Spending Time Wisely

Wealth is not measured solely in physical assets but also in time. The point of wealth is not merely to own stuff, but to have time to enjoy life. The only purpose of physical assets is to make life enjoyable, to give us time to do what we want to do.

From this it follows that it makes little sense to spend a lot of time doing things that we'd rather not want to do in order to acquire physical assets. The effort to acquire assets should be as pleasant as possible. That way, we can enjoy life while we're working towards the goal of enjoying life even more.

This means that we should try to live our lives as if we were rich already. Avoid tasks that we do not plan to spend time doing the day our ship comes in. Whatever we dream of doing if we were rich should largely define what we do with our lives in the present.

If our goal is to spend time out golfing, then why not take up golfing right away? If we dream of spending more time with friends and family, do this right away. Live as richly as possible.

Time spent acquiring physical wealth should be kept to a minimum. Investments and savings should not occupy our time more than absolutely necessary, and a few very simple principles can help us achieve exactly that.

First of all, we have to recognize that our current financial system is hostile to conventional savings. Real interest rates are negative, so saving money in the bank is both risky and guaranteed to give a loss over time.

Sound money like gold and silver, on the other hand, tend to gain purchasing power in line with the productivity increases of society. Sound money does not yield interest, since sound money is no longer used by banks, but it is still better than fiat money kept in banks.

Then there are real estate which gives us the opportunity to live in our own investment. Owning our own house or flat is a great way to enjoy savings right away.

Stocks and bonds are good ways to save too. However, only if they are managed by others. The time spent following the day to day moves of individual stocks are seldom worth the effort. Very few people see themselves spending their lives doing this if they were rich enough to avoid it, so it makes no sense to spend time doing this when there are good alternatives like buying an index fund.

A good portfolio of assets consists of sound money, real estate, and index funds. The only management required on our part is the allocation to each of these classes, and for this there are historical charts to guide us, such as the Dow-Gold ratio, the S&P Price Earning ratio, and the real estate to gold ratio.

A comfortable home

By Vesahjr - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link