Life Planning

This is a short review (of a part) of Life Planning by George Kinder.

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Every morning I take some time (30-60min) to read a book. This morning I was reading Life Planning by George Kinder. The book’s subtitle explains best what it’s about “the missing link between money and emotion”.

Kinder’s Phases

In the book, Kinder describes 7 stages of money maturity. The first two focus on your upbringing (ignorance & pain), the three after that on how to think maturely about money (knowledge, insight, decisiveness), the last two focus on awareness (vision, aloha).

What I love about the book is the ‘humanization’ of the topic money. Kinder shows that our beliefs and values guide our thinking about money. It’s not just numbers and spreadsheets, it’s wants, hopes and dreams.

Time = Money

In the chapter on knowledge, I was suddenly struck by an insight.

The time I spend reading and learning new things is like investing money. In the short term, I will become a little smarter, but I can’t spend that time on doing other (fun or productive) things. The same goes for the money that you put in the (investment) bank, it will (most probably) become more, but you can’t do anything with it for quite the while.

I also believe that the knowledge that I’m gathering will compound. By that, I mean that the accumulation of multiple pieces of knowledge will lead to something that is worth more than the separate parts. In investing this is called compounding, the interest on interest is what makes investing worth it in the long term.

My question to you is: How do you invest in yourself?