the purpose of the margin of safety is to render the forecast unnecessary. - Morgan Housel

In his book 30 Lessons for Living, gerontologist Karl Pillemer interviewed a thousand elderly Americans looking for the most important lessons they learned from decades of life experience. He wrote: No one — not a single person out of a thousand — said that to be happy you should try to work as hard as you can to make money to buy the things you want. No one — not a single person — said it’s important to be at least as wealthy as the people around you, and if you have more than they do it’s real success. No one — not a single person — said you should choose your work based on your desired future earning power.

It’s a subtle recognition that people generally aspire to be respected and admired by others, and using money to buy fancy things may bring less of it than you imagine. If respect and admiration are your goal, be careful how you seek it. Humility, kindness, and empathy will bring you more respect than horsepower ever will.

More than I want big returns, I want to be financially unbreakable. And if I’m unbreakable I actually think I’ll get the biggest returns, because I’ll be able to stick around long enough for compounding to work wonders.