Over the past 45 odd years I have ONLY seen people whose financial well being improved. People of my parents gen bought a fridge at the age of 40! the house came even later. Some of them had to depend on their children to pay the EMI for the house or for getting their daughter married.

Honestly I do not know of ANYBODY whose size of house has come down. I do not know any friend / classmate /neighbor who does not own a car. When I was in school, the car was a rarity. Today not having a car is mostly a lifestyle choice, not an ‘affordability’ choice.

People take vacations in far more exotic locations – Europe, Vietnam, a short visit to Dubai (desert rides), Singapore,….well these are no longer in the bucket list, they are all done.

So I am seeing a lot of long term ‘improvement’ in standard of living. However, when you talk to people, THEY FORGET THE LONG TERM improvement in their own life styles and size of houses and cars. They seem to be worried about inflation (which is historically at its lowest), or how the markets will behave (it has given amazing returns over the past 40 years), cost of housing (people have been able to buy bigger houses).

Funny is it not?

People forget to see the long term of ‘what happened’ instead they take some short term trend and project it over the long term and feel miserable!

What you need to do is to set your goals, get your Asset allocation right and then just continue saving and investing. Instead of that why people keep cribbing about things / factors that they cannot control – aka macros really beats me.

I have met ‘intellectuals’ who delayed investing till they were in their 50s, and some low end people who by saving and investing created a fortune for themselves by the time they were in their 50s! It is just a matter of being better prepared, luck, skill in understanding the importance of compounding…