Patience

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” - Blaise Pascal

Saving

I am, and have always been, a saver. As a teenager I’d famously borrow £5 from my parents to head to town for the day and come back and give them back somewhere between £3 and £6 in return. As a student, I’d live on one meal a day and bags of 40 frozen sausages for £2. Even as a new grad on a decent salary, I’d make myself discount aisle liver salad because there was no way I was going to pay £3 for a tasty lunch.

My salary has gone up and my family size has increased and with that has come a lot less frugality and a lot more spending. But still - I think we probably save something like 50 - 60% of our income every month, and have done for a long time.

We live in a house that we love and is perfectly well suited to us. We have holidays booked. We have a long-term savings strategy that lets us both retire early.

And yet…

Trying not to do something stupid

It’d be downright silly for us to upgrade our house. We’ve got a lovely big house that works well for our family. It’s old and has a big garden and it’s in a beautiful village where we can walk to our kid’s schools. But we don’t need to save that much and wouldn’t it be cool to have a bigger house? A castle.

It’d blow our mortgage payments up, force us to spend even more on house maintenance, and cost us a fortune in stamp duty…but it’s something to do.

There’s probably some cool set of stocks/options that I could dabble in, and maybe it’d go really well and I’d make more in a few months than I would in a year otherwise.

But I know that’s a mistake. I know that the answer is to just keep on doing what we’re already doing. Index funds. Regular investments. DCA. No selling when it’s down. Tax advantaged accounts. Simple. Boring.

Conclusion

This is a note to future me. Stop looking for things to do. This is the grind. It’s boring and plain and basic and…exactly what I should be doing. Sit quietly in the room and don’t do anything.