Woman I - Willem deKooning, 1950-52
I have never had much money. As of late, I hover around broke and periodically work in intense bursts in order to restore solvency and to throw my creditors a few bones to gnaw on. I have no insurance, and work in a comically unstable industry with no prospects for long term employment. I have no degrees, although I am technically still enrolled at a well-regarded private university. As I have insufficient money with which to invest, it would be absurd for me to give out investment advice. I may write about economics and the media, but I do not intend to be a source of stock picks.
Here’s how I do spend my money. I pay rent, bills, massive amounts of food, my YMCA membership, and three hours of therapy a week split down the middle between group and individual. Sometimes I go out to concerts, too. This may help to account for my relatively blasé reaction to the market dropping, but frankly, I doubt it.
The safest investment that you can make is in yourself.
Whether you’re looking at a bull or bear market, hyperinflation, martian invasion, deflation, stagflation, government collapse, martial law, avian flu, nuclear explosion – whether you’re looking at a doomsday scenario or a surprise turnaround – say, if Gandalf comes riding across the George Washington Bridge on a white horse on Monday – this is true.
Stocks can crater to nothing. Cash can be hyperinflated into worthlessness. Gold can be seized, as it was before under Roosevelt. Bonds can be defaulted on. Houses can burn down, or the value can collapse through no fault of your own. There is no such thing as an ironclad investment when you are looking at purchasing securities or materials.
Die gelbe Kuh - Franz Marc, 1911
On the other hand, the productive work that you put into self-improvement can never be taken from you. It remains entirely within your control.You are your most valuable asset. We know this intuitively. If a mugger asks you “Your money or your life,” the right answer becomes apparent immediately.
Your mind and body are your primary capital assets. The more that you improve those, the more your productive capacity increases.
Bajillionaire Mark Cuban recently wrote a very good post on becoming wealthy, but it’s incomplete. There is much more to life than simple career success or making a lot of money. This may be hard for some people to understand, but this principle was amply demonstrated to me in my childhood. My father was just as sad and nasty when he was making $100,000 per year as he was when he was making $600,000 or $6,000,000 – and the same after he wasted the majority of his fortune.
Time spent in therapy, in self-exploration and self-education about psychology pays for itself rapidly – if not in cash, in increased happiness. Granted, it can be a painful process. During some stretches for me, the level of extended physical agony has been comparable to the time I spent enduring the after-effects of a burst appendix. It’s very challenging. It requires that you gather some self-motivation to educate yourself, challenge your values, and – almost certainly, if you want to make lasting progress – re-evaluate all of your existing relationships with family, friends and lovers.
Living in accordance to rational values is necessary for sustainable happiness. I don’t think that it can be any other way. As to some degree or another, we have all been raised in manifestly irrational households, it takes some significant personal work to correct the damage done to our minds in childhood.
Can you afford not to go to therapy? Divorces are very expensive, particularly when there are children involved. Bad relationships are like heavy weights attached to your body with brutal piercings.
Do you take drugs frequently? Drink? Do you feel safe to be honest about your thoughts and feelings in the moment in your primary relationships? Do you maintain relationships with people who have used violence against you in the past?
Every year that you spend without examining your life is another one in which you sink into the quicksand of bad habits. Money can’t buy happiness, although it can buy some helpful tools that you can use to achieve it. If you’re concerned about your future, the best step that you can take is to invest your time and money inward.
Le Port d'Anvers (Anvers) - Georges Braque, 1906
15 Comments
October 11, 2008 at 11:12 am
Another gem, man. This is an excellent post, and I hope more people read it. I have to look into therapy, asap.
October 11, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Thanks so much, I hope the search goes well. I have heard that you can also do therapy over the phone, if it’s tough for you to track down an English-speaking therapist.
Are there even many therapists in Japan?
October 12, 2008 at 9:52 am
Brilliant! Did you post this on the board? This is how I view the self work, best investment ever.
I also liked the part about Gandalf lol.
October 12, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Yeah, there are therapists in Japan, but they speak Japanese, unless I live in Tokyo, which I don’t. I’m probably close enough to good enough at Japanese to attempt a session or two… we’ll see when I’m out of my financial hole in the next few months.
I also thought of an interaction that I had reminded me of this post. I was talking to another American about the economic situation in the states, and I mentioned that there is really no coming back from the path the economy is on at the moment, and it will just have to play out, likely leading to a pretty major collapse.
I wasn’t really thinking about how she would think about it, as it was the first time we met, and I was around my coworkers who have heard me predicting this for months. I quickly realized that she was not prepared for the message I was telling her, as she instantly started throwing up the defenses: “it’s going to turn around.” “they’ve got plans that will fix it (they being the government, of course)” “it won’t be that bad” etc.
The connection to this article is that I am not worried about it at all because I’ve been thinking about this investment in myself since before FDR. It used to just be financial knowledge, but I’ve been preparing myself for times like this for at least 2 years. Now that I’ve begun the really hard work on my relationship with myself, the future actually looks pretty bright.
But people who are dependent on the government to help them through this have to be terrified, because the idea that government does anything but create more problems goes against all of the empirical evidence. However, because they haven’t invested in themselves, the scar tissue left over from their childhoods is going to leave them stuck in this fantasy when reality is right around the corner.
It’s sad, really.
October 12, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Brilliant post, JC…i got quite teary reading it. I’m definitely put this in my favorites.
October 13, 2008 at 9:31 am
Beautiful, JC… thanks for writing this.
October 13, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Standing O!
October 14, 2008 at 8:58 am
Excellent.
October 14, 2008 at 11:42 am
Awesome post JC
October 14, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Great post JC.
October 14, 2008 at 2:03 pm
I also thought this was a good post. Well done. =)
October 20, 2008 at 9:06 am
beautiful post
December 17, 2008 at 1:05 pm
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February 10, 2009 at 1:41 am
[...] This is still the most visited post on my blog. I wrote about the value of investing in the self, by going to therapy and living with integrity, as an alternative to speculating in securities. [...]
February 18, 2009 at 4:54 pm
[...] This is still the most visited post on my blog. I wrote about the value of investing in the self, by going to therapy and living with integrity, as an alternative to speculating in securities. [...]