Two Things to Build

I think that there are two main things worth building in life, not as ultimate life goals, but as valuable waypoints to whatever goals you may have. Those two things are an amazing group of friends and enough money to survive for a long time.

To some people, mostly those who have already done it, that sounds easy and obvious. Others will have done one, but not the other, and only one seems difficult. And to those who haven’t achieved either yet, maybe both sound difficult.

But regardless of how easy or difficult these things seem, maybe we can all agree that they’re possible and helpful. After all, plenty of other people have done these things already, and don’t they seem to be benefiting from them?

Why these two things? Because they’re universally beneficial and within reach of anyone. It’s not often you can prescribe something universally. On the other hand, there’s no simple answer as to how to get them. Each one relies heavily on our individuality.

My next book will be all about social skills, focused heavily on how to build and contribute to a good social circle. It’s a big enough topic that I think it deserves a detailed treatment.

That said, there’s low hanging fruit that everyone can pick: be the one to make the effort, don’t hang out with people you don’t like, organize things for your friends, be the best version of yourself, know who you are and how to convey it.

How to make enough money to survive for a while is more foggy. The big part I think most people miss is making living expenses low. My most frugal friend makes $4000 a month after tax, but has expenses of only $600. Every month he saves up almost six months of living expenses!

He won’t keep his expenses that low for the rest of his life, but he’s definitely checking off his survival box. Even if he increases spending, he knows that he can easily dip back down to $600 per month at any time.

There’s a nice synergy between these two things. When you have enough money to survive, the possibilities for ways to spend your time spread wide open. You can work on your own projects, you can think, you can travel around and see the world. You can even spend all your time working on your social circle. And when you build that social circle, now you have a huge force of positive influence to help you guide that time and freedom. That’s a great combination.

While this post can’t give you a specific path to follow to build your group of friends and enough money to survive for a while, maybe it can nudge your awareness enough to cause you to figure out your own way to do it.

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Photo is my friends Leo, Shammy, Todd, and Eva in Budapest, looking at the huge year-long hourglass.


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