What are your Rich Life Goals?
An easy framework to put "riches" in perspective.
Welcome to the 31 new Thinkers who joined Thinking Cap(ital), thanks for continuing to share this with friends, we’re now 125 strong 💪
As many of you know, the goal is to reach 1,000 people by the end of this year. Cheers to the first 💯+ of you all and thank you for joining me on this journey 🙏
Some housekeeping
Before we get into it, let’s get organized. A newsletter like this is inherently limited by its incongruous nature to the messages, tasks, and personal matters adjacent to it in your inbox. While many emails are one-way communications or tasks to be done, the aim of ThinkingCap is to build confidence within our financial lives. Ultimately, freeing our minds from financial stressors so we can focus on what’s really important.
To keep us organized, I thought it might be helpful to have a central hub for reference. Don’t get too excited, it’s just a Google Sheet (for now), but perhaps this can evolve with time. Check out the work in progress hub here, and please email me with any suggestions on how to improve it.
Welcome to February
With Valentine’s Day within reach, I thought it would be fun to focus on exercises that can be done with your significant other. If you don’t have a SO, no worries, these are still very useful to do solo, and regardless of your situation, it’s usually worth starting these solo to ensure you’re being 100% honest with yourself before sharing. So where do we begin…
Rich Life Goals
For those familiar with Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, you may have thought of these already. For the uninitiated, Sethi is a best selling author with a refreshingly unique perspective on many aspects of personal finance. My favorite takeaway from Sethi is that he starts by asking folks to describe what their rich life looks like. In his words…
Well, one of the key insights of my work over the last 16 years has been that rich is quite different for each of us. And interestingly, rich might be your ability to go out and buy a $1,000 cashmere sweater. Great. No problem with that at all. Go for it. For others, it might be being able to pick up your son or daughter from school at 3 pm. That's also a rich life. But one of the things that I like to do when I start off talking about money with people, I don't talk about compound interest, I don't talk about asset allocation. I start off by asking people what their rich life is. And it is absolutely fascinating how people respond to that question.
Let’s digest that together. A rich life doesn’t necessarily mean a life full of luxury goods and Michelin dining. A rich life can be the freedom to walk away from your job for a few hours of family time, paying off a student loan that’s been hanging over you for the past decade, or simply splurging for an appetizer during the occasional night out. I find that perspective can be more powerful towards building your rich life than the actual item itself, that’s why it’s great to speak with those close to you to better understand what makes a rich life for them.
My Rich Life Goals
In that spirit, here are a few personal rich life goals:
When in doubt, order a cab — instead of waiting to see how I’ll feel after a night out with friends, I now factor the costs of a cab home as de facto. It makes my entire night that much more enjoyable to know I’m not beholden to a train schedule.
Never show up empty-handed — if friends invite us over, even if it’s for a quick drink before we head out somewhere, it’s so nice to have a small gift, bottle of wine, or snack to bring. My family raised me this way and somewhere between broke college student and perpetually rushed NY’er I had lost sight of this simple gesture of gratitude.
Stick to brandname hotels — after one too many subpar rental experiences, there are only a few cities where I’ll opt for a non loyalty hotel (Tokyo is a great example of a city where most every hotel stay is amazing). Sticking with a few major hotel groups ensures that I can easily share my room preferences beforehand and have a good night’s sleep. My room preferences typically being non-street facing, and as far as possible from the elevators, gym, and ice machines.
Of course some rich life goals can me a little more material and pricey, but the joy that I get from those three above far exceeds their costs in the grand scheme of things.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it is to consider your own rich life goals.
Once you’re done, you should share them with those close to you, and I whole-heartedly welcome you forwarding them over to me 🤗 If you’re open to it, I can aggregate and share them anonymously next Thursday, or you can leave a comment directly below.
A slight diversion…
For my fellow nerds, I really enjoyed the latest Ark Invest Big Ideas 2022 report. It runs the gamut of their holdings and conveniently paints a bullish picture, but I don’t want to discount the insights. I particularly enjoyed the framing in their Web3 section, like this slide speaking to NFT holders across smart contract blockchains:
Despite crypto Twitter (CT) feeds chock full of NFT profile pics, we have yet to hit a combined 1 million unique monthly buyers. We’re still early. Download the full report here.
Until next Thursday!
<$ Armand