The Most Important Investment in Life…

No I don’t make tons of money and no I didn’t start saving 10-20% of my income when I started working at 16 years old.  If I had though (damn!)…  Part of learning about how money works over the last 10 years is realizing where I’ve made mistakes over the last 24 years of having a job and having an income.  I talked about a couple of those mistakes in the post this past Friday (https://travisdaigle.com/2023/04/07/millennial-angst-burning-money/).

To sum it up, I spent a total of $14,000 trying to learn how to Day Trade (and I did learn) and learning how to build a business as a motivational speaker (and I did learn).  I also learned in each scenario that what was required to do those things successfully in the long run was not what I wanted to do.  The everyday mechanics and tactics just weren’t for me.  Part of my drive to do both was an anxiety about the future because I understood that I had lost a lot of opportunity to build wealth in the stock market because I didn’t start saving 10-20% of my income from the day I started working.  For the last 3 years, that’s what I’ve been doing faithfully.  Slow and Steady.

If my income stays at the same level for the next 25 years it probably won’t be enough to not have to work at all.  Being a security Guard who has a passion for writing and communication, I can’t bet that my income is going to skyrocket at some point to make up for what I didn’t save when I was younger.  That may prompt the question, “Well if you’re too behind to catch up, why save at all?”

Simple, something is better than nothing.  

I work 5 days a week right now.  My wife has a small business that’s doing well and I just started assisting her with her accounting.  I write 5-6 days a week for an hour or more.  I work on YouTube videos 2-3 days a week for an hour or more.  I also workout everyday and do all the chores that come with maintaining a living space like cooking and cleaning etc.  My schedule is pretty damn full.  Gratefully, I’m enjoying it now but I don’t think I’ll want to maintain this pace forever.  If I keep saving at my current rate I’m fairly positive that working 3 days a week as an hourly employee somewhere will be an easily achievable goal when I hit 65 years old.  I’m not counting on social security as I personally am not confident it will be around at that point (2048).  I think I’ll still be writing and I know I’ll still be working out.  I’ll have more time for both and more time for my family.  

No, it’s not the 

‘never have to work again’ 

‘my dues are paid’ 

baby boomer version of retirement.  

But it’s also not the 

‘work 40 years doing a job I never cared about’ 

‘retire having no idea who I really am and no idea what to do with my time so I started working again’ 

version of retirement either. 

Basically, I’ve realized in the last 3 years that what I haven’t saved up in money, I’m making up for in health and purpose that I’ve cultivated through learning and experimenting.  I think I said this recently, but the more I spend time writing the better my attitude and energy is for my security job.  I’ve been picking up more shifts at work lately as I find myself more content with life in general and more tuned in to who I am as a person.

It’s a totally different mindset from my parents values and what they pursued in a job/career life.  One of the things that I’ve seen in my family when people get close to retirement in their 60’s is people not knowing what they are going to do with themselves.  It can actually cause quite a bit of fear and trepidation.  I think part of the fear is the realization that even after you put in all this work at a job to retire, now you may have to work hard to figure out who you are as a person and how you will order your time.  This says to me that there is a deeper definition of work that includes more than a job that pays us money.  As a matter of fact, work for money might be the easiest form of work because the payoff is very tangible.  

I think we would all agree that working to know one’s self is hard but I’m grateful that I’ve been putting ‘money’ in that account since I was 10 years old.  That’s when I got tired of kids bullying me because I was overweight and I realized that I was the only one who could do something about it.  The literal blood, sweat, and tears I invested in learning and working out to lose weight, fostered a deep process of introspection and began a habit in investing in self knowledge through taking personal ownership… the most important skill in life… and maybe the most important investment.