Productive Assets

Financial Yoga is practicing what you identify with. Releasing yourself from “being” a productive asset. 

You can count some things. After a certain period, when you have done something conspicuous and explicit... it counts. You can demonstrate to others without them also having to do the work to understand. You have evidence as proof that you have been productive. 

 

There is a difference between something you consume, and something that works. If you get $100, and you buy and eat an incredibly fancy, overpriced, doughnut... it is gone. You consumed it. If you buy a ring, the ring doesn’t change. It is something you have that doesn’t DO anything. 

A productive asset is something you invest in, which does a job. Instead of $100, there is $110 at the end of the year. It makes $10 by solving problems. The next year, more money works and so the money makes $11. Now there is $121. It starts compounding. That is a productive asset. The wealthy person doesn’t actually “have” their wealth... it is working. 

I am all for productive assets rather than excessive consumption or hoarding. I just don’t want to BE the productive asset as my full identity. I have looked at the rules of the game, and I don’t want to play! Building Capital can gradually release us from being weighed, measured, and defined by what others can see and count us explicitly doing.