The Most Important Question

Carl Richards says, via the Evidence Based Investor blog, that the most important question an investor can ask themselves in a planning context is why is money important to you? We'll all have different answers and I can't imagine there are any wrong answers. If you want to buy stuff, fine. If you want to give money away, fine. Anything else, fine. Related to many past posts here though, is knowing yourself well enough to be able to answer that question. 

I believe a lot of people struggle to figure themselves out but as our friend Bill, here in Walker once said very wisely, you can figure it out now or you can figure it out later but you'll be much happier if you can figure it out now. 

My answer to why money is important might be odd. I don't aspire to much. I love looking at all kinds of vehicles and taking pictures of them. Many kinds including trick trucks (desert racing), Ferraris, old Harley Davidsons, fire apparatus and so on. I can't convey enough how fun that is for me. I've never had interest in buying something like that. I'm not motivated by leaving a big financial legacy to heirs or charities. I suspect we'll have some left over for that but whatever the equivalent is for name on a building for someone who is not wealthy means nothing to me. 

The reason money is important to me is for optionality. For purposes of this conversation I am assuming people are able to pay their bills and put food on the table. 

I've talked about this before but as I get older I find myself more willing to spend money on adding convenience or you could think of it as removing hassle. When we first moved to the house we're in I frequently shoveled the 1/3 of a mile down to the county maintained pavement. I'd put on my iPod and go get it done. I'd like to think I could still do that but a few years ago we bought an ATV with a plow blade. We've had a lot of small snow storms lately. Earlier in the week I was able to do the plowing in about 1/2 an hour without being wiped out. Today there was more snow so it took an hour. There still some work, getting out of the ATV to do a little shoveling but it is not tiring. Last year we had one storm where we got 18 inches in a couple of hours and my ATV could not get it done. A buddy from the fire department bailed us out with his front loader. At some point, as matter of convenience or removing hassle, we'll get a bigger piece of equipment that is capable of pushing more snow. It will be nice to have that optionality, to be able to afford that without going into debt for it. 

Another recent example of optionality as hassle avoidance that I may have mentioned before; a year and a half ago the 15 acre parcel went up for sale. The whole 15 was beyond us financially but we were able to buy the 3 acre slice closest to us to have a buffer from the development that is now happening with three different build sites downhill from us. This was important to us, so that no one would build in our line of site, we still will feel secluded.

I think success on this front comes from knowing what you want, understanding what you want to avoid and all this is much easier to achieve when you live below your means.