The sweet spot in decision-making is to find the short-term failures that enable the huge long-term successes to happen in the first place.
It’s easy for me to feel daunted and unsure at times about my hope to eventually own land, and an off-grid home out in the country at some point in the future. Each week, I invest and save a little more, but it’s still a distant future, with many questions, difficulties and unknowns, but I’m not that worried.
Nothing that I am investing in, really ties me to any one path going forward. Money, not tided up in anything but financial assets is entirely fungible, I am free to move it from one purpose to another. Maybe when I get older, I will want an ordinary house in suburbs, or I’ll decide to be an urbanite and live my final years in the city. Or maybe, rather then living off-grid, I’ll do something with agriculture. But it really doesn’t matter — savings can be used for any purpose.
My job, my family and in many ways my fear of the unknown keep me in New York State for now. But forever, that I do not know. I’m interested in many other states. But things can and do change. Markets go up and down, policies change, new job opportunities present themselves. Even renewable energy and electronics are rapidly changing, the off-grid technologies of today are likely to be different in a decade.
"But here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic."
"Here’s a very sobering piece from Alec Riddle who looks at the relationship between how long you work and how long you’re likely to enjoy your retirement."