9 Mistakes Most People Won't Avoid
189: Financial, Physical, and Mental Pitfalls
Good morning.
I hope everyone had a great weekend filled some with some productive activity or imbibing of some sort given the weather has a taken a turn for the better. Today’s post is an unofficial follow up to the first that we did on ten ways to improve your life overnight.
That post was incredibly well received for a number of reasons, chief among them, it helped steer people in the right direction during a time when it can be difficult to identify what the right decisions are that maximize chances of success — financially, socially, physically, and spiritually.
People make many mistakes in their lives that they ultimately come to regret — not changing jobs soon enough, not taking a chance on a big investment, wasting time on nonsense or things that don’t matter in the long run, living in the wrong area, hanging with the wrong people, not giving a decent relationship a chance, not spending enough time with family, and so much more.
Life is cruel in this way — you only get 80-100 years on this earth — if you’re lucky and at the end you get moments to reflect on what you could’ve done differently or tried to change.
We’re fortunate to be born in a wild and exciting time on earth — but the macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions we find ourselves in are also raising the stakes and in turn magnify the cost of mistakes that can readily be avoided with some simple forethought and a healthy dose of realism.
Making the decision now to thoughtfully approach decisions and crossroads in your life will ensure that you take the initiative ad don’t just settle for life as it is — you strive to actively make it that much better.
The negativity in the world can weigh all of us down from time to time so we like to focus on some of positive things we can implement and change to see positive results and outcomes and actually MOVE FORWARD.
Today we will cover 9 major mistakes that we feel most people are going to make in the coming years. Most people let their emotions influence their decision making. By laying these out in straight forward and no nonsense style it is my feeling that I can help better identify where many fall short so that our reader’s can adjust accordingly and be mindful of when they risk making these same mistakes in their own life’s.
We’ll cover financial, spiritual, physical, and mental mistakes so as to ensure we cover broad areas of life.
If you manage to avoid all of these you’re going to find yourself in an enviable position as you grow older — watching your finances, mental health, spiritual health, and physical health level up while the masses stay stuck inside the same old hamster wheel wondering why they never succeed or get any better.
1 - Paper Handing Risk On Assets
Don’t be a paper hands softo guys.
You might think I am joking until you realize how many people likely coughed up their assets in the recent massive market corrections due to fear or weak emotional management.
As the economic conditions in the US get tougher, layoffs ramp up (over 355,000 in tech alone so far) and we begin to see some cracks in the Real Estate market that so many eager first time buyers piled into in the last two years — I believe one of the unfortunate side effects we will see is the premature selling of high growth/risk on assets by the lower and middle class.
The 1% hold 53% of stocks, worth roughly $16.76 trillion and it’s a well known fact that the wealthy get wealthy by owning assets — businesses, stocks, LLCs, etc. When you think about the 99% that aren’t within the top 1% in the United States the ways in which they have chances to “make it” are dwindling by the day —fueled by high inflation, cost of living, and soaring housing rates/prices.
What’s worse — with the fast and aggressive deleveraging of the crypto and equity markets, many saw “paper wealth” they thought they had evaporate in weeks and months.
If we see a recession expand and worsen in the US asset prices will drop in the short to medium term and drops could be even more violent. Investor behavior is predictable in the instances, especially amongst people who dont have excess cash or reserves to live off, pay rent/mortgages with, or buy basic necessities with. This is a crucial mistake.
The people that will become much better off on the other side of all of this macro unrest and uncertainty we are seeing are going to be the ones who slowly ACCUMULATE instead of selling.
The major difference between those that can live comfortably in the future and those that are going to suffer is going to be who controls the lion’s share of outperforming assets.
So to combat this - to the extent you can — focus closely on avoiding unnecessary sales of stock, crypto, bonds, or real estate.
Do this by planning conservatively BEFORE the downturn gets worse — double your emergency fund, tweak your monthly DCA (dollar cost averaging ) strategies, etc. so that you can operate at a comfortable level of cash flow regardless of the economic conditions we find ourselves in.
When the markets and public sentiment inevitably shifts to brighter days you will propel forward if you’ve been stacking. If you’ve sold out of fear or panic, you will be priced out and lose your chance to accumulate wealth throughout cycles.
Keeping your 9-5 job while working on simultaneous and supplemental sources of income will all act as hedges if one of your streams goes bust temporarily.
I mean it when I say this — it doesn’t matter which walk of life you come from or which financial doctrine you believe in/read about/abide by, to make it or accumulate wealth in the next 10-20 years it’s going to be vital to make sure you have exposure to certain asset classes and emerging technology. The more the better.
You need to be on top of developments like CBDCs. You need to have your tax situation squared away. You need a tech portfolio and bond exposure and crypto and real estate. Have SOME sense of where the hyper growth is going to occur and make sure you own a piece of it.
You have to be nimble and willing to take on risk.
Don’t paper hands your tickets to future wealth.
Get more.
Number two is almost more important than number one.