I think of 3 variables when I think of life. Time, money, and freedom. You can have a lot of time and money, but without freedom, your quality of life is very poor.
Freedom is your ability to exercise free will to decide what to to with both your time and money, and is measured by the level of dependence you have to people and systems.
Like you pointed out, you have very little freedom when your chained to a corporate job, but you also don't have very much freedom when you are a baby (with the most amount of time you will ever have) or when you are old and infeeble (and likely when you will have the most amount of money you will ever have).
That's why an equally important investment, more so now than ever, are relationships grounded in love, dignity, and respect, because good parents give their children as much freedom as they can safely manage when they are babies, and well raised children do likewise with their parents when they are old.
Being a millionaire in your 70s doesn't matter much when you are in an assisted living center, alone, unloved, unable to care for yourself, and at the mercy of people with no emotional attachment to your well being.
That is when a deficit in freedom really becomes apparent.
I also think precious metals are imminently due for a parabolic rise owing to the recognition of the importance of freedom among Baby Boomers, as they approach their statistical life expectancy and realize they need their children to live out their last years with any level of freedom that allows them to die with dignity.
Gold and silver are investments so simple a small child can understand, and with a shoebox of gold coins or a small chest full of silver, you can represent the entire lifetime of a person's labour in a tangible form someone who doesn't know how to read, write, or even speak can recognize.
Real estate, stock portfolios, crypto wallets, luxury consumer goods, fine art, sports cars, insurance policies, even cash in quantities required to describe a person's legacy are impossible for a small child to understand the intrinsic value of, but 50 bars of gold is something anyone can quantify the value of very quickly.
When settling an estate, the kind of fighting that will happen between siblings of complex portfolios of such things will most certainly tear families apart, and Boomers who hand power of attorney before they die are going to discover their imagined wealth in such assets will create family feuds that will result in their abandonment by their children, leading them to spend the last months or years of life in a situation indistinguishable from hell.
The smart ones will convert much or all of their estate to gold before this happens, because there's no way for their beneficiaries to argue when they hand them equal sized stacks of gold over the intentions of their last will and testaments.
Yes I agree that freedom is a vital ingredient! I was looking to reference a post (That I thought I had written) joining time, money and freedom of control.
I recall you writing a such a post. Currently my wife and I are caring for a severely disabled elderly relative, our severely disabled child, elderly parents, as well as our other children. It's a very heavy load to carry, so much so that the necessity of freedom cannot be understated.
Most people in the West fail to appreciate and understand the actual meaning of freedom.
As I said previously, it is the ability to exercise free will to decide what to do with the resources in your possession.
We're also currently traveling in Vietnam and it's shocking to see this principle in action here. The people here have far less resources than what anyone in, say, Canada, the US or Western Europe does. But they have the maximum ability to exercise free will to choose what they do with those resources.
The consequence to this is that they may not have the same material affluence, but the amount of personal freedom they have is astonishing.
The result is that the people live much more in harmony with one another than we do in the West.
Not to idealize, because there are very clear trade offs between Vietnamese society and Western, but the one thing that is most endearing about having been here for the past 2 weeks is that there's a kind of patience, humility, and kindness you just can't find anywhere in the West.
People here don't have enormous egos the way we do in the West which, paradoxically, is also the biggest thief of our freedom.
The absence of which is the greatest source of theirs.
I think of 3 variables when I think of life. Time, money, and freedom. You can have a lot of time and money, but without freedom, your quality of life is very poor.
Freedom is your ability to exercise free will to decide what to to with both your time and money, and is measured by the level of dependence you have to people and systems.
Like you pointed out, you have very little freedom when your chained to a corporate job, but you also don't have very much freedom when you are a baby (with the most amount of time you will ever have) or when you are old and infeeble (and likely when you will have the most amount of money you will ever have).
That's why an equally important investment, more so now than ever, are relationships grounded in love, dignity, and respect, because good parents give their children as much freedom as they can safely manage when they are babies, and well raised children do likewise with their parents when they are old.
Being a millionaire in your 70s doesn't matter much when you are in an assisted living center, alone, unloved, unable to care for yourself, and at the mercy of people with no emotional attachment to your well being.
That is when a deficit in freedom really becomes apparent.
I also think precious metals are imminently due for a parabolic rise owing to the recognition of the importance of freedom among Baby Boomers, as they approach their statistical life expectancy and realize they need their children to live out their last years with any level of freedom that allows them to die with dignity.
Gold and silver are investments so simple a small child can understand, and with a shoebox of gold coins or a small chest full of silver, you can represent the entire lifetime of a person's labour in a tangible form someone who doesn't know how to read, write, or even speak can recognize.
Real estate, stock portfolios, crypto wallets, luxury consumer goods, fine art, sports cars, insurance policies, even cash in quantities required to describe a person's legacy are impossible for a small child to understand the intrinsic value of, but 50 bars of gold is something anyone can quantify the value of very quickly.
When settling an estate, the kind of fighting that will happen between siblings of complex portfolios of such things will most certainly tear families apart, and Boomers who hand power of attorney before they die are going to discover their imagined wealth in such assets will create family feuds that will result in their abandonment by their children, leading them to spend the last months or years of life in a situation indistinguishable from hell.
The smart ones will convert much or all of their estate to gold before this happens, because there's no way for their beneficiaries to argue when they hand them equal sized stacks of gold over the intentions of their last will and testaments.
Yes I agree that freedom is a vital ingredient! I was looking to reference a post (That I thought I had written) joining time, money and freedom of control.
I recall you writing a such a post. Currently my wife and I are caring for a severely disabled elderly relative, our severely disabled child, elderly parents, as well as our other children. It's a very heavy load to carry, so much so that the necessity of freedom cannot be understated.
Most people in the West fail to appreciate and understand the actual meaning of freedom.
As I said previously, it is the ability to exercise free will to decide what to do with the resources in your possession.
We're also currently traveling in Vietnam and it's shocking to see this principle in action here. The people here have far less resources than what anyone in, say, Canada, the US or Western Europe does. But they have the maximum ability to exercise free will to choose what they do with those resources.
The consequence to this is that they may not have the same material affluence, but the amount of personal freedom they have is astonishing.
The result is that the people live much more in harmony with one another than we do in the West.
Not to idealize, because there are very clear trade offs between Vietnamese society and Western, but the one thing that is most endearing about having been here for the past 2 weeks is that there's a kind of patience, humility, and kindness you just can't find anywhere in the West.
People here don't have enormous egos the way we do in the West which, paradoxically, is also the biggest thief of our freedom.
The absence of which is the greatest source of theirs.