I had this debate with a close friend today, he is under the belief that you need to continually save for the future and almost your whole salary should be put away and invested specifically for the future. He lives his life with a gentle fear of what the future holds and carries an aimless desire to prepare for it.
I respect his belief but it made me start thinking, why do I work? Is it just to survive, should I be satisfied with just surviving, is that the ultimate goal of life is, is that what I want to get out of life aka “survival”? Ask yourself why do you work hard? Is it for the material that you reap from the hard work you put in or the material goods you compile or like me is it the life “experiences” that you have access to from the monetary gain of work? Maybe its a combination of all of them but which one is number one?
Whenever I am sad, stressed out or just in a bad mood I put myself in travel mode again and think in my mind of past travels. They are the happiest memories I have besides “family” why not invest in more of them?
I have come to the conclusion that I work hard because I want the freedom to travel plain and simple. I could on my hand count the top five to ten experiences of my life and the great majority of them come from some form of traveling and experiencing the world.
At the end of our short debate, he politely criticized me for wasting away cash traveling the world instead of investing it in assets that could help me “survive” in the future. Although he is my best friend and someone I truly admire I think it is a truly bad habit to continually live in the future.
