The Fallacy of Investment

Imagine you have some money in a bank account, every year the amount doubles and you have a chance to take some out. The question is when should you ever take the money out? Every time you think to take it out, you would be much better to take it out next year, where you could take out that same amount and leave the same amount in it in. However, that half could have been doubled the next year, you could have only taken out a quarter and on and on. The answer to the paradox lies only in the practical applications, there is no general solution to it. When dealing with money the answer appears simple, you just take out what you need, when you need, bearing in mind that you will never need the stupid amount that appears after a long time. But is that really how it works?

A wonderful Northernism (A saying that southerners probably won't understand (don't worry England banter (Argh nested brackets, are they allowed?))) anyway I digress. I heard a Northernism that says, "There isn't any pockets in shrouds" basically, whatever the ancient Egyptians would have you believe, when you die, you leave your money on the mere mortal plane. Accumulating money is not an end, it shouldn't be a way of life. We shore up to enjoy tomorrow sacrificing today, not remembering that tomorrow never truly comes. Damn consumerism tricking us (Perhaps a rant about that later).

But the paradox comes up in other situations, I may sound cynical but perhaps education is one such paradox. I find myself sacrificing doing things with friends just so that i can pass my Cambridge Admissions test. When college is finished, who is going to make an effort to keep up with the boy that abandoned his friends for his work. Perhaps the answer to this is a balance, perhaps I sound disillusioned but the purpose of education is to enrich your life, not to doom yourself to a cycle of stress in the vain hope of self improvement. You can never set a point where you say, then I will enjoy life, that's when I will stop working so hard. You have to develop a mindset from the start which produces both self improvement and enjoyment. It's obvious I know but much harder to achieve. Tell me if you find it...

On a related note from the Dalai Lama,
“Man sacrifices his health in order to make money.
Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.
And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present;
the result being that he does not live in the present or the future;
he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”