Welcome to Wednesday, Apexians. If all has gone according to plan, I’m on a plane to Wisconsin at this very moment. Kim and I are flying out to visit her best friend for a week. But have no fear! I gathered money stories in advance so that you’ll have good things to read for the rest of the week. Good things like these.
Are you lucky or good? [Can I Retire Yet?] — “It is worth considering whether we’ve made good decisions or whether we’ve just been lucky to have such positive outcomes. If you are assessing your own retirement readiness, it is worth considering how heavily to weigh the input of those who recently preceded you.”
Why success doesn’t lead to satisfaction. [Harvard Business Review] — “The insatiable goals to acquire more, succeed conspicuously, and be as attractive as possible lead us to objectify one another, and even ourselves. When people see themselves as little more than their attractive bodies, jobs, or bank accounts, it brings great suffering…You become a heartless taskmaster to yourself, seeing yourself as nothing more than Homo economicus. Love and fun are sacrificed for another day of work, in search of a positive internal answer to the question Am I successful yet? We become cardboard cutouts of real people.”
The life hedge. [We’re Gonna Get Those Bastards] — “I construct a portfolio in such a way that I might limp along or be flat during expansions, but explode higher during recessions. So when things are good, I’m making money at my job, but not really excited about my investments, but when things are bad, and I’m losing money in my business, it is more than offset by the gains in my portfolio. So instead of being either deliriously happy or despondent, I am pretty much Even Steven all the time. No stress. I call this ‘The Life Hedge’.”
Let’s wrap up today with something that, to me, is simultaneously super fun and soul-crushing. Here’s a CBC story from 1970 about collecting “antique” comic books.
This is fun for me because I’ve been an avid comics fan since I first learned of their existence back in, say, 1974. It’s soul-crushing to me when I hear how little certain comics sold for back then (then compare that with how much they sell for today). If only I could have bought a copy of Superman #1 when I was fifteen months old haha!