My Life Lessons

These are things I share humbly. I’ve led a privileged life (so far anyways), so not everything may be appropriate for everyone. Most of this is from mistakes I’ve made, and the few things I’ve gotten right. One basic philosophy — make small changes to your life so that this is automatic — trying to make a decision every day towards this is very hard.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional financial advisor or a counselor or therapist, but have been to all of those, so heed my advice with a grain of salt.

General

1. Keep learning new things, whether physical, psychological, or intellectual. You’d be amazed how much you don’t know about yourself. It will keep you young — remember you age when you stop learning.

2. Tell the truth, tell what you think. People will appreciate it.

3. Buy quality, you get what you pay for. And yes, sometimes there’s fashion trends that cost a lot and have nothing to do with quality.

4. Try to ask yourself questions why at the edge of what you already know, you’ll be surprised how little you know, but that starts the journey to where you really know.

5. Get to doing, and you’ll learn more and get stuff done.

6. Meditate for 10–20 minutes every day — this is time to listen to what’s in your mind and get it processed.

7. Ask for help, at work, in your personal life. Others aren’t looking for what you need, it opens up conversations, and it keeps you humble.

8. Always bet on optimism. There’s almost 8 billion people working every day trying to make things better, why bet against that.

Relationships

1. Listen to your children, give them 30–60 minutes a day of your time, without you being on a screen. Listen, without looking for things that they need to improve in. Just listen to them sharing their journey, their troubles, their fun times, their view.

2. Create time for the people in your life. It can be in bed, on the dinner table, at a lunch or coffee with friends. Attend the special events in their lives. In the end, that’s all you’ll have, no job to get done, no ladder to climb, no title to boost your ego.

3. Be with people who are doing things, not in the stands. Get in a fast moving river (of people). Our need to keep up w/ others will push you automatically and you’ll just do more things yourself.

4. Stay away from takers and matchers, be a giver, and stay close to givers.

Finances

1. Get good at basic arithmetic, it’s like having flexibility in your body, it changes what you can do. I used to print a single page of 25 problems (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) every day for my kids when they were young and it really helped them.

2. Start your kids retirement fund (Roth IRA) from as early as they can earn — it might be as early as 14. $5K in that Roth IRA will be worth $533K in 50 years at the market average of 10%, through the power of compounding.

3. Manage your savings like it was a second job. Doesn’t mean you need to do something every day or every month. But look at it every 3 months. Look how much it’s grown each year, across all your assets.

4. If you just maximize your 401k from the start, you’ll be fine. It’s money you didn’t see and won’t spend.

5. Buy a house early, it allows you to grow with inflation and with leverage (remember it’s only 20% down), and you can always sell & buy a new one.

6. Pay fees to advisors on a non-recurring basis. Advisors are valuable and need to get paid to be around, but you don’t need to keep paying them to keep using the advice they already gave you.

7. Learn to read a balance sheet — profit and loss, assets and liabilities. If you’re going to buy an asset (stock in a company, real-estate) , it’s gives you a way to think about it and shop around.

8. Invest in things that produce value for other people — it’s likely it’ll grow. If you’re just investing in a fixed asset (gold, real-estate, etc..) hoping it’ll be worth more, it might but you don’t know when the music stops.

9. Keep looking for ways to build a recurring source of passive income, that’s something that’ll pay you even if you stayed in bed for a couple of days.

10. Take on debt, only the kind that you pay very little on. Like mortgages, car loans even. Anything more than 6% (ex. credit card debt) is a no-no, unless you’ve got an end game and are convinced you’re smarter than the finance companies.

11. The only true way to wealth is ownership. So buy assets that produce value. Your job gives you the capital to invest. Focus on long-term growth of those investments, less on how much you’re able to put in.

Career

1. Change your job at least every 4–5 years, whether it’s with the same company or a different one. Different people, different ways of working, different work — all make you a more rounded person.

2. Try to help others be successful, it just works. And you feel good along the way.

3. When you’re young, your greatest asset is energy and no baggage. When you’re older, even if you keep your energy, you’d better be bringing wisdom and connections to the table.

4. Chase the work, not the titles. Money matters, but if you get involved with interesting things, well then, interesting things will happen.

5. Ask your colleagues why they are thinking and acting how they are. You might learn something, and at worst, they’ll know you are open to a real conversation.

6. Seek mentors and advisors to give you a different perspective. Similarly, give back to others.

Food & Drink

1. Cooking is easy, once you get the process. Internalize the process and the steps, and you’ll save time vs. getting food from outside.

2. Learn to chop, it’s like arithmetic, once you’ve gotten it, it makes lots of things a heck of a lot easier.

3. You can have fun without chemicals in your system. If you want to use chemicals, you’re likely running away from something inside. I slowed down my drinking recently, still learning.

4. Get 3–4 recipes down cold, that you don’t need to look up, that you can make without a fuss.

5. Be careful of eating food with a brand. They’ve got to sell more each year, and to do that, it’s best with more salt and more sugar. No-one’s branding onions, tomatoes, or potatoes yet.

6. The only reasons you eat too much is out of stress or boredom.