As Luck Would Have It

For better or worse, I’ve “played by the rules” my whole life. Better, because it’s probably best that I’m no scoundrel. Worse, because probably maybe I’m a terrible bore.

I also drank the Kool-Aid followed the advice that my parents, schools, and society generally imparted. Do well in grade school. Go to college and maybe graduate school of some kind or other. Get a “good” job (i.e., something in the knowledge economy). Work hard and work your way up the business’ ladder. Live within your means, build an emergency fund, and save a little for retirement.

Plenty of people did/are doing the same.

Advice and consent

Those rules and the advice aren’t without some merit. I mean, if one were to look at my and The Missus’ lives on paper, we checked all the boxes. Alla them. Also, as I’ve written, we’ve passed coast and barista FIRE, and I hope to FIRE at the end of 2021.

So, following the advice was right, right?

Well, sort of. In actuality, I owe our incredible good fortune in part to following that advice, but at least as much to luck.

Here are just a few ways that luck, and not merely following the advice I’ve discussed, helped us.

Parental control

You don’t choose your parents. So, once you enter this cold, cruel world, it’s a crapshoot as to whether you get parents who are good or bad. Or who have means or don’t.

The Missus and I each benefitted from having parents who loved and cared for us while growing up. Regardless of their faults (and in the case of my parents, those faults were many and in some cases significant), they steered us away from dangers known and unknown, provided for our well-being, and paid for our college, among other benefits they provided us. This places us in a rare and privileged minority. That I know. We’re incredibly lucky that way.

Born in the USA. I was born in the USA.

Also, I was born a white male in the United States. To be sure, this is no guarantee for success. And being born of a different make-up and/or origin carries with it benefits of its own.

But I’m not so stupid as to think that it didn’t help. All but surely a ton, and often in ways I never was aware of. It completely disgusts me that attributes that I had nothing to do about at times likely trumped (wholly without my knowledge) the qualifications of people immensely more qualified than us. But I can’t deny that they surely did help. In everything from securing and advancing in jobs to buying and selling property at the prices we realized to receiving good health care to avoiding career- and life-derailing problems with Johnny Law, to name but a few examples.

Health club

Notwithstanding some notable, but mostly one-off, events, I and The Missus generally have enjoyed (knock wood) good health during our lives. Even pre-‘rona, I’d become fond of saying, “Mother Nature is trying very hard to kill us all.” So, this run of good health has in no small part been due to luck. Even if we have increased our chances of beating the old lady by eating reasonably healthily and regularly getting at least a modicum of exercise.

To the extent that we, and Thing One (The Elder) and Thing Two (The Younger), have had significant health issues, employer-provided health/dental/vision insurance has covered the lion’s share of those expenses. Luckily, none of theses health issues have been disabling, and we’ve been able to work and go about our daily lives with no serious impediments.

Law-dee-dah

As for me specifically, I went to work in the legal field. In my segment of it, employers pay even nonlawyer talent more handsomely than they ought to.

I concede that going into the legal field wasn’t luck; it was a choice. And I definitely knew that lawyers have the potential to make a good living. But, after having decided that I didn’t want to practice law, to have landed in an overpaid well-paid segment of the industry was all but a complete stroke of luck. That’s because at the time, I was too dumb to know, or look into, the salaries in that segment before I entered it.

Timing is everything

Another huge bit of luck that we benefitted from was the timing of our investing lifetimes, which started in earnest in 2006. Now, yes, we did have to do some investment-related learning, which we then employed to take calculated risks. And, yes, the stock market does generally go up over time at a not altogether insignificant rate. So, long-term investors in broad index funds, like us, tend to do well over time. Nevertheless, our timing has been fortuitous.

To the extent that our net worth comprises stocks, we’ve experienced above average returns since 2006. Just as important, the two down years for the stock market that we’ve experienced (2008 and 2018) occurred at times that resulted in limited damage to us, too.

The most significant down year, 2008, took place early enough in our investing lifetimes that we lost a large percentage of our investments, but not a ton in actual dollars. It also was followed by several turbocharged years for the stock market; years that coincided with rising investment contributions from us. Compounding did its thing, too, of course.

The other down year, 2018, took place a few years after I discovered FIRE (that discovery being an equally significant stroke of luck). By then, we were plowing money into our investments, which made up for the market losses.

Also, as with 2008, the years following 2018 have seen turbocharged stock market returns. During this time, we also sold the condo we’d lived in and invested a significant amount of the equity we realized upon the sale into a few index funds including stock market index funds. That . . . hasn’t hurt.

And in the end . . .

Dear Reader, there’s an old adage that it’s better to be lucky than good. Though I’ve never really wanted to believe that, experience has taught me that it’s often more true than not. That said, luck is a fickle partner. At any given point, your luck may run out.