All these trial periods offered by subscription services got me thinking - why don’t we have a trial period for all of our major life decisions? It seems ridiculous that all of them, say college, a new job, a new house, come with a heavy investment of time and money (and a heavy loss of some form if we go back on our decision too soon).
Here’s me wishing for a 30-day money and time back guarantee for each major life decision if it ends up being bad for me.
That was looking backward. Now let’s look forward. Is there any way to solve this problem?
A solution that came to mind was creating an agency that coordinates between the major life decision takers and the enablers.
Take the example of college - Colleges can offer pre-college introductory courses in the summer to help students decide if the course and university would be a good fit.
Take the example of companies - They can let potential employees shadow current employees for a short while and then either party can decide if they are a mutually good fit.
I do know internships solve this problem to a certain extent, but they come with the have experience ←→ gain experience Catch-22.
I haven’t thought about this completely - please do understand if there are gaps in my proposition and reasoning. (14-hour workdays have left my mind a bit muddled). I’m open to a reframing of this problem and any solution that you can think of.
TLDR - I hope for a change in the system that allows us to backtrack major life decisions without tremendous loss in time and money (and an extra penalty for backing out, smh).
Enough of those ramblings, it’s time to move onto-
Brain Candy
I recently completed the Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel and my most important takeaway is this - you can have the fanciest of finance education and the most logical of brains; but your investing journey is a summation of your personal upbringing, experiences and emotions. As long as your investments work the way you need it to and lets you sleep easy at night, that should be enough.
I got super interested in web3, cryptocurrency and NFTs. Whether or not you’re working on, or a part of it, I think you should definitely understand how it works. Here’s a thread explaining it in a super simple way.
I’m only nine pages into Daughter of the Deep and Rick Riordan keeps those chuckles and giggles coming right from page one. The series, based on Jules Verne’s 20,000 leagues under the sea, follows the escapades of Captain Nemo’s fictional descendent, Ana Dakkar. His books are a brilliant blend of mythology and humor, and I suggest you turn to them if ever in need of some light-hearted company.
I re-watched La La Land and I swear it’s hands down my most favorite film. Not in a, ‘I’d watch it a million times’ kind of way but in a ‘It reminds me to hope and dream at a time when I forget to do either’ kind of way. Not to mention the incredible album, which introduced me to Jazz music.
FinChats
There’s a movement called ‘FIRE’ - financial independence, retire early that many people are pursuing. You can read more about it here.
I choose to pursue only financial independence because, well, who wouldn’t like the freedom to take naps whenever they wanted! Not kidding.
The retire early goal is one I’d take with a grain of salt, as retirement may not be as rosy as one might expect it to be and leave one feeling like their life is devoid of meaning.
On a related note, here’s a video by Ankur Warikoo explaining how one can retire by 30 by investing consistently. (Spoiler: It’s hard to do so, and he concludes that retiring at 35 or 40 might be a more realistic goal, keeping in mind the curveballs life is likely to throw at you.)
A quote and a question
How we spend our days, is how we spend our lives - Annie Dillard.
A life well lived can look different for each person. Hell, it can look different tomorrow, from what you imagined it to be today.
So how do we ensure a life well lived? The answer is, we can’t. We can only craft a narrative that connects our life experiences to present a life well lived.
But what we can ensure, is zooming in to our lives and looking at what we do everyday. Doing the little (and big) things that bring us joy, pride, peace and fear compound to form the bedtime stories we will tell the next generation.
So what would you like to choose to feel today? And go do something that brings you that feeling :D
P.S Shoutout to Deeptika for reading and replying to every single one of my newsletters. You write way better than I do and your vocabulary, writing style and breadth of knowledge is an inspiration. This one’s for you.
Great one. I especially loved the fire concept!
30 days money back guarantee is not possible. This tell big discussion should have some kind of backup plan so that one fails other can save.
Not sure it is possible for all. On FIRE, we can try to customize on that concept. Like say work like 8-10 hours day till 40. Then can reduce to 3-4 hours and concentrate on things which makes us happy.