Morgan Housel

that the speed at which a luxury becomes a necessity is two seconds.

And I think that was true for a lot of the infectious diseases of the 20th century.

Scarlet fever, yellow fever, polio, all those.

If you had told them, if you had told a parent in 1952 that there was a vaccine coming that would just effectively eradicate polio and your grandkids would never have to worry about that, they would have said like, I can't imagine how happy you're going to be that you don't have to deal with this.

And we're not, of course.

People's heads just instantly calibrate to the standards of what everybody else has.

And that is the seed of saying it's not enough.

We're almost never going to get to a point where we're like, no matter how good the technology is, no matter how good the medicine is, no matter how big the houses are, never get to a point where at a broad scale in society, everyone wakes up and says, all good, this is enough.

I think what you described is a level of independence, but independence is always a spectrum.

So there is a high level of independence in which you don't need to work anymore.

But I would call that, you know, making this up, that's like level 13 independence.

And below that are several different levels of like, even if you have $100 in the bank,

That is a higher level of independence than if you had zero.

And certainly if you had negative, if you were in debt.

And so you realize that literally every dollar that you save is a little claim check on your future that you control that somebody else doesn't.

I think it's an important mindset like redefining things.

independence like that, that it's on a spectrum and every single dollar is an independence claim check.

For me, I've always viewed it like I've always been a big saver for my whole career.

And I've always viewed it as not saving money for delayed gratification.

I viewed it as purchasing independence for which I get value out of right now, today.