Happy Wednesday (afternoon), Wise Owl Nation!

Today marks the 125th week of the Wise Owl Wednesday Newsletter.

It's an arbitrary milestone that doesn't mean much, but I still think it's a cool number. Hell, in 5 weeks when we hit the 130th week, that is a quarter of a decade!

It truly feels like just a few months ago that I started writing this little newsletter, and I want to once again thank so many of you for hanging out with me every Wednesday for the past 2.5 years.

This week I want to talk about dependency in a broad sense.

For those of us living in the west, we take our independence for granted.

So much so that many of us feel trapped by the lives we lead because we have somehow become dependent on people, places, and things that can change our lives in the blink of an eye.

Today I talk about why it's an important thought experiment to perform on a regular basis as well as ways you can work to mitigate your dependence on others.

Let's get into it.

You can find all past issues (including this one) here. 

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🦉Wise Owl Thought(s) of The Week: A Few Thoughts on Independence

This topic is very near and dear to my heart, especially recently.

I've been in situations many times in my life where I've been completely powerless and at the mercy of other people.

I hate it. I work my ass off to avoid it, and yet even I still get complacent about my own ability to be independent.

The question I like to ask myself when I think about this concept is:

"How many people can fuck up my life with a single decision?"

The answer changes over time of course, but I always try to limit that number as much as possible.

Personally, I'll never be able to bring this number down to zero, as I like other people too much. Even so, I try to never let this number get too high.

As of this moment, I think there are between 2-4 people that could probably screw with my life if they really wanted to, but in reality, there are probably only 2 people that could change my life with a single decision.

One of them is my boss at work, who happens to be a longtime friend of mine.

This is a low-risk situation in my mind because as I said, this person is a longtime friend of mine.

How many people can say that, though?

I would expect that most of you have at minimum 1-2 people that can change your life with a single decision.

Anyway, life is more fun when you don't have to answer to anyone.

Let's discuss a few ways to get there.

Hedge against Chaos

Alright, let's talk about some things that you can control that can help you become anti-fragile to the wanton decisions of other people.

This goes in three directions

1. Individual Independence
2. Community Strength
3. Financial Independence

Become Hard to Kill

This is a bit dramatic, but there is some wisdom here.

From a pure health standpoint, how easy are you to kill?

We just went through a pandemic that showed us how valuable being in good physical shape was for fighting off foreign viruses.

Is your cardio good enough to run from zombies long enough to escape?

Easy ways to start becoming harder to kill

• Stretch every day. The number one killer of folks in their later stages of life is falling and being unable to get back up. Mobility matters. Get limber and stay limber.
• Something meditative - Not even I can stomach just suggesting meditation, even though it's awesome. The idea here is that the people that react best in intense situations are the people that can stay calm. So whatever you can do to practice getting to a calm state of mind quickly will dramatically help you for the rest of your life.

There are a ton of other ways you can work to become harder to kill, but you know what they are. Get healthy, friends.

You're stronger within a community

There is another question that I have recently started asking myself that has helped me find some balance in this crazy world.

"How many people are willing to help me if my life gets fucked up?"

Having a support system matters, but building a support system isn't easy. You have to learn to be a friend or companion that brings value to a network.

The more value you bring to a network, the likelier it is that network will provide value back to you when you need it most.

In the end, if a life-changing event happens to you and you don't have people to fall back on, it might not matter how hard to kill you are. We are all humans and having a supportive community is a godsend.

Build Towards F*ck You Money

I've written about this a few times, and while the premise is simple, the execution is not.

The idea is that you have enough money in reserve that you are never dependent on any one person or one job to make ends meet for a long period of time.

How much money would you need to have to feel comfortable saying "Fuck You" to anyone? To me, f*ck you money is five years of expenses at your current lifestyle. That's pretty hard to pull off, but if you want to reduce your risk of financial hardship, you need to work towards it.

How to do this:

• Reduce your expenses
• Increase your income if possible

You want as large of a gap as possible between how much you earn each month and how much you spend each month. The more money you can save or invest, the better off you will be should something awful occur.

This all may seem like common sense, but trust me it isn't.

If possible you want to keep your expenses as low as makes sense for you, so that you don't become a drain on yourself should your income get cut off.

How many months would you be able to live comfortably if you lost all of your income right now?

If it isn't greater than 6, you have some work to do.

Why not start now?

Have a great week!

This concludes our issue this week, I hope it gave you some perspective or injected a little motivation into your life!

If it helped, let me know! I read every newsletter response I receive, and I absolutely love hearing from all of you. This newsletter is for you, so I need your help to make it as great as possible.

If you'd like to show me some love for writing all this free stuff, you can always buy me a coffee.

More Resources

I will be adding to this section over time as we find resources that will help you all.

• Check out the Wise Owl Store
• All Wise Healthy Wealthy Articles on Medium
• Start your own Sendfox Newsletter
• Free products to help you level up

Crypto Resources

The Bankless Podcast: This is a link to the bankless podcast on Spotify. Start from the very beginning and learn why I am so positive about the power of Crypto and Ethereum in particular. You can find the podcast easily on the internet, but I am linking to episode 1 on Spotify for your convenience.

Buy your first ETH or BTC:

• On Coinbase - this is the easiest starting place for the newest beginners
• On Gemini - Another great option founded by the Winklevoss brothers. They are based out of New York.
• On Kraken - Kraken has a bit of a harder user interface, but they already have ETH staking enabled with the push of a single button.

Earn interest on your crypto

• BlockFi - Currently, you can earn 4% interest on BTC, 5% interest on ETH, and a whopping 8.5% on stable coins like USDC. Use the referral code b09f24fd to support the newsletter. BlockFi is currently not accepting new customers from the USA for its Crypto Savings Account. Non-US customers are still welcome.

Other tools:

• Argent Wallet - This is the best mobile wallet for Ethereum, Defi, and all things on the Ethereum network, including staking. They even have plans to implement Layer 2 to remove network fees.
• Ethhub - this is a weekly newsletter that lists out all the interesting news, articles, and tweets that have happened in Crypto that week. It's free and awesome.
• Ethdashboard - A simple dashboard to look at various metrics in the ethereum space. I mainly use this as a quick tool to check ETH gas fees.
• Cointracker - this is one of the better tools for tracking all of your various crypto across all of the various wallets, exchanges, etc. You can also use them to do your crypto taxes each year.
• Metamask - this is a crypto wallet that you can access from your browser and allows you to easily interact with blockchain apps online.