There is this common template for a nightmare. You are late to class. Everyone in your class is writing something. You freeze. You realize that there was a test scheduled for this period. And you forgot. Now you have to take a test completely unprepared. You sweat. You wake up. It actually feels good that at least the real world isn't as scary. Variation of this nightmare occurs to almost all of us, even when you are long past the age for taking a test in a class. Which other irrational fears are we carrying with us into the adulthood?

I like to point out, from time to time, the importance of saving and investing. What if we invert this question? 1. When is not a good time to save? 2. When is it enough? Inversion is a favorite mental hacks of the great investor Charlie Munger. The first one is easy. When you face an emergency, or have a great opportunity to spend your money on someone/something you love, you should do stop saving temporarily. The second one is trickier. This relevant for your retirement — this is the time you can stop saving permanently. Let's say your annual expenditure is X. This, of course, is different from your annual income. If you have accumulated 25X in equity funds, 1X in cash, 1X in debt/liquid funds, and 1X in gold, you can stop saving. You're set. The goal is to withdraw 4% from the equity fund each year (adjust for inflation as you go along). Generally speaking, this amount (1X) would be compensated by appreciation of the equity markets. You can't do this when the stocks drop

How do we see the world around us? It's easy to give in to the illusion that we see the world as it actually is. However, even rudimentary knowledge of neuroscience and behavioral psychology would tell you that it's a lie. For one thing, our sensory inputs are limited. There are animals that can see ultraviolet radiation. You can't. Apart from your literal sensory inputs, what you read, what you watch, who you interact with, influence your worldview. These subjective experiences make us unique, but also make us vulnerable to biases. There are two obvious ways we perceive the world in an inaccurate (but still somewhat useful) way. "The filter" is the part of the world even makes an impression on your brain. Just like you don't see your nose all the time, even though it's literally in front of you 24/7, we filter out enormous amount of information before us. This is a necessity. Our brains are amazing, but the world is too vast. Our sensory inputs are noisy.