Morgan Housel

I've saved enough and I can wake up every morning and do whatever I would like to do.

That's obviously an aspiration that for most people will never be fulfilled.

reached until they're maybe in their 70s and they're retiring and they have social security and some other savings from there.

But for most people, a good level of independence as a good goal is enough savings so that if you lost your job, if your car broke down, if you needed to replace the roof on your house, you would be able to do it without losing that much sleep.

That is a realistic level that I think almost anyone can achieve.

Financial independence, retire early.

Okay, get that.

How do I get there?

The first thing that I think that's most important, this is the first and the last thing, this is the most important part, is that

All wealth, your feeling of wealth is what you have minus what you want.

And it's so easy to ignore the latter.

I talk about in the book, my late grandmother-in-law, my wife's grandmother, she passed away a couple of years ago.

For 30 years, she lived off of nothing but $1,700 or $1,800 a month in social security.

Not a lot of money.

By most accounts, very little money.

But she didn't want anything more.

If she made $1,700 a month, she did not want $1,700 in $1.

She was perfectly happy.

She found all of her happiness working in her garden, going for walks, watching the birds, watching the sunrise, watching the sunset, talking to her friends, hanging out with her family.

But if you asked her, you said, you only make $1,700 a month.