Investing General Discussion

Gold has never gone up, it's still just Au. Just more fun than saying the dollar went down...again. That is what unproductive assets are for, to keep being the thing they are, while the dollar does what it does best being a two bit whore.

Was thinking the other day about some comments and wanted to offer a different perspective. We don't even need to beat inflation to be better off. Not when your NW is beyond your annual need. My NW doesn't need to outpace the dollars loss. I don't spend my NW so it's buying power is of interest to me at a smaller scale. If I spend $50k a year to support my lifestyle and inflation is 5% then I need to gain $2500 more to maintain my position , I don't need 5% on my NW to retain my position.

The point of this is that living below your means is a far bigger factor in being better off than your investment returns. A person could become better and better off for decades and not once out perform the S&P or inflation, then you want to tell that person, "Yeah but adjusted for inflation you're worse off!" But the actual lived experience might be, "guy I have enough money to live my current standard of living for the next 80 years."

I believe it's important to circle back to that every once in awhile, as chasing performance can be exhausting and we have much more control over lifestyle choices than we do chasing top gains. I'm sometimes mad at myself, should have made more etc. Returned 8% of NW damn that should have been 15% had I just done this and this, meanwhile that gain alone is more than I spend in years. Sometimes the real life application of all this matters.