Morgan Housel

And it's also the case that

I think as a survival mechanism, we underestimate the odds of bad things happening to us.

Because if we were honest about the odds of it happening, it'd be too hard to get out of bed in the morning.

If we were honest about the odds of you getting divorced, of you losing your job,

of your kids not turning out the way that you thought they would of you not saving for retirement if you were honest about those odds it'd be hard to wake up tomorrow you'd wake you'd be overwhelmed and so i think we there is a pro there is a almost healthy amount of ignorance that we have of of being like yeah but that's not going to happen to me and it's almost in a good way that you do it's like a survival mechanism but because we do it i think it is very important to financially and psychologically have a level of independence so just focusing on the financial independence

A level of savings that seems like it's too much, that seems like, oh, this is completely excessive.

Do I need this much savings and liquidity?

The answer might be yes, because you're probably underestimating the odds of very bad things happening in your life.

It's probably 20 to 30 percent.

Maybe it's high teens in that in that zone.

And it's been like that over the course of big changes in my net worth.

I've always had it about like that.

Now, any financial advisor would look at that and say, Morgan, given your age and income, that's way too much.

You don't need that.

And I don't even disagree with that.

I mean, it is ridiculous, but I value sleeping at night.

And as I said before, maybe there's a nugget of my past that's left me with a lower sense of self-confidence of being able to, you know, the idea that this is all gonna come crashing down.

And the idea that what I value more than anything is not outperforming the market or outperforming my peers, it's independence.

And so there are quirks of my personality and my wife's personality that lead me to that.

Never in a million years would I recommend that