Don’t hang around to be a setting sun. The sensible person’s maxim: abandon things before they abandon you. Know how to turn an ending into a triumph. Sometimes the sun itself, whilst still shining brilliantly, goes behind a cloud so nobody can see it setting, leaving people in suspense over whether it has or not. To avoid being slighted, avoid being seen to decline. Don’t wait until everyone turns their back on you, burying you alive to regret but dead to esteem. Someone sharp retires a racehorse at the right time, not waiting until everyone laughs when it falls mid-race. Let beauty astutely shatter her mirror when the time is right, not impatiently and too late when she sees her own illusions shattered in it.
Baltasar Gracián
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Doug Belshaw
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Doug Belshaw
Changing careers and ‘f*** you’ money
I’ve had a conversation today via DM with someone I haven’t checked in on for a while.
They’re still in the same position they were last time we spoke. Nothing wrong with that, of course, other than they wish the situation to be otherwise. They feel a bit stuck.
I mentioned that if they want to go in a different direction, that reducing their hours to work a four-day week might be a good move. It gives you flexibility to do new things. I’ve certainly gained from it.
Unfortunately, for the person concerned, that’s not a viable option, from a financial point of view. They wouldn’t be able to afford to take the concomitant drop in salary.
The conversation reminded me of some advice that I once received, and have since taken: you should always have ‘f*** you’ money set aside. This gives you the freedom to walk away and have between three and six months worth of ‘runway’ before you have to find something else to pay the bills.
Not easy, but certainly something I’d advise everyone to do as soon as they’re able. The easiest way of doing that, if you don’t have a well-paying job, is to dramatically reduce your expenditure. Again, not an easy step, but it’s the price of freedom.
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Simon Grant
And the most important contributor to reducing expenditure, for most people, is the cost of housing. So the solution (in our ridiculously high-priced housing society) will have to be sharing housing somehow. And that needs us to find really congenial people who can live together in reduced space in peace and harmony. Join me in setting up a system to find them? Or training ourselves to live together in peace and harmony?
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Doug Belshaw
I think that works for individuals and couples, but not necessarily for families.
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Simon Grant are discussing. 
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