Fire and Knowledge

The question that must be addressed, therefore, is not how to care for the planet, but how to care for each of the planet’s millions of human and natural neighborhoods, each of its millions of small pieces and parcels of land, each one of which is in some precious way different from all the others. Our understandable wish to preserve the planet must somehow be reduced to the scale of our competence.

—Wendell Berry, “Word and Flesh” in What Are People For? (1990), p. 200.

Eight Steps to Seven Figures by Charles Carlson, 293 pages.

What does it take to be a millionaire when you retire? Less than you think. Certainly less than I thought.

Charles Carlson gives eight steps to achieve that goal:

1. Start investing right now. Every day you wait is lost money.
2. Establish a goal that matters to you. If possible, make it measurable so you can track your progress.
3. Buy only stocks and mutual funds. Forget about the rest.
4. Buy only high quality stocks that are leaders in their field or, if you know the area, you are sure will be leaders. Buy what you know and when you don’t use no-load index funds.
5. Invest monthly, no matter how small. It adds up through compound interest and forces you to invest when the market is down. Diversify through time, not assets.
6. Buy and hold. Sell only when necessary. Never daytrade, which just makes your broker and government rich. Buying and holding makes you rich through better returns and tax reduction. And it’s less stressful to boot.
7. Limit taxes as much as possible by taking advantage of tax breaks. Hold stocks for at least a year (though the longer the better) and put in the maximum legal contributions into your 401(k) and/or IRA, or as much as you can afford.
8. Live a stable and simple life. Limit shocks to your finances – don’t divorce, don’t job or house hop, don’t get into debt, don’t have ten kids, don’t daytrade. Dare to be boring.

Sounds simple enough. Here’s an example. If a 20 year old invests just $67 per month into a 401(k) (assuming 11% average annual return), he will have a million-dollar portfolio by age 65. That’s less than $37,000 turned into $1,000,000, the magic of compound interest.

But the longer a person waits, the harder it gets. By age 30, the monthly requirement increases to $202 per month. By age 40, it’s $629 per month. That’s why the number one step is to start now, especially if you want to retire early.

If you want to be a millionaire, it isn’t that hard. It just takes a willingness to contribute regularly to your retirement account and live on less than your income. That’s something even I can do. And so can you.

How many beliefs could a perfect brain check for logical contradictions? The answer is surprising. Even if a computer were as large as the known universe, built of components no larger than protons, with switching speeds as fast as the speed of light, all laboring in parallel from the moment of the big bang up to the present, it would still be fighting to add a 300th belief to its list. What does this say about the possibility of our ever guaranteeing that our worldview is perfectly free from contradiction? It is not even a dream within a dream.

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (W. W. Norton, 2004), p. 57.

Our country is not being destroyed by bad politics; it is being destroyed by a bad way of life. Bad politics is merely another result.

–Wendell Berry, “A Few Words in Favor of Edward Abbey” in What Are People For? (1990), p. 37

Good taste confers a sense of almost unassailable superiority upon its possessor. This is the primary reason that, in our society, people from different social classes do not freely interact with one another. They cannot stand each other’s taste. More specifically, the people who are higher up in the social hierarchy are utterly contemptuous of everything that the people beneath them enjoy (movies, sports, television shows, music, etc.).

–Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture (UK Edition, 2004), p. 125

To have a great capital is not so necessary as to know how to manage a small one, and never to be without a little. It is not large funds that are wanted, but a constant supply, like a small stream that never dies.

–William Cooper, A Guide in the Wilderness (1810) as quoted in Scott and Helen Nearing, The Good Life, p. 285

There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.

–Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847; Reader’s Digest, 1984), p. 220

At best, countercultural rebellion is pseudo-rebellion: a set of dramatic gestures that are devoid of any progressive political or economics consequences and that detract from the urgent task of building a more just society. In other words, it is rebellion that provides entertainment for the rebels, and nothing much else. At worst, countercultural rebellion actively promotes unhappiness, by undermining or discrediting social norms and institutions that actually serve a valuable function.

–Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture (UK Edition, 2004), p. 65