Inspirational — Page 5 — My Money Blog

Thank You, John C. Bogle

January 16, 2019 By Jonathan Ping 6 Comments

Vanguard announced on January 16, 2019 that its founder, John C. Bogle, passed away on at his home in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania at 89 years old. There will no doubt be many tributes; here are a few same-day articles from WSJ, Bloomberg, Reuters, and great tweet from Morgan Housel.

Jack Bogle was a champion of thrift, simplicity, and keeping investing costs low. While he reached the popularity level where people would write entire columns about “Why Bogle is Wrong about This or That”, I was always annoyed when people would pick at one little thing he said. I felt that his strongest message was that of common sense. Sometimes it took multiple readings and time, but he really offered a lot of valuable, reasoned knowledge in his books. Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about my Jack Bogle Appreciation curve:

boglecurve

My first mutual fund investment was in the Janus Mercury fund in the very early 2000s. I was chasing performance and Morningstar ratings, and the fund was actively managed with high turnover and high expenses. Thanks to reading his books, my subsequent investments were in low-cost Vanguard funds that were available to a DIY investor. You can now buy ultra-cheap commission-free ETFs from nearly every brokerage account. New investors may take this for granted, but I’m old enough to remember that this was not always the case! This was solely due to Vanguard’s success:

vanguardbarr

He created a unique structure where the unnecessary “Helper” fees stayed in the pockets of the people who invested with Vanguard (and indirectly anyone who invests in a low-cost index fund today). This has resulted in an estimated $1 trillion saved by average everyday investors.

Today, my family is financially secure and we have a pretty clear plan for the future as well. The majority of my net worth is held at Vanguard. My life was materially improved by a man that I never got the honor to meet. The best I could do was to win a personally-signed book from a charity auction for his foundation.

Thank you, Mr. Bogle. I will try my best to heed your advice.

p.s. If you do not know that I am talking about, please do yourself a favor and read The Little Book of Common Sense Investing from the library or buy a copy. It is very short and a good place to start.

Filed Under: Inspirational

Last updated: April 25, 2019

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Wild Book: What Do You Plan To Do With Your One Wild and Precious Life?

December 27, 2018 By Jonathan Ping 6 Comments

I’ve been catching up on some memoirs and recently finished Wild by Cheryl Strayed. (I haven’t seen the movie.) I mention it here because the author did a “Big Awesome Thing” in hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and I think achieving financial freedom is also a “Big Awesome Thing”. I thought – What makes a person able to accomplish a “Big Awesome Thing”?

First, instead of rehashing another plot summary for the book, I’ll steal the blurb from Amazon:

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

Cheryl Strayed father also left her when she was young. An excerpt from the book:

The father’s job is to teach his children how to be warriors, to give them the confidence to get on the horse and ride into battle when it’s necessary to do so. If you don’t get that from your father, you have to teach yourself.

In my opinion, the lack of a strong father figure and the early death of her mother left her without the support or belief that she had power over her own life. But by pushing herself to do this seemingly random but difficult task and overcoming many obstacles along the way, she discovered that she did have that power inside. Perhaps each person is drawn to a different “Big Awesome Thing” that can be the first stepping stone to a life lived consciously. Hers was being free in the wild:

It had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.

After that, Strayed could attain happiness and fulfillment because she had the belief that she could change her own circumstances. Her actions mattered. It was worth trying, taking that risk to make your life better. I fear that many others have lost that self-belief and thus don’t even try.

I enjoyed the following excerpt from a poem that was included in the book – “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Inspirational

Last updated: April 25, 2019

Shel Silverstein “The Voice” and Financial Freedom

December 2, 2018 By Jonathan Ping Leave a Comment

I remember being both amused and confused by Shel Silverstein’s poems as a kid. When I read them again today to my own kids, my reaction is mostly the same, except some of them are even darker than I remember!

I ran across a Fatherly roundup of inspirational quotes from Silverstein and really enjoyed this one called “The Voice” from his newer book Falling Up:

There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
“I feel this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong.”
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What’s right for you–just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.

For me, after shock-proofing, the path to financial freedom was all about finding alignment with this voice. I’m still working on it, but there is less of an inner struggle when you’re not also stressed about how to fix the heater and also cover the rent due next week.

Filed Under: Inspirational

Last updated: April 25, 2019

Good Luck or Bad Luck? Maybe, It’s Hard To Tell

August 16, 2018 By Jonathan Ping 3 Comments

Reading children’s books to my kids has become a regular source of new wisdom. I guess that’s not surprising, if the goal is to teach kids about life. Here’s one that came across recently and keeps popping back in my head.

I first read it in the children’s book Zen Shorts by Jon J. Muth (Caldecott Honor book). There are many variations of it online, and it may be credited as a Chinese, Buddhist, Taoist, or Zen parable. Here’s a brief version from Daily Zen:

There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically. “Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed. “Maybe,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. “Maybe,” answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “Maybe,” said the farmer.

I enjoy the sound of Alan Watts’ voice, so I am also embedding this YouTube version:

I still have a hard time applying this parable in real-time, but it does help me after some time passes. This parable is also tricky because you have to remember both when life puts up a roadblock and when you receive an unexpected windfall.

Filed Under: Career, Inspirational

Last updated: April 25, 2019

NYT Financial Tuneup Day 4: Retirement

February 27, 2018 By Jonathan Ping Leave a Comment

nyt_ftu Day 4 of the NY Times 7-Day Financial Tuneup is about retirement. (Sign up for your own personalized tune-up here.) This assumes you are eligible for a 401(k) or similar retirement plan. The key action point is bumping up your retirement contribution rate by 1% and perhaps adjusting your asset allocation if necessary. Here’s a simple chart showing you why:

nyt_tuneup_ret1

If you’re making $50,000 annually and contributing 5 percent of your salary to your retirement account, assuming an annual return of 6 percent and a 3 percent annual salary increase, in 25 years, you will have about $198,000 in your retirement account. If you start to increase that percentage by 1 percentage point annually however, you will have over $550,000 in that same account in 25 years. By increasing the amount you save by 1 percentage point each year, you’ll save an extra $354,940 for retirement.

Increase Your Savings

Log into your retirement savings account. (Baby steps…)
Increase the amount of money taken out of your paycheck by 1 percentage point annually. Also check to see if you are taking full advantage of any company match.
Make it automatic. If you have the option, set it to automatically escalate in the future.

Rebalance Your Account

Log into your retirement savings account.
Determine how you should rebalance your account. What is your target asset allocation? Here’s mine but it’s probably more complicated than most people need. Consider a target-date fund, especially if it is a low-cost, passive version. Fidelity, Vanguard, and Schwab all have solid versions. I put my own mom in the Vanguard one.
Make it automatic. If you have the option, set it to automatically escalate in the future. My provider calls it “Auto-Increase”.
Rebalance your account. Basically, make sure your portfolio is still what you want it to be, as it may have shifted over time. You only need to do this once or twice a year, or you can set “bands” to rebalance when things get too out of whack.

Action, action, action. This move won’t make you save enough for retirement by itself, but it’s something tangible. If you are really going for financial freedom, you should use this as a platform to do even more. We have our 401k savings rate already set at 60% (max allowed by one provider) since we are working part-time (“semi-retired” sounds better!) with a lower income but still want get as close to the annual 401k limits as possible.

Financial Tuneup Recap (still in progress)

Day 1: Optimize Your Thinking
Day 2: Trim Your Budget
Day 3: Finding Better Credit Cards
Day 4: Retirement (this post)
Day 5: Credit Report
Day 6: Insurance
Day 7: Emergency Fund
Alternate Day 6: Flexible Spending Accounts
Alternate Day 7: Student Loans

Filed Under: Frugal Living, Goals, Inspirational, Retirement

Last updated: March 2, 2018

Ikigai – Finding Your “Reason For Being”

February 26, 2018 By Jonathan Ping 3 Comments

ikigai

I stumbled across the concept of ikigai in Japanese culture – loosely translated as “reason for being” – in this Medium post. The Venn diagram above appears to be taken from this Toronto Star article (which is based on another work, and so on…). The graphic suggests that we asks ourselves these questions to find our ikigai:

What do you love?
What are you good at?
What does the world need from you?
What can you get paid for?

In other words, Ikagai is not just your passion or something that makes you happy. I searched for deeper explanations and found this BBC article with the most satisfying one:

Ikigai is what allows you to look forward to the future even if you’re miserable right now.

I was reminded of this previously-mentioned Venn diagram by Bud Caddell regarding finding the right job:

caddell620

In essence, the question “What does the world need from you?” is collapsed into “What can you get paid for?” above. If you’re looking for the ideal job, then I suppose that is a good shortcut.

However, not everyone’s reason for waking up every morning involves money. The BBC article cites a 2010 survey of 2,000 Japanese men and women where just 31% of participants cited work as their ikigai. That means for 69% of Japanese people, their ikigai is something else. Family, friends, community, a hobby, a volunteer position.

Food for thought.

Filed Under: Career, Inspirational

Last updated: February 26, 2018

NYT Financial Tuneup Day 2: Trim Your Budget

February 21, 2018 By Jonathan Ping 8 Comments

nyt_ftu Day 2 of my NY Times 7-Day Financial Tuneup is called Trim Your Budget. The key here is to take action, not just do research and then put it off again. (If you just want to daydream, Day 1 was Optimize Your Thinking.) Again, the NYT doesn’t have direct links, but anyone with a (free) NYT account can get their own personalized list of tasks.

Reviewing your monthly budget annually is a simple way to keep your spending in check. Don’t worry, we’re not going to ask you to cut anything you love, just to trim your spending in places you may not even notice. After all, if you benefit from your weekly yoga class or truly enjoy your restaurant night, have at it. Just be honest with yourself about the services that you truly use and enjoy. In comparison, if you have a languishing gym membership you never use, it may be time to cut that $50-a-month membership fee.

Round 1: Find an Easy Item to Cut

Gather your credit card and checking account statements from the last month.
List your spending. “…list any expense from the last month that occurs routinely: daily, weekly, monthly. From the cup of coffee you buy every morning, to your weekly manicure, to your monthly gym membership or magazine subscription.”
Find an easy place to trim. “…most commonly-cut expenses are subscriptions to gyms, credit bureaus, newspapers and audio services.”

Here is rundown of recurring expenses with some commentary.

Mortgage – thankfully paid off a few years ago.
Property tax – yes, but not really negotiable. I suppose I could contest the assessed value of my house, but it seems pretty reasonable.
Car loan – none. My measure of car affordability is whether I can pay for it with cash. I’ve paid cash on every car, from $2,000 on up to 20x that.
Student loan – thankfully paid off that $30,000 a while ago.
Insurance – feels like we have so much insurance, but they have high deductibles to protect against catastrophic events. Car, homeowners, life, long-term disability, and umbrella insurance.
Food/grocery/take-out/restaurants – I’m sure we could trim something, but not in a clear-cut way. No coffee shop habit.
TV/internet – yes, this is a target for trimming.
Cellular phone – Still at $6 a month with Sprint for two lines.
Gym – yes, just barely worth the cost.
Gas
Medical
Clothing, gifts, etc – yes, again I’m sure we could trim something but we are okay with it overall.
Charitable giving – yes, but already thoughtfully budgeted for.
Credit monitoring, Netflix, magazines, music streaming, etc. – I pay for Amazon Prime and feel it is worth the money. No to Netflix, Spotify, HBO, Lifelock, paid credit monitoring, etc. A few magazines at $5 or less per year.

Round 2: Lower Your Bills

Pick a bill to start with
Find and review your latest bill
Call your service provider
Ask for a reduction in your bill

The hard part: Pick up the phone and call my cable provider. I’ve done it before, but it’s never fun. This tune-up did motivate me to do it, so I suppose that’s something. I called my cable provider and after 26 minutes, I was only able to squeeze about $5 a month in concessions by having them re-arrange my bill around to a “new plan” from my “old plan”. Even that required me to get past the initial lie that my “old plan” was “already a great deal”. ($60 a year in savings is not bad for 30 minutes of time, I suppose.)

I did not go all the way to setting a cancel date, as I wanted to avoid interruption in internet service. If you are ready to cancel, see Tips on Reducing Cable and Phone Bills From Ethically Ambiguous Experts.

In the end, I called up the duopoly DSL provider to get the new customer promotion for TV and internet. I confirmed that their was no credit check required. If it all works out, switching should save me around $50 a month ($600 a year). Switching back and forth isn’t fun, but it does save money!

Financial Tuneup Recap (still in progress)

Day 1: Optimize Your Thinking
Day 2: Trim Your Budget (this post)
Day 3: Finding Better Credit Cards
Day 4: Retirement
Day 5: Credit Report
Day 6: Insurance
Day 7: Emergency Fund
Alternate Day 6: Flexible Spending Accounts
Alternate Day 7: Student Loans

Filed Under: Frugal Living, Goals, Inspirational

Last updated: March 2, 2018

NYT Financial Tuneup Day 1: Optimize Your Thinking

February 19, 2018 By Jonathan Ping 3 Comments

nyt_ftu I’ve been in a “Back to Basics” mood and decided to work through the NY Times 7-Day Financial Tuneup. I don’t have direct links to each day as you need a (free) NYT account to view your personalized list of tasks. Instead, I’m quoting selected portions to illustrate the general idea. These are my answers and not a statement of what is best – each person’s situation is different but equally valid.

Day 1: Optimize Your Thinking

nyt_tuneup1

What do I value?

Try to figure out why you are working so hard and worrying about your finances. After that, setting financial priorities may be simpler.

Spending quality time with family and friends. Being able to spend time with my children while they are still young (and want to spend time with me too). Having the opportunity to teach them things and build a good lifelong relationship. I hope to avoid the cycle where young children spend all day cared for by paid professionals, and in return the elderly are also cared for all day by paid professionals. (Selfish, I know…) I’m not against school or babysitters – I also enjoy spending one-on-one time with my spouse.
Having personal time to pursue my own educational goals. I also want time all to myself. I want to try things that I’m not very talented at but I still enjoy. (This means dropping work, which often means getting paid for one specialized task.) I’d like to work on residential solar PV + battery storage + water catchment systems. I still have a plenty of room to improve my cooking skills. I want to smoke my own Texas-style briskets. I took this Vanguard retirement quiz and scored mostly as a “learner”.
Find a way to give back. I also answered some questions as a “teacher” and “volunteer” role. I’d like to figure a way to give back to my community where I feel like I am making a tangible difference (as opposed to my current cash contribution with unknown impact). I still haven’t figured this one out.

What brings me the most joy?

Figure out the two or three things you spend money on in your life that bring you the most joy. Is it your annual vacation? Your fancy gym membership? The great apartment close to work?

Our house. Location was our top priority, and it is close to both work, school, and most extracurricular activities. We chose less square footage in exchange for 30-minutes less (each way) in commute time. While we managed to pay off the mortgage, it did take up a big chunk of our income for a long time. The house is older and also has higher maintenance needs.
Extended annual trip every summer. We chose a school schedule with traditional summer breaks (no homeschooling, no year-round school). As a result, I would like to be able to plan a longer 4-week vacation each year in a different destination. This would help to better immerse ourselves in a different world. For example, one year might be studying national parks and then going on a cross-country USA road trip in an RV. The next might be Japan and having the kids prepare by learning about Japanese culture in the months leading up.
Home-based DIY fun. I like DIY culture (even though I’m not especially good at anything) and simple rules like “Eat anything you want, just cook it yourself“. We don’t eat out at restaurants often, but we do cook a lot at home and sometimes buy more expensive ingredients like good cheese, vegetables, and random things that aren’t on sale. We buy nice kitchen hardware. Another similar thing we are going to try is home-based birthday parties (with 3 kids the $$$ adds up), which means we can “invest” in things like a playground/swing set, vegetable garden, and backyard movie screen. (Tree house would be a stretch goal.)

Financial Tuneup Recap (still in progress)

Day 1: Optimize Your Thinking (this post)
Day 2: Trim Your Budget
Day 3: Finding Better Credit Cards
Day 4: Retirement
Day 5: Credit Report
Day 6: Insurance
Day 7: Emergency Fund
Alternate Day 6: Flexible Spending Accounts
Alternate Day 7: Student Loans

Filed Under: Goals, Inspirational

Last updated: May 30, 2020

401k Millionaire By Age 45: How Was It Possible?

February 1, 2018 By Jonathan Ping 19 Comments

mill With the ongoing bull stock market, more people are reaching $1,000,000 balances in their 401k every day. However, a more extreme claim is that someone reached this mark at age 45 with total employee contributions of only $300,000. Is that really possible? Let’s take a look at what would need to fall into place for that to happen…

Consistently high contributions from salary. If you divide $300,000 by a theoretical 25 years of savings, that works out to $12,000 per year. That is within 401k historical contribution limits, but even with 25 working years, that means nearly maxing out your 401k contributions every single year. (Employer company matches don’t count and can push you above that limit.) According to Redditor Subject_Beef, s/he indeed saved regularly in 1995 with contributions close to the max most years. Consider that only about 10% of participants max out their 401ks each year, and most of those people were over the age of 45.

401kmill

High investment gains. Next, you must have the growth of $300,000 to $1,000,000, which would require a high stock allocation, avoidance of a prolonged bear market, and not panicking during market losses. Even with a lump-sum invested 25 years ago, going from $300k to $1000k would require a compound annual growth rate of 6.2%. However, with a 401(k), you have to do this through regular contributions and dollar-cost-averaging over time. Therefore, the actual growth rate would have to be significantly higher than that. By my rough calculations, the average would have to have been around 9% annually. The current asset allocation was shown to be roughly 37% S&P 500 Index fund, 33% US Small Cap Stock Index fund, and 30% International Stock Index fund. The annualized return of the S&P 500 has been about 10% over the last 23 years, so the numbers are quite possible.

No IRA rollovers. Finally, you’d need a steady career as most people who change companies either cash out or roll their 401(k) funds into an IRA with more flexibility. It is possible to do repeated 401k-to-401k rollovers, which is apparently the case here. I can’t think of too many compelling reasons to do so besides enabling the Backdoor Roth IRA. This is also why I don’t think tracking aggregate 401k balances is a good way to measure savings or wealth. People move funds out of 401ks into IRAs all the time.

Altogether, I believe this story and the numbers do check out. However, this is not a common occurrence given the factors above that have to align. The poster does mention a significant employer match that would have help increase the effective contributions above $300,000 and make it a bit more realistic for an average worker. In any case, becoming a 401(k) millionaire by age 45 is an impressive accomplishment.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Investing, Retirement

Last updated: March 4, 2018

Anthony Bourdain: Taking One More Risk Changed Everything

January 22, 2018 By Jonathan Ping Leave a Comment

Anthony Bourdain gets to travel around the world, eat great food, and hang out with interesting people. I have read a few of his books and enjoy his TV shows, but this YouTube video from 1 Step Away revealed some new details about how it all started.

Bourdain loved writing but spent long days working as a chef. At age 44, having already made a few attempts at literary success, he decided to write up a short piece about restaurants. Finally, despite already having been rejected, he decided to send it over to The New Yorker (after a nudge from his mother). It ended up being printed in 1999. After taking that risk and that initial “yes”, he went on to write the bestseller Kitchen Confidential in 2000.

Having a day job but working for yourself as well definitely sounds familiar. You don’t need to quit everything and chase your dreams into bankruptcy. There is honor in taking a job that puts a roof over your head and supports your family. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep taking some calculated risks. Look for upside potential without taking a lot of downside risk. What if Bourdain had given up after the first round of rejections? It only takes one “yes”.

Previous mentions of Anthony Bourdain:

Filed Under: Inspirational

Last updated: April 25, 2019

Charlie Munger’s Life as a Financial Independence Blueprint

January 18, 2018 By Jonathan Ping 7 Comments

blueprint Charles Munger is probably best known as the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and partner of Warren Buffett. The University of Michigan Ross School of Business recently shared a hour-long talk with Munger on YouTube (embedded below). Munger has plenty of mentions on this site already, but my main takeaway from this talk was a more nuanced overview of his early years and how he personally achieved financial independence before really getting involved with Warren Buffett.

Here is a summary of my notes from the talk:

He was not born poor, but he was also not born into exceptional wealth. Munger wanted to go to Stanford for undergrad, but his father encouraged him to go to the University of Michigan as it was still an excellent school but more affordable. He ended up dropping out after only one year in 1943 to serve in the US Army Air Corps.
Military service, then law school. After World War II, he took college courses with the GI Bill and eventually went to Harvard Law School (getting accepted even though he never earned an undergraduate degree).
Successful law career. He practiced as a successful real estate lawyer until he achieved about $300,000 in assets. This was 10 years of living expenses for his family at the time (he now had a wife and multiple kids). At this point, he started doing real estate development at the same time. When this took off, he stopped practicing law.
Successful real estate development. When he achieved about $3 to $4 million in assets, he also wound down his real estate development firm. He was now “financially independent” but still mostly anonymous.
At this point, he decided to become a “full-time capitalist”. This last stage is what led him to his current status as a billionaire philanthropist. Along with his work with Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway, he was also the chairman of Wesco Financial, which also grew to be a conglomerate of different wholly-owned businesses along with a carefully-run stock portfolio. Wesco Financial eventually became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.

Using Charlie Munger’s life as a blueprint, here’s a pathway towards financial independence.

Work hard, get an education, develop a valuable skill. Munger didn’t start Facebook from his dorm room or trade penny stocks in high school. He served in the military, earned a law degree, and went to work everyday for years. At this point, work means exchanging your time for money, but hopefully at a good hourly rate.
Use that work career and save up 10x living expenses. Munger called himself a “cautious little squirrel” saving up a pile of nuts. He dutifully saved his salary while supporting a family and kids (and some other personal family drama that a luckier person wouldn’t have to deal with). I don’t think you’ll need 10x if you don’t have a family to support.
To accelerate wealth accumulation, you can now take some more risk and start some sort of business. You need something that scales, something that’s not paid per hour. Munger did real estate development. If you look at people who got wealthy quickly, nearly all of them are business owners of some type.
At some point, your investments will enough money to support your living expenses. This is financial independence. It doesn’t matter what you do during the day, as you earn enough money while you’re sleeping. However, many people choose to continue doing one of the paths above: (1) employee-based career, (2) active business management, or (3) actively managing their investments.

Bottom line. Charlie Munger offers up great words of wisdom in this talk. He reminds us that our choice in marriage is much more important than our choice in career. He reminds us that just showing up every day and plugging away will yield great dividends over time. He reminds us that easy wealth without work is not a good thing for society. (He also says to give Bitcoin a wide berth.)

However, you can also learn a lot by noting and observing his actions. Munger was not a huge risk-taker. He grew his wealth in steps and never exposed his family to possible ruin. He worked hard for a long time and only became extraordinarily rich and famous later in his life. He primarily wanted to be independent “and just overshot”.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurial, Inspirational, Retirement, Self-Employment

Last updated: January 18, 2018

Good News: Here’s How the World Has Improved Over the Past 25 and 50 Years

December 12, 2017 By Jonathan Ping 1 Comment

Bad news seems to come at us from all angles, but sometimes we need to step back and point out the good news. Here is a chart of how the the worldwide level of hunger, poverty, illiteracy, child poverty, and pollution has fallen over the last 25 years. Via @dinapomeranz and @johanknorberg.

progress

Here are some specific stats comparing changes in the last 50 years (1966 to 2016). Via HumanProgress.org. These are worldwide numbers. See specific numbers for your own country and age at Your Life in Numbers.

In 1966, average life expectancy was only 56 years. Today it’s 72. That’s an increase of 29 percent.
Out of every 1,000 infants born, 113 died before their first birthday. Today, only 32 die. That’s a reduction of 72 percent.
Median income per person rose from around $6,000 to around $16,000, or by 167 percent – and that’s adjusted for inflation and purchasing power.
The food supply rose from about 2,300 calories per person per day to over 2,800 calories, an increase of 22 percent, thus reducing hunger.
The length of schooling that a person could typically expect to receive was 3.9 years. Today, it’s 8.4 years – a 115 percent increase.
The world has become less authoritarian, with the level of democracy rising from -0.97 to 4.23 on a scale from -10 to 10. That’s an improvement of 5.2 points.

There are many forces behind these trends, but perhaps it will inspire people to keep trying to improve their world or to support others financially who are dedicating their lives to improve the world.

progressbook Johan Norberg wrote Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future, which was a 2017 Book of the Year for The Economist and the Observer. I haven’t read it, but it seems like a well-researched book with hard evidence on why we should be more optimistic.

Our world seems to be collapsing. The daily news cycle reports the deterioration: divisive politics across the Western world, racism, poverty, war, inequality, hunger. While politicians, journalists and activists from all sides talk about the damage done, Johan Norberg offers an illuminating and heartening analysis of just how far we have come in tackling the greatest problems facing humanity. In the face of fear-mongering, darkness and division, the facts are unequivocal: the golden age is now.

Filed Under: Giving Back, Inspirational

Last updated: August 9, 2018

Thank You, John C. Bogle

Wild Book: What Do You Plan To Do With Your One Wild and Precious Life?

Shel Silverstein “The Voice” and Financial Freedom

Good Luck or Bad Luck? Maybe, It’s Hard To Tell

NYT Financial Tuneup Day 4: Retirement

Ikigai – Finding Your “Reason For Being”

NYT Financial Tuneup Day 2: Trim Your Budget

NYT Financial Tuneup Day 1: Optimize Your Thinking

401k Millionaire By Age 45: How Was It Possible?

Anthony Bourdain: Taking One More Risk Changed Everything

Charlie Munger’s Life as a Financial Independence Blueprint

Good News: Here’s How the World Has Improved Over the Past 25 and 50 Years

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