The Stoic Path to Wealth: 15 Core Principles of Anxiety-Free Investing

Lately, I’ve been using a book app called BookGenius to help me remember more of what I read. Above is my score from The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel’s first book. Check out the app for yourself here, and if you sign up through my link you can get 56% OFF the annual plan! (Sponsored)

“Clarity is your savior, and we must prioritize programming, maintaining, and evolving the systems our mind runs on. This is done through self-generated goals, creating a path to achieve them, and focusing on solving the problems that arise without being consumed by distractions.”

“What your subconscious mind believes, leads to what your conscious mind begins taking steps to physically achieve.”

“We should prosper financially and mentally. When your finances are solid while your mind is peaceful, that’s true wealth.”

“The majority of people are focusing on increasing their salaries. While earning more might give you immediate financial relief, it’s not the path to long-term wealth.

Data show that for the 99 percent of taxpayers making less than $500,000, salaries and wages account for 75 percent of their income. For millionaires, their salaries only account for 15 percent to 50 percent of their income.

So here’s what we know about getting rich: invest your money in reliable assets, and let it grow over time. It sounds so easy, and yet it’s one of the hardest things to accomplish in life. Because we don’t just want to get rich at all costs. We want more money, but we also want peace of mind at the same time.

Those two things don’t always go together. You can have so much money you never have to worry about paying the bills, and still be terrorized by anxiety about losing that money.”

“Here’s what Epictetus, one of the most stringent Stoics, said about money: ‘If you can make money remaining honest, trustworthy, and dignified, by all means do it. But you don’t have to make money if you have to compromise your integrity.’

I love this mindset because it doesn’t judge those with ambitions of having money. Want to get rich? Go after it. And if you don’t get rich? No problem. Simply focus on doing the right thing and forget about the outcome.”

“The Stoics were investors. They gave up instant gratification and bad habits to increase their odds of living a peaceful life. That’s exactly the key: to find financial fulfillment is to invest in yourself. You part ways with some of your money today so it compounds and you have more of it in the future.”

“Here’s my proposition: To build long-term wealth in the stock market, you need to invest throughout your lifetime, no matter what’s going on.

To be so consistent that you keep investing in spite of feelings like fear and greed, you need to develop the only edge that’s accessible to all investors: the Stoic Edge.

When you possess that edge, you will have the mental fortitude to stick to your investing strategy, which will make you wealthier over time.”

“The foundation of this book is based on three steps that are backed by Stoicism, namely: (1) Investing in yourself, (2) Accepting loss, and (3) Letting your results compound over time.

I believe this is the first framework for building a Stoic Edge as an investor. Each step ties into the most important aspect of investing and of Stoicism: managing your emotions. This path might not create overnight millionaires. But it does help you to build wealth.”

“Not to assume it’s impossible because you find it hard. But to recognize that if it’s humanly possible, you can do it too.”

“Only the educated are free.”

“When the Stoics talked about freedom, they didn’t talk only about financial freedom. Freedom in a Stoic sense means liberation from ignorance. It means the freedom to live your life peacefully. To not get attached to ideas and beliefs. To not get swayed by external events. And to have tranquility at all times. We can obtain those things by continuously sharpening our minds.”

“No one likes to think about winter during the summer. And during the winter, it seems like summer is never coming.”

“While the stock market behaves rationally over the long term, and it’s driven by the underlying principle of earnings, in the short term, the market behaves highly irrationally, driven by investors’ collective psychology.”

“Ignore the stories - focus on principles.”

“Focus on getting the most out of your time, rather than getting the most out of your money. The potential to earn a few percentage points of returns is often not worth the time.”

“There is no difference between grief for something lost and the fear of losing it.”

“If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures.”

“Consistency is what defines investing success. The type of strategy you use is less important than whether you can stay the course and execute it to perfection.”