What is money and where does it reside?

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7Wannabe5
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Ego said: Some of the most honest people I know are illegal immigrants working illegally for illegal businesses selling products that they contractually agreed to export but rerouted back to the US.

While I agree that fair trade coffee and vegan coffee creamer can be more refined (in both senses of the word) versions of consumerism, there is a point where the way we spend our stored labor/time becomes unethical and immoral. Like Justice Stewart, I have trouble defining it but I know it when I see it.
I agree with you too. My use of the word "steward" implied a boatload of responsibility. None of us are perfect (certainly not moi by a loooong shot), but, IMO, it is kind of pathetic for anybody to claim full adult membership in society, if they can't at least, on balance, take responsibility for trying to leave a little bit less of a mess than they found. But, I try not to be judgmental about how other people attempt to do this. Maybe somebody believes he is doing his share by working hard and paying more taxes than most people, so his large motored speedboat consumer habits are mitigated. Maybe the near-morbidly obese, chain smoking social worker believes it is net more beneficial to work in her community in Zone 4 than mind her own habits in Zone 00. I generally believe that it is best to start from Zone 00 and proceed outwards, simply because most efficient and most sensibly motivated, but how can you or I even do that when we inhabit such a complex web that we usually have almost no clue where the products we use and consume every day are produced or under what circumstances? The starving baby or functionally illiterate child dropped on my doorstep or the radioactive fracking waste dumped in my compost pile simply can not be ignored or information overload-numbed out of existence. But, where does my rightful domain of action and responsibility end? Where am I profiting from yield, but not exhibiting care? Money is morally neutral but it does hold power, so it follows that wherever we choose to spend it we are claiming some bit of authority to which an equivalent bit of responsibility should be attached, if we wish to be net functioning as admirable (worthy of trust and respect) in our behavior as adults. Of course, those of us who hold more time/energy or other stuff than money are also responsible for the stewardship of those resources. Social class isn't or shouldn't about how much money you have managed to hoard. It is about how noble you behave. It is about washing all the dishes in the sink even if some of them aren't yours, because in that moment you inhabit the grace to afford to be generous in spirit.

7Wannabe5
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Dang, I am getting preachy in my old age. -lol. The mystery to be solved is how I can possibly be motivated to save more money when my lifestyle is already quite fun and fulfilling, and I don't scare easy. This puzzle may perhaps not be unrelated to the puzzle of how I can possibly be motivated to eat fewer cookies as long as I can still work in the garden and attract lovers, and I don't shame easy.

JL13
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by JL13 »

7Wannabe5 wrote: The mystery to be solved is how I can possibly be motivated to save more money when my lifestyle is already quite fun and fulfilling
You seem to mention this often, but you seem to have a pretty solid lifestyle. Is this desire to save money an internal or external motivation?

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Ego
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by Ego »

Fearless, shameless future-you might have the answer.

Toska2
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by Toska2 »

I get my motivation from my disabled elders. I see very few lugging books in winter.

Being close to monetary FI means I get to pick and chose my "battles". If choosing to lug books when it's only 50°f+ , it's a worthwhile win.

7Wannabe5
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

JL1 said: You seem to mention this often, but you seem to have a pretty solid lifestyle. Is this desire to save money an internal or external motivation?
Mix, I guess. I have been a practitioner of frugality for almost 30 years, but I always seem to ratchet down my income to match my expenses (I took my first mini-retirement when I was 22) , except for short-term specific saving goals. It's not that I don't care about future me, but although past me was quite unhappy to have to work over 40 hours/week for the 6 years she did it, current me is quite content with her current, very part-time, challenging-in-a-good-way and varied work load, so I don't know why future me would be happier not working at all.

Actually, I would say that my internal motivation would be more in alignment with reducing my expenses even more rather than saving more money, but it gets down to a bit of apples for apples if, for example, I do something like buy and renovate a dilapidated duplex, because I would really just be doing something like trading the 3.5 days I have to teach each month to pay my current $300/month shelter expenses for a part-time job as an owner-occupying landlady.
Ego said: Fearless, shameless future-you might have the answer.
Yeah, I guess I could just continually practice becoming more fearless and shameless. I will enter note to jump naked into the Detroit River on the Spring Equinox 2046 on to my calendar.
Toska2 said: I get my motivation from my disabled elders. I see very few lugging books in winter.

Being close to monetary FI means I get to pick and chose my "battles". If choosing to lug books when it's only 50°f+ , it's a worthwhile win.
Well, I'm already 51, and if I project back to age 35 and then forward to age 67, I don't foresee a likely total decline in my ability to lift 40 lbs. My monthly expenses are quite a bit less than I reasonably expect to collect in Social Security payments at that point. Besides, if my physical condition deteriorates to the point that I can no longer lift 40 lbs., I am pretty well out of luck in most realms of my lifestyle beyond making money. For instance, I wouldn't be able to jump rope with 5 year olds, shovel and cart truckload of woodchips, or attract vigorous lovers. My knee's are like gold to me. That is why it would be a far more rational choice for me to focus much more life energy on whatever I have to do to maintain my knees than saving any more money. Zone 00 way more important than whatever Zone money lives in. In fact, if it came down to my knees or cookies, I would definitely choose my knees, but how will I know?

JL13
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by JL13 »

@wannabe

Yes I totally understand what you're saying. The law of diminishing returns sets in at a certain point. I think a pay-as-you-go lifestyle is just as valid as a accumulate a massive net worth till FI lifestyle. The key is efficiency right? If you can get a great lifestyle for 75% off, then it shouldn't matter whether that 25% remainder comes from a few hours of part time work or a few dollars of dividends.

7Wannabe5
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

JL1 said: If you can get a great lifestyle for 75% off, then it shouldn't matter whether that 25% remainder comes from a few hours of part time work or a few dollars of dividends.
Right, but I would still like to have some dividend-like income at a "natural", or maybe "graceful" proportion, so that is what I am trying to figure out on this thread. I don't think corporations are inherently evil,( even though,in theory, a corporation could live forever if it kept making profits-bwah-ha-ha), and I do choose to consume some products and services they provide such as Garnier Nutrisse Extra-Light Ash Blonde and WestSoy Plain Lowfat Soymilk, and associate with them in various other ways, such as my current book-dealing symbiosis with Amazon, and my practically non-existent relationship with the corporation that provides substitute teaching services in my district and direct-deposit payments to me.

I'm probably not doing a very good job of explaining. Okay, this Sunday is Easter and I need to bring a babka to the celebration. I can bake one myself or I can walk around the corner to the long-time family owned Polish bakery in the well-maintained 1930s structure with the sign that says Fancy Cakes and a festive display of baked goods in the big display window. To me, these are equally "graceful" options, although one transaction might require a bit more cash. On my way back from the bakery, I smile and say "Good Morning" or "Yay! Finally!" and signal thumbs-up to the member of the government road crew filling in a pothole or painting bike lanes. I do not resent whatever portion of my property tax bill I had to pay to fund this "graceful" transaction. Where it gets out of whack is when we are all getting paid and spending money to do something on a large scale that could be done in a manner that would be more efficient and more sustainable on a smaller scale closer to home. And,maybe, this is as true when it comes to choosing where or how you are investing your savings. IOW, why would I invest way off yonder in some unknown, impersonal realm where I wouldn't choose to buy a cake? My theory is that the most graceful solution would be to choose to invest in the corporations with which I otherwise choose to associate because doing that would cause me to give some more thought to all aspects of possible transaction.

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Ego
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by Ego »

7Wannabe5 wrote:My knee's are like gold to me. That is why it would be a far more rational choice for me to focus much more life energy on whatever I have to do to maintain my knees than saving any more money. Zone 00 way more important than whatever Zone money lives in.
I can be rich by saving lots of money.
I can be rich by having few needs.

Or both.

By acknowledging that there is more than one route to wealth I then have to ask the question, how much of myself should I trade for money? Will that money buy future-me more value than the future value of the things I relinquished to get it? Knees. Dignity. Love. Community. Self-respect. Sanity.

Is it wise to trade highly valuable time today to cushion less valuable time in the future? Can I even buy back with investment returns the things I traded to get the underlying assets?

What are the costs of oversaving? What are the costs of undersaving? What is the likelihood of each? Is it possible that having too much money might be a bad thing? Is it possible that having too little money might be a good thing?

Can I train Zone 000 to make it all meaningless?

We get to decide this goldilocks amount for ourselves rather than having it decided it for us. Of all the people who ever existed and those who now exist, not many had that luxury.

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Toska2
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by Toska2 »

What if paid work (aka low impact exercise & kept cookies away) helped save you knees? Later on that money saved your knees by allowing a stocked fridge instead of midnight 7-11 trips. Maybe allowing knitting instead of carrying books on icy sidewalks. Or buying better dome supplies instead of scabbed pallet wood.

Btw health isn't linear. My three neighbors (55-60) were in the military. They went from 200+ push-ups and rucking 10 miles to barely carrying a gallon of milk. My boss finished in the top ten in 10k and half marathons for two decades. He retired with a cane.

7Wannabe5
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Ego said: Is it possible that having too much money might be a bad thing?
Yes. One way you know you have too much money relative to other qualities you might have otherwise developed or maintained is if you find yourself making use of the term "gold-digger" in anything resembling a serious fashion. One of my external motivations for wanting to save more money was that it kept happening that this term was associated with me when I started dating after my divorce. I was 42 years old and had been married for 19 years, raised two children , started my own little business, renovated a house, graduated from college, been valued as an employee and bringer of casseroles to pot-lucks etc. etc. etc. and had little doubt of my own independent adult status, but then this terrible stereotype applied to people who are blonde, curvy, hyper-sexual, don't make much money and sometimes find older men with assertive personalities attractive brought me down. First I did myself damage trying to over-defend myself. Then I did myself damage by giving up and not even trying to defend myself. Then I thought that maybe I was too old and nobody would say that to me again, but then yacht-guy said it again and my recent ex went on and on in a facebook post about treating somebody like a princess and giving them everything but then she leaves you because she wasn't "invested" which is really the most unfair thing in the world because I helped him renovate 3 rental properties, build a brick driveway, win a $150,000 lawsuit, and I did most of the housework. If anything I was the one getting ripped off of life-energy in the deal.

Anyways, I like my blonde hair. I like my curvy figure, I like being hyper-sexual. I like not working very much for money. I still sometimes find older men with assertive personalities attractive, BUT they are no longer allowed to use hardly any money to pay any part of P.O.P with me. Charm, vigor, humor, dominance, creativity, arranging to have free load of wood chips dumped on my garden lot, community service...all may work in combination, but I don't care about the rules of dating or your stupid convenience or oh-so valuable time because you are such a busy making-money kind of person, your money will get you zero credit with me over the more vigorous guy who made his own counter-top out of concrete and just threw me up on top of it! Boundary time!! I feel strong! Yay!

7Wannabe5
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Toska2 said: What if paid work (aka low impact exercise & kept cookies away) helped save you knees? Later on that money saved your knees by allowing a stocked fridge instead of midnight 7-11 trips. Maybe allowing knitting instead of carrying books on icy sidewalks. Or buying better dome supplies instead of scabbed pallet wood.
The more you pamper yourself like that, the weaker you become. That's my mother's affluent retired lifestyle and she's like "Waah, waah, the mean physical therapist came over and made me do some exercises."
Btw health isn't linear. My three neighbors (55-60) were in the military. They went from 200+ push-ups and rucking 10 miles to barely carrying a gallon of milk. My boss finished in the top ten in 10k and half marathons for two decades. He retired with a cane.
Yeah, sometimes old guys decline quickly if they don't switch over to joint sparing exercises and mind their testosterone levels. Water aerobics, yoga, biking, gluteal strength training, herbal or bio-identical hormone supplementation, whatever I need to do to forestall getting relatively skinny frail in the shanks and fat frail round the middle and generally maintain flexibility is my plan. More paid work will just distract me from ramping up these practices.

7Wannabe5
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Ego said: We get to decide this goldilocks amount for ourselves rather than having it decided it for us.
Right. Minor vents concerning minor incidents of insecurity expressed as disrespect put aside, my problems are really the problems of a very spoiled, lucky person. It's like I am 10 years old and I am in my front yard trying to build a go-cart, and one boy came over and is telling me how I should do it, and another boy came over and just picked up my tools and started working on it, and another boy came over with his own super-duper go-cart and said "You don't have to build a go-cart, just come ride in mine." and, meanwhile, the really nice woman who lives next door is leaning over the fence saying "Sweetie, could you please come over and babysit the twins. I will give you $10 and I would really appreciate it." and my sister is pestering me to come play duets on the piano with her, and my Grandmother just came over to give me a new dress and a bag full of cookies. Therefore, it is difficult for me to imagine a dire future in which choosing the $10 for babysitting and putting half of it in my piggy bank is going to be the critical choice.

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Ego
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

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Toska2 wrote:My boss finished in the top ten in 10k and half marathons for two decades. He retired with a cane.
In my experience, the people who push themselves to permanent damage use running as a drug to cope with things they need to change. They run through pain to the point of self-harm, usually because the endorphin feel really good.

Keeping with the running analogy, we've been trail running in the park a couple days a week since returning home. Mrs. Ego found a trail that runs along a steep canyon then plunges down across a stream full of head-sized round rocks. One day she told me with childlike glee about how she has gradually increased the speed she runs down the gullied trail then crosses the wobbly rocks like a running back training on an agility ladder before sprinting up the steep, crumbly path on the other side. I've been running it ever since. The first few times I ran down the slope, I approached it tentatively and practically walked across the rocks. It took time for my brain to adjust. Now I run it at nearly full speed and barely look at my footing. I learned to be agile.

Last year we rented a flat way up at the top of the Medina in Essaouira, Morocco. A few rooftop over an ancient lady with a magnificent hunch hung her laundry each morning, five stories and ten rickety flights of stairs above the chaotic Medina. In the afternoons she would somehow waddle down the stairs one step at a time and waddle over to our favorite fruit vendor where she would chat with friends. In the U.S. she would have been confined to her bed in a nursing home. She would have learned to be helpless.

Learned agility vs. learned helplessness.

Money can buy security. It can buy what appears to be simple solutions to complex problems. A home healthcare worker. Someone to do my laundry. A Rascal. There is a benefit to knowing at fifty that I won't have that cushioned safety net at eighty.
7Wannabe5 wrote:Therefore, it is difficult for me to imagine a dire future in which choosing the $10 for babysitting and putting half of it in my piggy bank is going to be the critical choice.
We still put half in our piggy bank. As I get older and have more experiences with people in the catastrophic-cohort I am gradually adopting your way of thinking. I am approaching it tentatively, recognizing that I've got to walk before I can run.

7Wannabe5
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Ego said: We still put half in our piggy bank. As I get older and have more experiences with people in the catastrophic-cohort I am gradually adopting your way of thinking. I am approaching it tentatively, recognizing that I've got to walk before I can run.
It's not really my way of thinking. More like what I have repeatedly observed in myself and others and come to wonder about. I have met so many people who have suffered a serious series of failures or catastrophes at mid-life and then were full of energy or acceleration up the steep slope of an S curve not too long afterwards, and so many other people who were locked-in routine and responsibility or sleep-walking along the flatland of their success. I think the question is why do people have to fail or fall upon hard circumstances in order to start again with new energy? I think it has something to do with thinking along the lines of "and then I will be safe forever." I have come to feel the same way about relationships. If somebody said anything along the lines of "I will love and accept you just the way you are no matter what until our dying days." to me, I would run screaming because it would be indicative of their reflective core need for complete security. I liked that rock running anecdote you related because it was funny and revealing how you couldn't not respond to the challenge offered by Mrs. Ego's new success. I am just maybe a teensy little bit in limerence with somebody now because he has gone so honcho on me that the last thing he said to me the last time I saw him was "Do you understand your instructions?" Yum. Very likely will not end well, but I will still be better off if I rise to the challenge. Life is so fun when you never know (or try to nail down) what is going to happen next!

7Wannabe5
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Took a peek at Taleb's appendix again and noted that he categorized debt as fragile, equity as robust and venture capital as anti-fragile. I think part of my "problem" is that I am far more motivated to save money if I think of it as something like "putting together my next roll" rather than "building my fortress of equity brick by brick" But, any little bit of money can be my next roll. For instance, I want to take a gamble on a house at auction, so to generate the roll to do that, I gamble a little bit of money on a pile of hockey posters at a thrift store. Maybe if I could think of an interesting venture that absolutely required a lot of capital then I would be motivated to save that much money. But mostly when I think of an interesting venture or adventure, the first thing I do is try to figure out how to do it without very much money, because using a lot of money makes it more boring. Like packing too much stuff when you go on a trip and strapping yourself into a baby seat. Like right now I am frustrated because I can't think of how to proceed with my permaculture venture without buying a truck load of compost next week. I mean, on one level it is a trivial problem with an easy solution. Go teach children for one day and earn $95 then spend $95 to buy compost, but if I can come up with a way to do it without spending the $95 then that more complex solution will be reflected in my brain fire paths and my map of the world. So, when I think of working to save up enough money to live on for the rest of my life, it's like it's too hard and too easy at the same time or it's like I am engaging in a short term practice, I have no intention to continue. Like why train yourself to be a very hard worker with the intention to eventually be completely lazy? Kind of seems like riding an exercise bike wearing a plastic suit you made out of hefty bags and duct tape for 3 weeks in order to lose 10 lbs. in time for the prom.

IlliniDave
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

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7Wannabe5 wrote: ... But mostly when I think of an interesting venture or adventure, the first thing I do is try to figure out how to do it without very much money, because using a lot of money makes it more boring ...
It shouldn't come as a surprise (since I've not been shy about admitting my brute force approach to FI), but this is a very foreign way of thinking for me. I suppose it is just a matter of what a person finds satisfying/enjoyable. I only derive limited enjoyment from going out of my way to avoid using money. It's fine as a means to an end, but sort of tastes flat as an end in-and-of-itself (oddly in a way that is analogous to the complete opposite approach where the attempt is to solve too many things by throwing money at them). Maybe it's because my planning and goal-setting is longer range, which relegates many of the intermediate steps to being a list of chores where I use my fuzzy inner weighting function to decide whether it is most beneficial to spend time or spend money getting them crossed off the list.

There's no judgement implied in that. Each should take her/his own happy path. There is no one-size-fits-all best way to do things. You seem to strike a defensive posture regarding your way of doing things, which I think is unnecessary.

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Ego
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

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IlliniDave wrote:I only derive limited enjoyment from going out of my way to avoid using money. It's fine as a means to an end, but sort of tastes flat as an end in-and-of-itself (oddly in a way that is analogous to the complete opposite approach where the attempt is to solve too many things by throwing money at them).
That assumes money is the end. An alternative way of looking at it is that the end is a web of skills derived from the struggle to find ways to do things with little or no money.

We are what we practice to be. Fear of the future disappears as the web of skills increase. He who dies with the least fear is the winner?

IlliniDave
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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

Post by IlliniDave »

Ego wrote:
IlliniDave wrote:I only derive limited enjoyment from going out of my way to avoid using money. It's fine as a means to an end, but sort of tastes flat as an end in-and-of-itself (oddly in a way that is analogous to the complete opposite approach where the attempt is to solve too many things by throwing money at them).
That assumes money is the end. An alternative way of looking at it is that the end is a web of skills derived from the struggle to find ways to do things with little or no money.

We are what we practice to be. Fear of the future disappears as the web of skills increase. He who dies with the least fear is the winner?
Money is not the end at all (for me). It's a tool one has the option of using. Sometimes it is the best tool, sometimes it is not. I don't see any fundamental superiority to either shunning money or over-reliance on money. I opt for a balanced approach. That is what works best for me. YMMV.

To repeat myself, there is no one-size-fits-all best way to do things. So I'll happily acknowledge the alternate viewpoint you posit, though without having any intention of following you down that particular path, or anyone else down theirs.

My goal in life at this point in life is to cultivate inner happiness/contentment for what time I have left. I have no interest in being a winner. On balance I don't fear the future, I look forward to it. Along with my ability to do a lot for myself, my financial position is robust. When it makes sense I always choose the both/and approach over the either/or. That certainly does not make me more fearful. Diversification in resources makes me more confident in the face of the unknown.

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Re: What is money and where does it reside?

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IlliniDave wrote:On balance I don't fear the future, I look forward to it.
I think maybe I was confused by this...
IlliniDave wrote: But as a hedge I've purchased remote land, intend to purchase more remote land, and to lay in a supply of guns and ammo. :lol:
We are what we practice to be.

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