If the executioner tells you your death has been delayed by a day cause of malfunctions to your electric chair, should you be happy or sad

 Fuck this shit

For some reason, this year is going by really, really fast, and we cant even blame it on covid since fortunately for us, its going much better than other countries. I can already foresee it going like this: New Year, take some time to get into the groove of things, chinese new year, then april may june where you get quite a few public holidays, then poof, half a year is gone. Stay tuned, maybe I'll do the forecast for the second half of the year sometime in July. Wouldnt say its been the best month for me so far but some of the resolutions have been going great while others have been just spiraling towards oblivion, which prompted me to at least hop on my monthly reflection before even this goes to shit too.

Been a month of trying to understand why I do some things I do. How apt that my February book has a particular point on sometimes we dont have to be totally logical with the things we do, we just have to be reasonable and that's enough. 

So in Feb, I read The Psychology of Money, and interesting book that teaches quite abit without going into any technical fuzzy wuzzy charts and numbers type of shit. Its actually just a simple book of 20 lessons or takeaway people should have about money. Just going to state a few of those I like best from the book:

1. No one's crazy. Sounds obvious, but its more about understanding that everyone has a reason to do what they do and there's so much about understanding that before we make decisions based on the decisions of others'

2: The power of luck. Luck exists, truly. but the trick is to never overrate or underestimate luck. Do not blame your failures on luck and do attribute some of your successes to luck. Though personally what i find about luck is, when you absolutely need it, it will surely fail you, but when you do enough of your own part and said luck makes the difference between great and fantastic, it will come to ride alongside you. Luck, like any gold digger, likes to pick a winner too it seems.

3: Shifting goalposts. set your goalposts and change them reasonably. If you forever follow a forever moving goalpost, you will never be happy.

4: Getting wealth and keeping wealth. its not about trying to make flash in the pan bets to get rich, though thats great too. its about having the power to hold your holdings when they are down because time, in the terms of investing, is money, literally.

5: The power of tails. a lesson to be used in investing and diversification, but also, a lesson to be used in life. Many things in life follow the power law, just like investing. you'll lay down 10 good stock picks but 1-2 of them will be the one that cover most of your profits. And its the same in life, corny as it sounds, you will make 10-20 mistakes but let your  1-2 success define you.

6: Freedom. Making the choice to obtain freedom should be the choice that everyone takes. The freedom to do whatever you want, however you want, with whoever you want and for as long as you want. To decisions should be greater than that. E.g no purchase should lock you into doing something you might not like to do for 10 years or something.

7: Being reasonable is enough. You dont have to be completely logical, because if every human being in life makes completely logical decisions, then we cant really be set apart from each other. You just have to be mostly logical, and whatever else that makes you happy, relieved, or simply give you a peace of mind, stick with it. Example, financing a long loan to buy a house is financially savvy cause investment returns, opportunity cost blablabla. But if financing a shorter loan and fully paying off your house earlier gives you a peace of mind and helps your find Freedom (see previous), then just fucking do it.

8: Change. Dont be afraid of change, dont be a prisoner of sunk cost even when the logical/reasonable choice is staring you in the face.

9: Nothing's free. This one is a great one too because it really gives me a bigger peace of mind. Summary of it is , everything has a price, and its rewards of course. Investing in the stock market naturally gives alot of upsides in terms of potential rewards, but the price, is the key. Many people believe that its just the capital they put into it, when in actual fact, the sleeplessness, the despair and market drops, the mindboggling, nervewrecking moments are also part of the price you pay. Same in life, understand the rewards, but more importantly, be clear of the price too.

10: You and me. As with money, as with life, its nice to take advice from others. but always, always remember, everyone is playing a different game, every has different concerns, risk of appetite, etc. Be sure you know the advicee's story before you follow it.

11: What we want to believe and what we need to believe. I concur with this chapter, that people tend to believe what they want to believe more. but when what they want to believe becomes very close to what they need to believe, they will surely follow it with a fervor. Example, if I put 10% of my stock portfolio into apple stocks, i would really want them to succeed and constantly scour news for their success. But when i put 100% of my portfolio and then borrow some to dump it in, I will really pray to 1000 gods for its success and tell myself that it is the best company for the future of mankind, eventually narrowing down my vision.