Did you win the game? Have you stopped playing?

Coffee
23

This, Musk/Bezos are also good examples of this. Making another billion doesn’t mean much for them I suspect.

Re Olympic athletes, imagine how crushing it must be to then see somebody like that swimmer Phelps win 28 (!) Olympic medals.

The achievement to win a gold (in most sports) is something I admire. Not because e.g. running 0.01 second faster is particularly great but because of the monomaniacal nature one must have to commit to the hardships, discipline, etc. to be that bit better than everybody else. I do often find myself raising my eyebrow though when former athletes don’t move on with life afterwards and for the rest of their life just stay hanging in “I was once great” as their life story.

1 Like
24

Part of the question is: Do you assume cash to be risk-free, or whether you see it as just another asset class? Personally, I would consider a pure-fiat portfolio to be much more risky than a diversified portfolio.

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25

It’s a fair point and I guess being in cash carries a lot of risk: inflation, devaluation etc. I guess Swiss Franc may have held up better than others, but pure cash (or even bonds with sufficient interest to beat inflation) is likely still too risky.

I guess you have to really diversify across asset classes and jurisdictions.

I know of people who lost everything when the explosion happened in Beirut. Going from an affluent middle class lifestyle to having to grow whatever food they could in their garden.

They had real estate which was destroyed and wasn’t covered by insurance and the money in their bank accounts were locked up and couldn’t be withdrawn. Even having a small portion in a different jurisdiction could have prevented this disaster.

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26

That highlights the importance of geographical diversification, in the sense of actually holding savings and custody accounts, precious metals and other tangible assets, real estate, etc. in multiple non-connected legal jurisdictions. In my experience, only a small minority of people account for this key pillar of wealth-management in their financial planning.

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