2043: My Single Greatest Achievement by Vitaliy Katsenelson

This is Optimal Finance Daily episode 2043, my single greatest achievement by Vitalik Hassanelsin

of ContrarianEdge.com, and I'm your host and personal finance enthusiast, Diana Miriam.

Welcome back to another bonus Sunday episode.

This is where we get to hear from one of our other shows in our podcast network, and

today's comes from Optimal Relationships Daily.

So with that, here's Greg, as we optimize your life.

My single greatest achievement by Vitalik Hassanelsin of ContrarianEdge.com.

On Sunday, we drove my 18 year old Jonah to the airport.

He's taking a gap year after graduating high school, and we'll spend the next two semesters

in Israel.

He'll be taking classes at American Jewish University, doing internships, touring Israel,

and discovering himself.

After we hug Jonah and put him on the plane, my wife looked at my daughters, Hannah 13,

me as Sarah 5, and said, you're not going anywhere, you'll be home college.

I share my wife's sentiment.

Intellectually, you know that your kids will grow up, but you want to slow down the process

as much as possible.

Still, you know this day will come, and the only thing you can do is spend as much time

as you can with them while they still live under the same roof as you.

And when the time comes for them to leave, you just don't want to let them go.

After we dropped Jonah off, my wife and I took our daughters to veil for a day, where

I drowned my sorrow and pasta and ice cream.

I almost never eat either.

This was a major off the wagon, moment for me.

When your kids leave for college, you somehow get to look back at your life through

a different lens.

You start asking yourself, did I spend enough time with them?

Before Jonah boarded the plane, we exchanged letters.

It was his idea.

My wife and I wrote a letter to him, and he wrote one to us and his sisters.

There was a paragraph in his letter that put tears in my eyes.

Quote, thank you for using your time to create great memories with me while still balancing

everything else that you do.

A while ago, you read a book about Warren Buffett, and this book had talked about how Warren

wished he had spent more time with his kids.

You were worried that you weren't spending enough time with me.

Don't worry.

I can happily say that you were and are a great father.

I have never in my life felt that you didn't spend enough time with me.

I'm quote.

This stands above everything else I have accomplished in my life.

Everything else feels somehow temporary and insignificant.

I remember when Jonah was a few years old.

I held his tiny hand, and I was thinking, what will he be like when he grows up?

I was trying to picture him as an adult.

I could not.

Now I see an adult, standing at six foot four with a deep voice, a great sense of humor,

curly hair, and a kind heart.

Today, I look at my two girls and try to imagine them growing up.

Just like with Jonah, I cannot.

But they will.

I have only five and thirteen years left before Hannah and me as Sarah leave home.

And though it feels far off, the time will fly, just like it did with Jonah.

Now I want to set new higher standards for myself when I spend time with my kids.

I recently read that attention is the currency of time.

I want to make sure that when I spend time with my girls, I am there with them 100%.

Not thinking about a stock or a book I just read, but giving them my full attention.

Personal finance article follow up.

I wanted to add an important point that I forgot to include in my personal finance article,

health, time, education, and experiences are categories of spending that are important

to my family.

And as a consequence, our budget for them is very loose.

But just because they are important to us, does not mean that they should be important

to all my readers.

Not at all.

We are different.

We have different values, different financial situations, and are at different stages of our lives.

My categories were examples of my family's conscious choices.

Here's another example.

I have a friend.

He's divorced and has a 21 year old son he is very close with.

He is a personal trainer and chooses to work 20 hours a week.

He lives in an apartment that is slightly bigger than his car, and that he shares with

the roommate, his son lives on his own.

He doesn't eat out much, and generally leads a very modest day to day lifestyle.

But he loves traveling.

A couple times a month he takes a 3 day trip with his son to a new place in the US.

They stay in cheap $60 motels.

I get the feeling that spending time with his son is the main reason why he loves to travel.

He also enjoys the experience of driving, and despite his modest income, Lisa's a $35,000

car every two years.

I doubt that he intentionally sat down and wrote out a budget, but he made a budget through

intentional prioritization of his spending, elevating things he values and enjoys, travel

and driving, and deemphasizing things that are less important to him, like food and size

of his dwelling.

At this point in his life, he chooses to work just enough to cover his very limited

needs, and here's the best part.

He is incredibly happy.

This is a reminder, happiness equals reality, minus properly calibrated expectations.

I unintentionally tied the two aforementioned articles together, our personal budget should

follow our values.

We need to figure out what matters to us, our values, and calibrate and prioritize our

spending accordingly.

After all, money buys the most when it buys things we actually value.

We just listen to the post titled, My Single Greatest Achievement, by Vitali Katzenelsin,

of Contraryanedge.com.

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Thank you so much to Vitali for a wonderful post and for sharing his wonderful realization

about what achievement really means to him and for many others.

If you know much about Vitali, you know that he's a successful guy who has had many

different ventures.

I won't get into his whole bio, but with that being said, I think this article

underhandedly highlights the fact that although we only have so much time, we can still

harvest great family relationships while also making time for ourselves and fulfilling our

own desires.

One might argue that it's self a filament that fuels us to do better by our family members

actually, whether we have lofty personal goals or find simpler pleasures in life like

Vitali's friend who he referenced at the end of the article, a portion I particularly

enjoyed.

It's not one of the other my friends, it is being aware of your values, making them

the focal point and eliminating the nonsense around them.

And that is how we are going to end this week a lot to think about and hopefully some

good reflection for you all this weekend.

I hope you all have a great few days to unwind and relax, and I will be back with you

on Monday with another post and where you're optimal life awaits.