Is self-help content better for personal finance than finance content?

If you’re motivated to increase your wealth, consuming content related to money and finance may seem natural. However, I’ve come to wonder if it can sometimes end up doing more harm than good, at least in quantities beyond a certain point. Instead, I think one can be better off financially by consuming content related to productivity, lifestyle, stress reduction and mindfulness.

^{Being too obsessed with min-maxing strategies and decisions for investing can be a large source of stress. Stress that in turn can have more negative effects on one's wealth than the efforts made to pursue it in the first place. Image credit Warrior Trading}

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My own financial progress and use of content

In the past year, I’ve been increasingly motivated to pursue financial gains. Whether it's been hustling to add and grow side incomes, saving more money wherever possible, making smarter and consistent investments, and generally making plans and goals for how to improve my financial standing. In just two years, I’ve grown my wealth by more than most people manage to do by the time they’re 40. Something that I’m obviously quite happy about!

In the process, I’ve come to consume a lot of content on money and investing. I've looked for inspiration and education everywhere in the form of audiobooks and video clips, to articles and blog posts. It's safe to say that I feel like I have learned a lot while also becoming more motivated. However, now that I have the foundation in place, is more content doing any good? Or can it even become harmful?

Finance as an undesirable source of stress harming performance

As with many things in life, there’s a fine line between being passionate and motivated on one side, and being obsessed and addicted on the other. One fuels you with energy and can be a catalyst for positive change and meaningful achievements, while the other can lead to fatigue and burnout. Consuming content related to finance and economics periodically can be a great source for learning while also reinforcing motivation to make smart financial decisions, but it is unlikely to be the thoughts you want to have occupied your mind most of the day. Instead, you want to build your day around having as much energy and motivation as possible, as well as mental focus and sustainable well-being. Not only in order to live more happily, but also to perform better.

Consuming too much finance content, I've noticed, makes me too obsessed with min-maxing decisions. Should I have sold my index funds and instead bought oil and gas companies when Russia's aggression towards Ukraine began escalating? Should I bind my mortgage now that interest rates are going back up? Should I invest differently in crypto than I'm doing today? The number of decisions we can make to place our money better is almost endless, as are the theoretical gains from an optimal allocation. But does endless consumption of finance content lead to better decisions being made? Perhaps if you start with no experience and need some education. But once you know the basics, I think it is doing more harm than good.

Stress is a source of undesirable spending. When we have a lot of stress, we suddenly feel the need to have that unnecessary Starbucks coffee, soda, chocolate bar, or order dinner from a restaurant delivered home rather than cooking ourselves. More spending then in turn means less money to invest. Is the added education going to result in different decisions so much better that they make up for that? Or are we instead creating a hamster wheel for ourselves where we need to spend more money to go after more money?

Additionally, more stress results in loss of focus and mental clarity which again lessens performance, productivity, and decision-making. Following the 80-20 rules, which states that 80% of our wins come from 20% of our decisions, it is likely better to ensure that we're at our best for that 20% of work, than to hustle in an extra hour to increase the total. Adding more stress is thus likely to result in us not making our best gains, which in turn make up the bulk of our growth.

Finally, stress literally makes us age faster! I'll delve into the new science behind aging that we're now beginning to understand well. If you have a lot of stress in your life, even subconscious stress from living in a big city and constantly being bombarded with stimuli from your environment, your biological age will be higher than it would be without that stress. As a result, you will, all else equal, live a shorter life. And a shorter life also means you'll be less wealthy.

Improved healthspan as one way to get wealthy

We are only beginning to understand the big potential of human longevity and healthspan. While many assume that aging is inevitable and just a number, we now know that 1. there can be a big difference between one's biological age and the number of times one has rotated around the sun and 2. that there's a lot that can be done to slow down biological aging. Stress is key to that.

Let’s imagine that your sole goal is to become as wealthy as possible with no consideration for your own health (an unlikely position, but let’s assume it for the sake of argument). Although seldomly taken to this extreme, many knowingly make sacrifices to their own health to become wealthier. They get less sleep in order to work. They don’t find time to eat healthy and instead rely on fast food. They live busy and stressful lives to serve more clients or hustle in more work on their product, they log more hours or take on more responsibility in order to earn more money. But provided that one has good investment habits through the early stages of one’s life, adding a few years of healthy living means more time for the compounding to do its magic. Investing in your health is thus not only a good idea for your own well-being, but also good for your wealth. As Warren Buffet once said when asked what his investment advice would be “start early and die old”.

Thus, replacing stress-inducing content with stress-reducing content will contribute towards making you wealthier. As a result, it could very well be that content focused on paying more attention to the market, making trades, or hustling more, can all at some point result in adding too much stress. Replacing at least some of it with the opposite, can have a tremendous effect on your own mental clarity, performance, healthspan, and thus also financial wealth.

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