My wife is 13 weeks pregnant. It’s crazy to think that in six months (God willing) I’ll be a father. The heartwarming messages I’ve received from family and friends have been amazing. My mother, who’s only wanted “a grandbaby” for the past few Christmases, is especially overjoyed.
But I’ve also noticed how my focus has changed since we got the good news. For most of my life, I’ve only had to look after one person—myself. My needs. My desires. My career. My writing. My health. My future. While getting engaged/married changes that a bit, I know that my fiercely independent wife can take care of herself.
As a result, everything I’ve worked for has been geared toward my current (and future) consumption. I’ve run the numbers too. I’m fortunate enough that I could support my individual spending needs for the rest of my life. I could move to a lower cost of living area (abroad or in the U.S.) and live out my days without writing another word or responding to another corporate email.
Of course, I have no interest in retiring early because I enjoy writing and love what we are building at Ritholtz Wealth. But, more importantly, a lifestyle of endless consumption has slowly lost its luster for me. Let me explain why.
In my 20s and early 30s, I loved going to restaurants. My wife and I have eaten at over 350 of them together (I keep track) and I’d eaten at over a thousand others before meeting her. I’ve dined in a chateau overlooking the French Riviera, eaten fried tarantula in the night markets of Cambodia, and gorged myself on dry-aged ribeye at every major steakhouse in NYC.
I still enjoy going to restaurants today, but it’s not the same. For example, over the weekend I went to Monkey Bar, a swanky high-end restaurant in NYC. The food was great, but I wasn’t blown away. Shortly after, I realized that this had nothing to do with Monkey Bar and everything to do with me. If I had eaten at Monkey Bar at 22, it would’ve been one of the best meals of my life. I’d probably still talk about it today. But I didn’t. I ate there at 35.
We like to talk about experiences as if we can measure them objectively, as if your perception of an event would be the same at different points in time. But it won’t be. The reasoning is simple—the experiencer matters just as much as the experience.
This is why my 60th dry-aged ribeye didn’t taste as good as my first. We become habituated to heightened experiences and seek ever more novelty to top them. And when we inevitably fail to surpass these peak moments, life becomes duller.
People start to notice this in their 30s because there’s an obsession in the West with maximizing personal consumption and individual freedom. We are told that more is always better. More money. More goods. More options. But when taken too far, it can lead to isolation. Chris Arnade summarized this dynamic perfectly in a recent post:
It’s like driving in a really snazzy convertible deeper and deeper into the desert; the ride feels great until at some point you realize you’re utterly alone, which is immensely depressing.
I know what this feels like. I’ve struggled with focusing exclusively on myself in the past.
But in six months, that’s going to change. From here on out, every dollar I earn isn’t for me. It’s for my wife, my family, and any future causes I want to support. My personal consumption has already been accounted for, now I’m working for others.
This isn’t specific to me either. It’s true of anyone who has others to support and the resources to do so. For example, Warren Buffett hasn’t made money for himself since the 1980s. All of his personal consumption through today, including his “Indefensible” private jet, has been covered by the hundreds of millions of dollars he had already acquired by his mid-50s. Every dollar he’s made after that has been for his family and a handful of philanthropic foundations.
It’s odd to think about wealth in this way, but it’s true. Some of you reading this right now are working for dollars that you will never spend. Some of you have been working for dollars that you’ll never spend…for decades. And some of you are doing it with a job that you can’t stand. That’s the real tragedy.
While only building wealth for yourself slowly feels empty, focusing too much on others can make you lose yourself entirely. You spend your life giving to others, only to wake up one day and realize you don’t know what you want anymore. You may be stuck in an unfulfilling career or trapped in a situation out of obligation, not purpose. The pendulum swings from self-indulgence to self-erasure, and neither extreme is satisfying.
I don’t claim to have it all figured out. I’m still in the early stages of building wealth for others. My pendulum has only just started to swing in that direction. I suspect it will swing further with time. As the years go by, my work, my writing, and my aspirations will increasingly revolve around the people that I love and support. That’s what the next stage in life is all about—using your resources not just to make your own life better, but to make others’ lives better as well.
So the sooner you figure out how much wealth you need, the sooner you can start building the wealth that truly matters.
Thank you for reading!
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This is post 471. Any code I have related to this post can be found here with the same numbering: https://github.com/nmaggiulli/of-dollars-and-data
