We wrote efficiency since a lot of our youth was wasted. Reading about “hacks” for health, fitness, money, dating that were all an enormous waste of time. Since the vast majority will still search for special tricks, we’re going to highlight some things to be aware of as you get older. A lot of them are simply related to body decay over time (no way to argue that a 60 year old man is as nimble as a 20 year old man). But. Some of the other items are important if you’re looking to meet new friends with similar life expectations.
Physical
Fruits and Vegetables: We outline a clear diet in Efficiency and you’ll need to find ways to get the nutrients despite having a schedule that may change rapidly. If you’re traveling a lot, you’ll be forced to travel with items such as Chlorella and do quick google searches for organic juice stores (Whole Foods is typically the easiest spot). The one thing you’ll notice? When you change your diet you’ll physically feel the difference. If you miss a week or a month, your body will not act the same and this is due to aging. While you could drink a gallon of alcohol on Thursday night and still feel fine on Friday at age 21… doing the same at 40 is just not going to be realistic. The same concept applies to positive health changes. It takes a little bit more time for the positive effects to flow through.
Flexibility: If you do any repetitive task for a long period of time, you’re going to overuse certain muscles. This is going to lead to a host of problems: 1) bone alignment, 2) lactic acid build up, 3) muscles changing your posture and 4) consistent knots in certain areas. You’ll notice the changes occur as you get to around middle age. This is important since money will solve the vast majority of your issues. Since you’re following the right workout regimens that we have outlined in Efficiency you’ll feel your body change. When the inflexibility sets in you’ll want to have a slush fund for 1) deep tissue massages, 2) yoga sessions and 3) any additional joint issues.
Circulation: It is rare to see people in their 20s have heart attacks (unrelated to drugs) and this is due to circulation. You’ll find that flexibility, circulation and diet all impact your circulation. More importantly? When you fly on planes and rack up those air miles you’ll notice your feet and arms change after a long flight (bad for your body). To combat this you’ll likely take a single asprin during long flights and purchase compression socks and arm bracings. These will be life savers if you sleep on flights since business class and Jets do not protect you from cabin pressure. If you’re over 30 we strongly recommend trying this and you’ll feel 100x more refreshed when you land. Oh… and as you get older, you’ll need to do more sprints on the bike (we also recommend eating some cayenne pepper).
Skin: Ahh one of the best markets for affiliate marketing. There is a reason for this. Your skin will get wrinkled over time and this is simply due to aging. Instead of buying the insane products that are sold on the internet for cheap monthly subscription revenue fees… You can do your own research and look into collagen and internal fixes to the problem. Just like diet, the real fixes are never external. Read a single book on how the skin works and you’ll find a lot of interesting facts about preventing the declines (hint there is a reason why vegetarians have good skin and no we’re *not* recommending becoming vegetarians).
Recovery Time: The final one is recovery time. As you all know everything compounds. This is not just investments but physical investments as well. A nagging injury for 10 years will be much harder to get rid of. You can certainly optimize your body, but at the end of the day, it’s always easier to recover if you’re younger. So keep in tune with your body and make those adjustments.
Financial
Watch Out for the Snakes: When you cut the grass the snakes show up. In the case of money, this is extremely true. Many people (we’d say about 99% of them) get rich and don’t win at the other parts of life. They are either out of shape or are stuck in relationships they don’t like. Or worse… They are still desperate to earn money because it is tied to their identities. The vast majority believe their net-worth = their actual worth (ego). Be extremely cautious to take life advice from these individuals as you may end up like them. Would you want to have billions of dollars but an over bearing wife who runs you around like a chicken with its head cut off? Would you take $100M if we said you’d be in a wheel chair for life? The answer of course is no. Many people believe they would “just change that part of their life” and that’s just not how the game works. Be careful.
Stop Worrying About a Collapse: Once you’re rich (somewhere around 30-35 is our guess) you shouldn’t worry about protecting the rest of your cash. If you have say $5M and that’s earning you $250K a year in boring bonds/dividends at 5%… There is no reason to invest your future money “conservatively”. If your plan was to get to some number like $50M+, it also won’t happen with boring CD investments anyway. These guys who live for low single digit returns are typically the ones who have lived a meaningless life. They went to a top school, got a stable job, saved, married some mediocre person at 30, had a couple kids and are walking towards death with no life experiences. That sentence sounds brutal and pessimistic, yet look around. The vast majority choose the predictable and boring normal life as if they get another chance at it “later”. They don’t.
Don’t Go Off The Rails: While we’re encouraging people to take more risk, there is always a balance. *When* you get rich, it’s foolish to bet anything that would hurt your principal balance to live a good life. This means you should figure out where your line is and close that door for good. Put a balanced portfolio away to cover a comfortable lifestyle forever and under no circumstances do you touch it. None at all. Once you have that money set aside that will keep you set for life then live it up! Don’t buy CDs buy that fast car (if you’re into cars) buy the vacation house (if that’s what you like) and roll the dice on some intelligent gambles if that’s how you get your thrills. Take a look at the lives of rich people who go broke quickly and then go meet some corporate guy with a boring life driving a honda civic. There is a happy medium and that’s how it should be.
Before You Spend… You ever wonder why branding yourself as “high end” is beneficial? The answer is free stuff! Before you spend see if you can get it for free or make money from it. We’ll use an obvious example with actors/athletes. If they sponsor specific companies they get free cars, watches, trips etc. Not only do they get them for free as trials… they also get paid to use them! Talk about a sweet deal. We don’t know where you’ll be successful, just remember it is ideal to find a way to make money without doing anything or at minimum get it for free. Does anyone here really believe billionaires pay for their own travel and food? Usually someone else begs them to do it for a presentation and some money as well.
No Principal Pull Down: This is last because it’s our own rule. Every year, you’ll never touch the principal on your portfolio. This prevents your cash flow from going down in any year. Notice, we focus on cash flow since that’s the number you’re looking to protect and if your principal is going up every year you’re in good shape. In the years when we have recessions you should have a good cash fund that supports you without dipping into the cookie jar. Then buy up all the assets on the cheap and go back to your vacation home.
Friends and Contacts
People are Busy: You shouldn’t want a friend who wants to hang out every day. That means they live an uneventful life. All the “social rules” are simply mirroring successful people. If you are willing to drop everything to go and meet someone new… it means *they* are socially above you. We have no problems saying we’d drop everything to go and meet several billionaires we admire. The same applies to dating. When a thirsty guy is willing to drop everything for girl he just met, it means she out ranks him (a bad thing for him). As you get older you’ll see that all of your friends are just as busy as you are. While your phone will light up with messages they are typically soft contacts from people you actually want to meet. If you’re constantly talking to a specific set of people they are usually business contacts not really friends.
Most People Don’t Evolve: A good litmus test to see if a guy is successful without any access to financials is to ask them about random topics. If you talk to a new person for a couple of hours you’ve usually “drained the well”. This means all of their knowledge is around 1-2 topics at most. That’s a bad sign. It means they never actually built a wide range of skills. If however, you talk to someone and they are constantly in the weeds on a lot of topics to the point where you’d call them an expert… You can bet that they are doing well financially. Now remember, everyone has a niche the key part is being able to diversify your skills to prevent over reliance on one talent. Unless you’re a singer or sports star, diversification makes a big difference.
No Such Thing as Business Friends: Don’t trust anyone but yourself. By the time you turn 20-25, the vast majority of people are simply “angling” for some deal (99.99% of people). They could be your “business friend” for 5-10 years. And. At the end of the day you guys are not friends, you’re frenemies. They would be thrilled to see you fall off if it meant $10K for them. You’re going to spend more time talking to business contacts because your actual friends (i.e. never mix money with friends) are going to be busy working on projects as well. Just remember your co-workers, your boss (if you have one temporarily) and the people you manage are not your friends. Not even close. They will stab you in the back with an ear to ear smile. While this sounds awful, have an emotion-less response to it. Everyone has to find a way to make their cash so there is nothing wrong with some conflict. Just remember, now that you’ve been warned, if you make a mistake it’s the second part of “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me”.
Suddenly You’re Popular! Avoid fame. You’re going to suddenly see people emerge from the wood-work as soon as you get rich. They will suddenly be interested in “helping you succeed”. Simply ignore. The good part? If you avoid fame, this will be manageable. The best part? You’ll recognize other successful people. It’s another form of the matrix. Once you see the queues you’ll know who the $30,000 millionaires are and who the rich people are. Surprisingly, they could drive a civic and they could drive a Ferrari, the key way to tell is by how they speak and their body language. The ones that are difficult are the rich guys who are run by their wives spending all of their hard earned money. But. At the end of the day… you’ll learn to spot those as well. And. Avoid them.
Other Strange Stuff: Not long enough for a section of its own but here are some other strange things you’ll notice: 1) you’ll be extremely frustrated if you have to wait long-periods of time for things that burn your time; 2) if you’ve really made it you won’t even compare yourself to billionaires, you’ll be happy and relaxed at all times, 3) you’ll feel sorry for the rich guys with tons of stress chasing a few extra dollars at expense of their health and personalities, you won’t bother helping them out of the matrix because they are too certain that they are making the right decisions, 4) you’ll get more excitement out of helping a few friends make money (when they are significantly younger) since they are not colleagues and the money doesn’t really matter anymore for you, 5) you’ll get more excitement from learning something completely new since you’ll be in the top 0.1% if your specific field… anything new is fantastic in your eyes, 6) empathy is a lot harder due to success so you’ll be forced to manually work on it, 7) meditation will be better for stress relief than exercise – you’ll likely add it to your daily routine, 8) getting a regular sleeping schedule will be critical as your body will react to negative changes, 9) you’ll do a lot of things that are not financially beneficial to you since you’re looking for new interests/hobbies and 10) you’ll laugh at all the amount of stress you had to go through and will recognize it was a brilliant move to take the pain when you could (in your 20s). Finally, you may not even agree with these 10 hence why they are at the end and are simply things we have noticed.
