Friends,
This past weekend, my (Stoffel, here) seven-year-old son's little league season came to a heartbreaking end. I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say there were lots of tears shed in the dugout.
But the loss affected me as well. This is the first season I've coached his team. By that evening, I was swapping texts with the other co-coach -- not bummed about the loss, but that our season was over.
To put it bluntly, we were shocked by how much these young players grew as humans. This group of kids (that came from three different schools and covered three different grades) became a team -- celebrating success together, offering up high fives after a strikeout, understanding what it takes to be part of something.
At one point, our smallest kindergartener didn't know where left field was. Without prompting, a soon-to-be third grader put his arm around the little guy and said, "No problem buddy, I'll show you where it is."
That was the part that we didn't want to end.
Why We Disagree with Benjamin Franklin
In Benjamin Franklin's 1748 "Advice to a Young Tradesman", we got the famous line:
Franklin then does the math. Say you earn $400 a day. You take the afternoon off and spend $20 on a diversion. You'd think it cost you $20. But really, Franklin argues, it cost you $220 — the $20 out of pocket plus the $200 you didn't earn.
While we obviously understand the point Franklin was trying to make, we think that if your basic needs are met, he gets it exactly wrong.
- If your highest goal in life is to die with the largest bank account possible, then by all means, take Franklin's advice to the extreme.
- If, on the other hand, it is to create the types of memories and experiences that will leave you without regret on your deathbed, flip to script.
A better aphorism might be:
Before starting my current career, I taught at an inner-city middle school that required students to be in class for roughly 50 hours per week (~35 hours is the norm). Everyone involved knew what they were signing up for, and the school largely accomplished its goals.
But it was exhausting.
My wife and I would pass out on the couch most nights while eating a late dinner, wake up early the next morning, and do the same thing again. Having the time to do something like coaching a little league team: completely out of the question.
There are three primary reasons we have that time available to us now:
- Spending: we keep our expenses reasonable.
- Saving & investing: we have a buffer available thanks to our investments.
- Prioritizing: we have consciously chosen freedom of time over income-maximization.
That doesn't mean life is all rainbows and butterflies -- the pit in our stomach when the season ended was real and sad. But with a little space, it's also clear that this is exactly the type of pit we signed up for. And over the long-run, it's those types of experiences we'd choose to have together.
Wishing you investing success,
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Brian Feroldi, Brian Stoffel, & Brian Withers
Long-Term Mindset
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