@Marcus Auerbach
Well, the basic are pretty simple. I left Greece in 2007, just before the bottom fell out of the Greek economy, came to the USA and married a Russian/Ukrainian immigrant in 2012. Steady investing from 2012-2022 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
We've seen crazy things from two of the greatest internal economic and political failures in the history of Europe. Thank God, we've been insulated from them because we live in the States, but that doesn't mean that they haven't happened to our closest friends, our families, to people we know and respect.
For us, it's impossible to overstate the security implications of seeking financial independence. I'm sure you've read my posts against the idea of investing in cryptocurrency and thinking that when the time comes to crush Bitcoin, governments will play fair. My wife and I have a privileged perspective on what governments in turmoil will do, one that includes technocratic appointed governments, capital controls, selective forced military service, and refugee crises.
We feel the same way about giving our money away. If you actually care about anything and you think a government is going to realistically do something useful about it, you'll be wrong at least eight times out of ten. In my case, it's the English-language education of the children of Greece. We plan on donating everything we own to a professional organization that I was once a board member of, one dedicated to improving English-language educational outcomes in Greece. A few million dollars in the right place, structured the right way, will go a long way to upping professional teaching standards in the ranks of Greek English-language instructors.
We are in this so that generations will benefit from what we do. There are only so many times you can turn your head away from children just like you were without the privileges of your birth being completely screwed over, being stamped defective, second-class citizens of Europe, before you realize that making this better is a useful thing to do with your life.
Riding an ebike to do many of my rounds is not being fake humble, although it would appease my heightened instincts for self-preservation. I believe it aligns with my values, and that makes me happy. Spending money on a hot car to impress my neighbors in a place like where I live and operate (just south of Pittsburgh in the Homestead area) is frankly laughable, if you know anything about Homestead, PA. I actually live in a duplex built for an heiress and remodeled by yours truly: I really can't complain about the accommodations. We have no children and my wife is now retired and also working in our business.
Don't get me wrong, I'm as vain as the next guy. But after the things I've seen, I know spending more money on fun stuff for myself will never make me happier. I grew up in poverty and then decided to become a humanities grad student: money was never important of and by itself for me. On the other hand, my brother studied computer science and has consistently used whatever money he's made to buy hotter cars and live in larger houses. Good for him, I understand why. But for me, I need two vacations a year and that's about the only thing we spend any significant amount of our money on outside our business.
