Everything is an Investment

[DarkRange55]

Everything is an investment and 99% of financial investments are garbage. I'm not talking about lifestyle investments like ordering a good meal that is healthy and makes you feel good. I'm talking about financial investments. But the first concept is to understand is that everything is an investment. When you receive money, instead of thinking how am I going to spend this money? Think of how am I going to invest this money. Because thats literally what money exists for: to be traded for goods and services. If it is an investment, it is an investment in a good or a service. Whether thats stocks, bonds, currencies - those are goods. Whether it's a financial advisor to help you make more money or a corporate consultant, thats a service. So wherever you go, you're investing money. There's no way around that. Buying drugs is an investment and it's both a bad lifestyle investment and a bad financial investment. Most of the time because very few people can have a good lifestyle on heroin. Ordering a pizza is an investment, it's how you invest your money. You're trying to buy happiness through junk food. That might be a good investment if you can limit it to once a week. If you're eating pizza everyday that is a bad investment. Everything you buy is an investment and 99% of them, if we're looking from the lens of: is it a financial investment, are garbage because thats literally thing that you buy, that good or that service is not going to make you more money in the future. A good financial investment will make you more money than you payed for it, eventually. You at least hope will make you more money in the future. That stock could loose you money but its at least got a chance of appreciating. The pizza that you just bought has zero percent chance of appreciating in the future. No one's gonna wanna buy your used pizza after it's been sitting out overnight.

There's disposable investments which go pretty much to zero. Which is paper towels, food, anything that is small and consumed quickly. Once you buy it its pretty hard to resell it like I'm sure you could get some resale value on toilet paper and you really could during the Covid Pandemic if you really pushed it selling it on Craig'sList or something but most of the time when you buy goods they are going to depreciate to zero percent. Thats the first level of goods, their resale value is like from 0-10%. The second level of goods that you buy, lets say higher ticket items, like TV's or perhaps clothes although clothes loose most of their value unless its a rack of designer suites, cars, planes, yachts the vast majority of higher ticket items that people buy loose at least 30% of their value the second you bought them. The second you drove that new car off the lot its just lost 30% of its value. The clothes that you buy might have lost 90% of their value unless they're some designer suites. That's pretty much the only thing you can resell at a decent value but it'd have to be relatively soon after you bought it because suites don't age particularly well. Fashion changes. The TV, probably 40% of its value is gone the second you buy it and continues to get worse over time. $500 phones two years later maybe you can get $100 for them now. Most of what you buy either depreciates 30-100% the second you buy it. So a car, unless its is a vintage supercar or Porsche that could go up in value, its gonna be a Honda that's depreciating 30% the second you bought it. At the least you can sell the car but it's at 70% of its value which is a bad financial investment. Food is depreciating 100%. You'll have a tough time reselling the food that you just ate. To pop $20k worth of bottles in the club is the worst financial investment you can make. You can make that kind of investment when you're high-rolling and making $10 million a month and it doesn't matter. These are all lifestyle investments. You're investing in feeling good in the moment. Which is perfectly fine. Lifestyle investments are not bad, their purpose is to enjoy life. They are the whole point of money making investments. What I'm saying is that they are worthless in the sense of they have no have no financial worth and they are a place for your money go. Most high-rollers go broke, just give them a long enough time line. Unless they are extremely good at getting revenue and extremely motivated to get revenue after they're rich which is a lot harder when you're a high-roller because the whole point of getting rich was so you could ball out.

But financially it's either worthless or depreciates at 30-90%. That used TV is maybe 50-70% depreciation based on how old it is, clothes are often 90%, food is 100%, bottles in the club are 100%.

 

[Pluto]

 

[Forever Sleep]

I wonder if that many people are aiming for financial investment when they buy day to day stuff. Even when they buy property- which can be good to invest in if you're rich and know what you're doing. The majority of people though I imagine buy property to live in. They may hope to pass on that investment to loved ones when they die. They may end up needing to sell it- if they need money to pay for health/ nursing home care.

I tend to find people who buy stuff for investment do it consciously though. Collectors for instance- won't remove things from the packaging. They may not get the item restored- because they know it decreases the value. Some people get pleasure from both collecting and profiting from knowing when to buy and sell- almost like buying/ selling shares and, playing the stock market. I think maybe more people- especially those with less disposable income need to use what they buy though.

But sure- we invest money in the hopes of improving our emotions. We also do other things for that. We invest time and energy if we hope to improve our prospects in life. Education is both a time and money investment- in the hopes we might land a more enjoyable and higher paying job. We may invest effort and discipline into our appearance to try and improve our chances impressing others- both socially and romantically. We may also invest time, money and effort into our mental health, if we know certain issues hold us back. I wish I'd invested more into tackiling my social anxiety. Maybe the biggest investments we can make are into personal development. They may not be as financially profitable as a Ming vase but then, maybe some things money can't buy.

Would a pet be a good investment for instance? In most cases- probably not. It will require vast amounts of resources to keep. It likely depreciates in value as it ages. But, the emotional reward could be beyond measure. Of course, there will be 'prize' animals out there. Bought and sold as status symbols- sadly quite often- if it encourages illegal activity and cruelty.