What if the world goes into chaos and all my money vanishes away? Money, after all, is a social construct. What if, one day, everyone stops believing in money?
What if the economy falls down and the stock market crashes? What if another pandemic comes that’s 100x deadlier than Coronavirus? What if I become homeless?
I often find these ideas running in my head, causing me a constant state of anxiety. As it turns out, there is a solution for it — stoicism.
Put efforts into what’s under your control and stop worrying about what’s not in your control — that's the gist of stoicism. And this thought can be applied to personal finance too.
I can’t predict the future. I can’t predict what’s going to change, so there is no benefit in trying to do that.
However, I can prepare (a little) for the future.
- Good health will help me if everything crashes down.
- My family and friends’ good health will help if everything crashes down.
- Staying close to my family and friends will help if everything crashes down.
I can not fathom what a future filled with chaos will be like. So I can prepare only up to an extent.
But I can know what happened in the past and prepare for something similar as economies (even whole civilizations) work in cycles. I can read history and know what happened in different decades and centuries. I can’t predict the black sheeps of the future but I can know more about the white sheeps by learning history, human psychology, psychology of the masses, etc.