Zeihan in tears. I really enjoy his description of geopolitics, but the man definitely overestimates Argentina repeatedly for no bloody reason.
When I was a child, I saved a little of my allowance to start with, but then rapidly realized that every year I was blowing away (in earnings) my savings from the previous year. Soon my porn and bootleg music high-school business was beating all the savings of the previous year. Then my ad fraud "business" plus my fake reviews "business" was beating that.
I dropped all of that stuff, went to uni for other things and then eventually started engineering later in life than most people and the pattern repeated in earnings. Through sheer luck I happened to make choices that aimed at growth rather than savings.
Pure savings are over-rated. You should hold nearly everything in inflation-protected assets. And loads of these are crazy liquid. Plus, I have friends with whom I have a de-facto liquidity pool. It's sort of a liquidity insurance mechanism: we'll just help each other over temporary liquidity humps.
One of my friends had to leave the US temporarily because of a green card processing delay due to COVID and he knew that I'd cover his mortgage if he needed me to. Helps you sail closer to the wind knowing that only broad-based economic failure can hurt.
What are some examples of these crazy liquid assets?
In the past I've spent extra money on tools, a house and some gold and silver (as I have a goldsmithing hobby). The house is difficult to unload, at least mentally, pretty good market. The tools have kept their value, but finding a buyer is difficult. The gold and silver are a similar story, but tend to fluctuate in value rapidly.
Global stock and precious metals ETF's are inflation-resistant and quite liquid. You'll pay only 0.02% spread to liquidate them and have the cash in your bank account within a few days. As opposed to a house which is generally 6% spreads and a couple months to liquidate. Only in exceptional liquidity crises (August 2008 - March 2009, and March 2020) are you at risk of cashing out for 30-50% losses. 80% of the time it's at value or higher. So you just need a small percentage of assets that are deflation-resistant (cash & bonds) for the small periods of time deflation happens, to pay your expenses.
When I was a child, I saved a little of my allowance to start with, but then rapidly realized that every year I was blowing away (in earnings) my savings from the previous year. Soon my porn and bootleg music high-school business was beating all the savings of the previous year. Then my ad fraud "business" plus my fake reviews "business" was beating that.
I dropped all of that stuff, went to uni for other things and then eventually started engineering later in life than most people and the pattern repeated in earnings. Through sheer luck I happened to make choices that aimed at growth rather than savings.
Pure savings are over-rated. You should hold nearly everything in inflation-protected assets. And loads of these are crazy liquid. Plus, I have friends with whom I have a de-facto liquidity pool. It's sort of a liquidity insurance mechanism: we'll just help each other over temporary liquidity humps.
One of my friends had to leave the US temporarily because of a green card processing delay due to COVID and he knew that I'd cover his mortgage if he needed me to. Helps you sail closer to the wind knowing that only broad-based economic failure can hurt.