Wisdom Journal
Money Mindset
Morgan Housel:
“The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving … Modern capitalism is a pro at two things: generating wealth and generating envy. Perhaps they go hand in hand; wanting to surpass your peers can be the fuel of hard work. But life isn’t any fun without a sense of enough. Happiness, as it’s said, is just results minus expectations.”
“Social comparison is the problem … Consider a rookie baseball player who earns $500,000 a year. He is, by any definition, rich. But say he plays on the same team as Mike Trout, who has a 12-year, $430 million contract. By comparison, the rookie is broke. But then think about Mike Trout. Thirty-six million dollars per year is an insane amount of money. But to make it on the list of the top-ten highest-paid hedge fund managers in 2018 you needed to earn at least $340 million in one year … the ceiling of social comparison is so high that virtually no one will ever hit it. Which means it’s a battle that can never be won, or that the only way to win is to not fight to begin with—to accept that you might have enough, even if it’s less than those around you.”
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Lynne Twist:
Scarcity:
"Scarcity is a lie. Independent of any actual amount of resources, it is an unexamined and false system of assumptions, opinions, and beliefs from which we view the world as a place where we are in constant danger of having our needs unmet."
“… our relationship with money … rob us of the satisfaction and fulfillment we’re looking for in life”
"Money itself isn't the problem. Money isn't 'bad' or 'good.' … It's our interpretation of money, our interaction with it, where the real mischief is and where we find the real opportunity for self-discovery and personal transformation."
Sufficiency:
"When you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, it frees up oceans of energy to make a difference with what you have. When you make a difference with what you have, it expands.”
“Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency. By sufficiency, I don’t mean a quantity of anything. Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough.”
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Ramit Sethi:
"Live your rich life today AND tomorrow."
Avoid the blind pursuit of money, without realizing that your rich life is actually lived along the journey - not at the final destination. Use it now while continuing to drive wealth creation the way you feel like doing that. Yes, it's hard. That's how it's supposed to be. "First I'll invest - later I'll enjoy it" doesn't work because you won't have the muscle of knowing how to live a joyful rich life if you start doing that in your sixties. One does not come after the other. They're beautifully intertwined. This is important. We want to make today magical. That's the purpose of money.
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Rich Litvin:
Work on your general mindsets and character first. Money isn’t your identity. It’s an amplifier. If you are not a kind, creative and happy person before you have a lot of money, you won’t be once you do.
Mastering the money game is a long-term game. It is possible to master it in less than 10 years and without a commitment to years of studying, reading, researching, learning and teaching about money. But it’s your commitment to be in it for the long haul that makes the difference.
Money is an infinite game. You make new rules as you play. There are no winners or losers. The purpose of the game is to keep playing. There is no finish line. No end point. The problem is that most people approach infinite games as if they were finite. They want to be perfect parents, they think if they had X$ they will finally be happy. Finite players make plans and set goals and try to avoid ever being surprised. Infinite players expect the unexpected and have fun in seeking it out.