Why Invest?

 Why Invest?

Sometimes, people ask me: Why invest?

Well, I thought of a great answer, and I wanted to write it down so I don’t forget. Now, I can just send those folks a link to this page :) And hopefully, other people can benefit from these answers!

As explained below, the answer to this question is: I’d rather die with money than live without it.

A Conversation on the 4% Rule

 A Conversation on the 4% Rule

I had a brief conversation with Steve of the SteveArk blog, in his thought-provoking post on the 4% rule.

My initial comment was WAY longer than it should have been, but the thoughts and resources just kept pouring out of me, as I couldn’t help but think “what if somebody runs across this, a few years from now, and wants to know more?”

So I figured I might as well turn this into a post on my own blog! Perhaps I can do a better, more well-thought-out (and well-edited!) version here. So here goes:

Can I retire on $2 million?

Can I retire on $2 million?

Is it possible to retire on $2 million?

In short: yes. But, of course, it depends on you.

Jump in!

I found this article interesting: http://lifehacker.com/move-before-you-re-ready-get-started-without-being-an-1654826130

Learning skills as you need them can increase both your motivation to learn the material (because you need it now!) and your engagement with the subject material. This increased motivation and engagement can lead to a deeper, richer understanding--and a quicker acquisition of that deeper, richer understanding!

This flies in the face of the advice that you usually hear about planning ahead and learning everything about a subject before doing it--but such advice does not account for constraints of time, motivation, and cognitive ability. This advice to "jump in and learn on the fly" does.

How does this apply to personal finance? Well, I'm a big proponent of keeping things simple. So, if you start out keeping your budget (and your investments) as simple as possible, and only learn about new things when they come up, you'll be more likely to actually accomplish something (rather than putting it off for a day...or a year). And who wouldn't like to accomplish more?!

Definitely an interesting idea, and a great read!