I have been a runner for most of my life. From 8th grade through my senior year of High School I ran track, cross country, and summer track. While I do not run anywhere near that much anymore, I still run a few miles a week as well as occasionally do 5k races around the country.
Back in high school I remember we had one day where our coach wanted the eight of us to do seven eight hundred meter sprints at a moderate pace. At practice that day we had a guy, I believe he was homeschooled, training with us. The new guy was pretty fast and one of our guys wanted to challenge him, so instead of running at a moderate pace these two guys kept trying to best each other. They ended up running pretty much race pace on the first eight hundred and could not complete the other six runs. Needless to say our coach was not very pleased with these two.
These two provide a great example that we can apply to wealth accumulation. Many people attempt to sprint to great wealth and this usually ends in disastrous results. They try to speculate on bitcoin, speculate on real estate, or numerous other methods of speculation that eventually place them farther behind in wealth accumulation than they were before. Others try to sprint to wealth accumulation by looking the part, even if they do not have the wealth. They buy the biggest house and the newest cars, leveraging themselves to the hilt and burying themselves in debt. A sprint is very unforgiving. If you stumble coming out of the blocks, or if your form is not perfect, it is very hard to overcome in a short race.
A marathon however is very forgiving. If you stumble at mile three, you still have twenty three miles to overcome a setback. I have a fairly sizable net worth for someone my age. I just saw a headline that said that the majority of millienials have less than $8,000 of net worth and I thankfully have many multiples of this. I would love to regale you with tales of great business savvy that has allowed me to accumulate this wealth. I would love to talk about how I sprinted to great wealth through shrewd investments, but this has not been the case. My wealth accumulation has not been exciting like a ten second sprint, but it has come from a slow and steady pace. My wealth accumulation has come from having a habit of saving, a habit of living frugally, and a habit of investing. It comes from methodical steps put in place and practiced over the past eleven years of my career.
I must confess in the beginning it kind of sucks coming to the realization that wealth accumulation is a marathon instead of a sprint. A sprint is flashy and exciting whereas a marathon is drawn out and somewhat boring. A sprint is quick to the goal, whereas a marathon takes hours. While in the beginning this realization is a bit hard to swallow, I have now come to see how beneficial it is to know and accept.
Knowing and accepting that wealth accumulation is a marathon makes it easy to invest in boring low cost index funds because you know they are one of the best and most guaranteed ways to wealth and making your money work for you. Knowing it is a marathon makes it easy to not always have to have the flashiest car or the biggest house because you know it is these choices that accelerate you to your goal. The marathon mentality makes it easy to not chase speculative investments because you know true wealth takes time. The marathon mentality also makes it easy to spend large amounts of money on things you value because you know you are in this race for the long term.
Looking at wealth accumulation as a marathon instead of a sprint also brings hope. As I mentioned above if you make a mistake in a sprint it is very hard to overcome, but not so in a marathon. Even if you have made poor financial decisions up to this point in your life, there is still time to overcome. Your race is not over and you can still come from behind and win.
Looking at wealth accumulation as a marathon allows you to stop and smell the roses along the course. Recently I started listening to the Afford Anything podcast and their first outside interview guest was Brandon from the Mad Fientist website. I have heard him speak on other podcasts I listen to, including his own, and one point that stuck out to me from the Afford Anything interview is that one of his major regrets for how he pursued financial independence is that he sprinted to the finish line. Instead of focusing on what made him happy and what he valued, and letting that be his guide, he focused solely on the numbers and let that dictate what he did and did not do. This led to him having a bit of a depressing time in his journey to financial independence, whereas if he had focused on what he valued it may have taken him an extra year or two to achieve financial independence, but his quality of life would have been immensely improved.
Another famous financial independence writer, JD Roth, sums up wealth accumulation being a marathon with the title of his website, Get Rich Slowly. In numerous interviews I have heard JD speak of how he was in multiple thousand dollars of consumer debt and realized he needed to make a change. He started reading several books on personal finance and said he realized the main point of them all was that wealth accumulation was a slow and steady process, aka you get rich slowly. These books showed that wealth accumulation is not achieved through get rich quick schemes, but through a habit of saving and investing practiced over many years.
Pursuing frugality and financial independence requires a mindset shift from the commonly held beliefs of society and I believe this concept is an important shift. So many grow up wanting to be rich, lose money chasing schemes to become so, and then give up on the dream. We realize however that rich is possible through slow and steady processes practiced over many years. This mentality also gives hope that even if you have sprinted yourself into debt you can slow down the pace and come out ahead!
Off topic P.S. As an experiment I have opened up a Vanguard account and invested in VSTAX to see how it compares to Betterment.
