When Warren lectures at business schools, he says, “I could improve your ultimate financial welfare by giving you a ticket with only 20 slots in it so that you had 20 punches, representing all the investments that you got to make in a lifetime. And once you’d punched through the card, you couldn’t make any more investments at all.” He says, “Under those rules, you’d really think carefully about what you did, and you’d be forced to load up on what you’d really thought about. So you’d do so much better.

An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.

Money is not the only way to improve life. Instead of widening your margin of profit, widen your margin of leisure. Instead of optimizing for money, optimize for time. Instead of seeking efficiency, seek recovery.

Why, he asked, do all of our policing efforts have to be so reactive, so negative, and so after the fact? What if, instead of just focusing on catching criminals — and serving up ever harsher punishments — after they committed the crime, the police devoted significant resources and effort to eliminating criminal behavior before it happens? To quote Tony Blair, what if they could be tough on crime but also tough on the causes of crime?3 Out of these questions came the novel idea for Positive Tickets, a program whereby police, instead of focusing on catching young people perpetrating crimes, would focus on catching youth doing something good — something as simple as throwing litter away in a bin rather than on the ground, wearing a helmet while riding their bike, skateboarding in the designated area, or getting to school on time — and would give them a ticket for positive behavior. The ticket, of course, wouldn’t carry a fine like a parking ticket but instead would be redeemable for some kind of small reward, like free entry to the movies or to an event at a local youth center — wholesome activities that also had the bonus of keeping the young people off the streets and out of trouble. So how well did Richmond’s unconventional effort to reimagine policing work? Amazingly well, as it turned out. It took some time, but they invested in the approach as a long-term strategy, and after a decade the Positive Tickets system had reduced recidivism from 60 percent to 8 percent. You might not think of a police department as a place where you would expect to see Essentialism at work, but in fact Ward’s system of Positive Tickets is a lesson in the practice of effortless execution. The way of the Nonessentialist is to go big on everything: to try to do it all, have it all, fit it all in. The Nonessentialist operates under the false logic that the more he strives, the more he will achieve, but the reality is, the more we reach for the stars, the harder it is to get ourselves off t

Index your important money, then go have fun,” Burton Malkiel told me. “It’s better than going to the racetrack.” But, he said, limit yourself to 5% or less of your total assets or portfolio.

Buying a lottery ticket is the only time in our lives we can hold a tangible dream of getting the good stuff that you already have and take for granted. We are paying for a dream, and you may not understand that because you are already living a dream. That’s why we buy more tickets than you do.

She makes me feel like I could win the lottery with a parking ticket.

If only I had more money” is the easiest way to postpone the intense self-examination and decision-making necessary to create a life of enjoyment — now and not later.

I wish someone would just start Fly At Your Own Risk Airlines. How 'bout that? You can have your hair gel, you can have your lighter, you can have a fucking gun, how bout that? You can show up at the gate five minutes before the plane leaves, and pay in cash, like in the good ol' 1980s. The ticket just says "shit happens" on the back, because that's the way it is anyway.

The customer pays his money and gets a ticket. He cannot refuse it. He cannot get the money back. He may protest to the machine, even swear at it. But it will remain unmoved.

Inflation is slowly losing your wealth.
Bitcoin fixes this.
Aging is slowly losing your health.
Longevity fixes this.

Investing well is a skill that everyone can and should learn.
Accreditation rules prevent learning & push people into a small set of "safe" assets, high-priced managers, & into lotteries/gambling.
Rules based on sophistication instead of net worth would lower inequality.

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

Invest in yourself, invest in your own self-education and then take that knowledge and use it to help others get what they want and need out of life. In the process, you will acquire power and financial freedom.