But wait... there's less!

Given the choice, would you prefer to feel good or feel bad? The answer is not as obvious as you might think. If someone said to me "Here's an activity that will make you feel worse about yourself" , I don't think I'd take them up on the offer. Yet that's kind of what we do most days. Perhaps because we don't realise it. How do we know? One of Google's many great toys is predictive search function. You start typing something and instantly get suggestions. If I start typing my name, it suggests David Bowie, David Tennant, David Beckham and David Attenborough. Here's what happens if I type "facebook makes me feel" and "instagram makes me feel" I find the differences interesting. It seems that facebook is the best if you want to feel like a failure or left out, while Instagram works better if you want to feel fat, inadequate or insecure. If you want to be feel depressed, lonely, or like a loser, then either platform can...

Australian singer Guy Sebastian has a new song out and it got me thinking. It's clearly an ode to a friend whose "book ran out of pages" . Now he wishes he could have said "out of all the moments in my life the ones I got to share with you were probably my favourite." In a later verse he puts his finger on the problem. "We fill up all our days with workin' ... just to make ends meet. Too busy to call, we'll catch up next week. And then it gets to next week and we say maybe next week..." . Obviously this isn't good (as the singer now realises). We don't have that many weeks All this talk of pages and weeks reminds me of Tim Urban's Your Life in Weeks . Tim graphically represents each week in our life with a box. 52 boxes across and 90 boxes down. Shockingly, this grid of our life fits easily on a page. In the follow-up post The Tail End he did the maths of how many times he'll get to do the things he loves. He includes...

The FIRE concept (Financial Independence Retire Early) seems to be a new one to many people. There's a brand new documentary about it: Playing with FIRE by Scott Reickens. It's his family's journey into the FIRE movement. Their attempt to buck the consumer culture and bring forward financial freedom. Check out the trailer . I was stunned that 69% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings - and that one-third have no savings at all. It seems US advertisers have milked Americans for every last dollar they earn. Who is Scott? If you want to know more about the leadup to how Scott Rieckens got into this you may want to check out this episode of the Choose FI podcast . His earlier life Scott talks about "lifestyle creep" - moving to bigger places and buying stuff just to fill the space. He was paying $2850/mth for rent (that's $34,200 a year). On top of that he paid a nanny to watch his kid (which he'd prefer to do himself) and realising that...

One of my pet peeves is people saying "retirement age" when they mean "pension age". Retirement age is largely up to us. Here's how. The FIRE movement FIRE stands for "Financially Independent, Retire Early". It's a trend that seems to be gaining momentum. Basically, there's two parts to it: 1. Live on far less than our income. 2. Intentionally save and invest the rest. Doing those two things can set you up for financial freedom long before old age kicks in. Just how early are we talking? It depends on your saving rate - the percentage of your income you can save. A 10% savings rate (Aussie workers, you get that in default superannuation) still means a long working life. Upping that to 15% gets us to a normal retirement a bit more comfortably. Significantly bumping up that savings rate can really shorten our working years and give us many years of financial independence. If you're starting now, with no savings, this table can give...

African-Australians give an interesting insight into wealth, people and happiness. The Australian documentary series You Can't Ask That asks "misunderstood, misjudged, or marginalised Australians" questions we don't usually ask. I find most of the questions appalling, or at least incredibly insensitive, but that's kind of the point of the show. This episode features African Australians . Coming from people who have lived in two vastly different cultures, their responses were a fascinating insight into poverty, community, happiness and what's really important. Poverty "You wake up, you go to school, you have no shoes, and life continues and you are happy." says Dr Casty Hughes in a matter-of-fact way. Thelma White admits "I grew up with it as my normal life. I later learned it was called poverty. ... I grew up very materially poor but spiritually wealthy. And now, with just very basic Australian life, I am the wealthiest I've ever b...