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October 15 - October 17, 2024
That’s the real definition of risk—what’s left over after you’ve prepared for the risks you can imagine. Risk is what you don’t see.
“Invest in preparedness, not in prediction.”
in personal finance, the right amount of savings is when it feels like it’s a little too much. It should feel excessive; it should make you wince a little.
Today’s economy is good at generating three things: wealth, the ability to show off wealth, and great envy for other people’s wealth.
The best story wins. Not the best idea, or the right idea, or the most rational idea.
If you have the right answer and you’re a good storyteller, you’ll almost certainly get ahead.
Washington said, “At your highest moment, be careful. That’s when the devil comes for you.”
“A tree that grows quickly rots quickly and therefore never has a chance to grow old,” forester Peter Wohlleben wrote. Haste makes waste.
A lot of progress and good news concerns things that didn’t happen, whereas virtually all bad news is about what did occur.
What Gates seems to get is that you can only be an optimist in the long run if you’re pessimistic enough to survive the short run.
In the middle is the sweet spot, what I call the rational optimists: those who acknowledge that history is a constant chain of problems and disappointments and setbacks, but who remain optimistic because they know setbacks don’t prevent eventual progress.
The trick in any field—from finance to careers to relationships—is being able to survive the short-run problems so you can stick around long enough to enjoy the long-term growth. Save like a pessimist and invest like an optimist.
Plan like a pessimist and dream like an optimist.
Charlie Munger once noted: “The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want. It’s such a simple idea. It’s the golden rule. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end.”
It’s easiest to convince people that you’re special if they don’t know you well enough to see all the ways you’re not.
Disagreement has less to do with what people know and more to do with what they’ve experienced. And since experiences will always be different, disagreement will be constant.
