I love days when we get Scotch Street guest posts!
Today, we have a guest post from, Ryan, over at FinancialLion.
New to Scotch Street?
We write stream-of-consciousness pieces about money while drinking scotch (or an alternative drink, in this case, Bourbon).
At the end of the article is a link to all the great Scotch Street articles.
Financial Lion Bio
Scotch Street Guest Post – FinancialLion
What a fantastic idea – a drink while writing whatever comes to your head.
This is commonly where I find inspiration writing for my blog. Sadly or not, you can be the judge here.
Tonight I’m drinking two fingers of Jefferson’s Ocean – a lovely batch of Kentucky bourbon whiskey that’s aged at sea. I found this bourbon via a recommendation from my boss at work.
If you haven’t seen it, the video on how the bourbon is made is worth a watch (check it out here).
In short, the barrels of whiskey are held on a boat for aging. The constant motion of the sea keeps the liquid in the barrels swirling and always in contact with the barrels which blends the flavors in a unique way.
It might just be me, but I swear you can smell a little bit of the ocean’s salty breeze in each sip.
Delightful.
Well, on to the real reason we’re all here.
I find it pretty funny that I have the movie The Wolf of Wall Street playing in the background while writing for Stock Street tonight. God’s honest truth that was unintentional.
It makes me think though just how crazy our little world of finance can get.
I mean people making hundreds of millions of dollars off manipulated trades is just mind-blowing. Especially compared to when I’m just mostly index-funding it and riding it out.
It really shows just how glorified making #bookoobucks really is.
To be honest, there’s nothing really exciting about watching your money sit in an index fund. It’s akin to watching paint dry.
But there’s something to be said for the millions of folks who stick to the process over so many years. Relentlessly, year-after-year, these dedicated women and men keep piling in all the money they can scrounge up into these funds and watching it grow…also watching it occasionally give you a heart attack losing 15% when the market freaks out.
I recently finished reading The Millionaire Next Door, a truly perspective-shifting personal finance book. Essentially, the majority of millionaires in our country are not the ones glorified in movies like The Wolf of Wall Street, wearing $50,000 watches, or living in the Hamptons (although these things would be nice).
The real millionaires are the ones you’d never expect. The people living in average-priced homes, driving used cars, and working their whole lives to get there.
It’s something I truly respect and will hopefully attain one day.
As a personal finance blogger, it seems the story everyone hypes these days is the 30-something-year-old who saved a disproportionate amount of his or her income and is now retired traveling the world.
While this is attainable for some, it’s not the norm.
Honestly, should it be the norm? I wonder how our economy would fare if the majority of the population made their living online and retired after only a decade of work.
Seems to me there’s no way we could keep the machine churning. What’s so bad about working anyways? I’m asking a lot of rhetorical questions…
Through my short 25 years of life thus far, I’ve always had two different feelings tugging at me.
On one hand, I want to be filthy rich. I’m sure there’s people out there who would decline that option, but I have yet to meet any of them.
On the other hand, I go back to my southern roots. My family comes from a long-line of farmers, just as most American families do. My family along with so many others made a living literally growing food and tobacco in the hot sun all day long.
They never amassed great fortunes or took extravagant vacations. They were purely satisfied with living simple, non-material lives.
The song Simple Man by Lynyrd Skynyrd is now blaring in the back of my head…
At the risk of sounding corny or cliché, I think we can all liken our lives back to the days of our grandparents and great-grandparents. We have to remember each and every day to man the farms of our lives.
I think what I’m trying to say, but with the help of bourbon have been extremely long-winded in doing so, is stick to the process. Oftentimes in pursuing something, it’s the trip there that we enjoy the most, not the destination.
In building wealth, and just living life, it’s the same idea. Our jobs are to be present for and enjoy the moments along the way because that’s what makes the whole thing worth it.
Big thanks to Ryan at FinancialLion for contributing a great article.
I love that The Wolf of Wallstreet was playing in the background 🙂
Don’t forget to visit financiallion.com!
Interested in more Scotch Street articles? Here are some recents:
Scotch Street Guest Post – Budget Kitty – Nimble Giant
Scotch Street Guest Post – Michael Dinich
Scotch Street Guest Post – I, Vigilante – Caol Ila 12
Interested in contributing? Read this:
What Is Scotch Street? Description, Rules, and How to Guest Post!
