,000, but we have no idea when that last day might be, shouldn’t every day be valued that way?
People have argued that the odds of you being born as you are 1 in 400 trillion. When it’s phrased like that, it becomes pretty obvious that we may be richer than we’d ever fathomed.
It’s something to think about, especially for younger professionals. I’m not here to discourage anyone from achieving their goals or fear-monger people into thinking they need to quit their jobs.
But I will definitely encourage people to find balance in their lives. Find things you enjoy and work you truly like if possible (I know this isn’t always the case.) Take time to enjoy life itself. Work is not life. Although, if you can find something you truly enjoy, work can feel a lot less like work.
It is so important to find balance financially, personally, and professionally.
Money can serve us, but at a certain point, if we aren’t purposeful in our financial lives, we become servants to our money.
This is for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal, tax, or investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security or strategy. The investment strategy and themes discussed herein may be unsuitable for investors depending on their specific investment objectives and financial situation. Opinions expressed in this commentary reflect subjective judgments of the author based on conditions at the time of publication and are subject to change without notice. Past performance is not indicative of future results.