Law versus Chaos in Personal Finance.

I just completed 90% of two research papers and started by mid-term holidays ( Lectures resume next Tuesday ) and have only a few minutes to create this update.

Recently a really horrible piece of financial advice came out from Elite Daily which was immediately pounced upon by by my friend and uber blogger Budget Babe. I would like to add some context and nuance about personal finance in general.

We need to think about our adult lives as battle of Law against Chaos.

On the side of Law is our desire for security. To meet our goal of security we need to be conscientious. Saving our money and carefully managing our careers put us in the side of Law.

On the side of Chaos is our desire for variety. To meet out goal for variety, we need openness to new experiences. We are not robots. We need to spend a little money, develop interesting hobbies and make new friends to stay sane.

Financial bloggers are generally on the side of Law. Elite Daily is generally on the side to Chaos.

But as psychology students might know. Conscientiousness and Openness to new experiences are orthogonal to each other. We can save, work hard and have fun at the same time.

Maybe a way to proceed is not to see a disciplined life of savings and investments as one being quite drab and no fun at all. For me, the bulk of my books sales and dividend earnings do go into buying role-playing games.

Case in point, I have suffered enough to put out two research papers.

I am now meeting my family and then I should be out partying with my classmates later.

Catch you guys this weekend where I will be sharing an article on beating the STI index.