15 Invisible Assets to Your Personal Economics
Hey there, Aluxer!
Have you ever found that some people around you make great financial decisions and they seem to do it effortlessly? It's like they've got some kind of magic touch or formula. Well, you know, they probably do, and you have it too. You just might not have recognized and developed it yet. Your decisions and behavior directly affect your personal economic health.
But what influences your decisions? Your good financial decisions are influenced by your invisible assets. You can't hold these assets; they're not tangible. You can't see or feel them, and you can't put a price on them. They are the underlying influences that lead to you acquiring the tangible assets you're after. You've inherited these assets from your biology, society, and your experience. So now you need to optimize that inheritance, and the first step to managing them is recognizing them.
Okay, and a little note here about the bonus right at the end: it can't be quantified in a monetary value, but it fuels all of the other assets. To fully understand its power, we have to first go through all of the invisible assets that have a more direct line to your personal economic profits.
So now, let's get into these 15 invisible assets to your personal economics.
Starting off at number one: above-average returns on your investments in your relationships. Good, valuable relationships don't pop up out of thin air. Before you see any kind of return in a relationship, you have to make an investment into it. This investment is your effort, time, and empathy, and you have to give this investment consistently over a long period of time. Like investing in a business, you have to make sure that the person you're doing all of this for is someone of high quality, someone with a good reputation and a plan for the future.
And while a mutually beneficial relationship is great, you can't go tit for tat. Expecting a favor or help in payment from them for something that you've done is not genuine. Good, genuine people will support and help you whenever they can. But if you only have people in your life just to call in favors one day, they're going to know you're not genuine, and they'll eventually drift away from you. If you've invested strategically and consistently, you will see returns from your relationships. These are the kinds of people who will help you clean and paint your new business space, saving you money on labor. They'll offer to pick up supplies, saving you money on gas. They'll loan you cash if you're feeling some financial stress. If they trust you and your work ethic, they'll open up doors for you that may have stayed closed forever otherwise. But it'll only be beneficial if you choose a high-quality person to invest in and if you're a high-quality person who invests in them without expecting an immediate return. They'll do the same for you.
Number two: your management of your intellectual capital. A formal education is great. In fact, according to a report from Georgetown University, people with advanced degrees earn an average of $2.7 million over their lifetimes compared to 1.5 million for those with only a high school diploma. But you've got valuable intellectual capital even if you don't have a degree. If you're an employee, then someone else is profiting off that capital. Your intellectual capital is your unique knowledge, expertise, and ideas. These are the tools you use to think of ways to make something work better. They're the tools that help you to see opportunities, and these tools help you to add value to someone's life through something you make or do for them.
These tools are there for you, whether you own a business and are constantly leaning on them, or if you do things amongst your friends, family, and colleagues. Your intellectual capital is one of the most valuable things you possess.
Number three: your why in why you want to be successful. Beneath all of your goals, there's a reason, right? And that reason is often stronger and deeper than you think. You have to look beneath the surface for it, though. Reaching your personal finance goals, your health goals (both mental and physical), your relationship, and personal growth goals—all of these take an incredible amount of work. You're also going to face obstacles and challenges that will set you back on the work you've done. If your why isn't strong enough or you aren't aware of your true motivation, well, it's going to be easier for you to throw in the towel when things get hard.
Your why is going to keep you committed and resilient. Motivation that's rooted in a deep personal reason is far more sustainable than superficial stuff, and it can inspire and influence other people too. When others see your passion and dedication, they're more likely to support, follow, or collaborate with you. Think about your goals and keep asking yourself why you want to reach them. Keep asking until you get a reason that surprises you—maybe one that even makes you a little bit sad. That's the one. That's what's driving you, and now it's time for you to control it.
Number four: your access to optimizing your health. Your time is your money, and the longer you're in the game, well, the better the chances of winning. Investing in your health, Aluxer, buys you more time. Through health apps on your phone, your smartwatch, and devices like the Aura ring, you now have access to quantitative health data that you can use to develop qualitative steps that give you more energy, which leads to you making better decisions. It gives you better sleep, which can lead to better performance at work, and reduces your stress levels, which of course allows you to focus on your priorities.
When you optimize and work on your health, you have the energy to choose good investment opportunities, the ability to perform well at work that leads to promotions and better pay, and a calm mind that stops you from making impulsive statements or hasty sales.
Number five: your ability to defend your peace of mind. A clear peace of mind allows you to concentrate on your projects properly, make decisions more effectively, and work efficiently without being bogged down by stress or distractions. It also leads to emotional stability and thoughtful, rational decisions. With all of these things in your arsenal, you're able to become a more emotionally stable, productive, and well-rounded person.
But you know, we often hear about how important it is to protect your peace of mind. That's step one: where you take action to defend yourself against potential threats. It's a step you take before something happens, and there are tools and programs you can use that will be this protection for you. The sponsor of today's video, NordVPN, is one of those tools. They protect your financial security and personal data by encrypting your internet connection, which shields you from hackers, identity thieves, and even your internet service provider that might be gathering your information and selling it.
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To get the deal, visit nordvpn.com/alux. We've also added the link into the description box so you can access it from there too, and it's free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. Once you've got that first step of protection in place, then you also need to manage your peace of mind by finding healthy coping mechanisms that work for you in dealing with stressful situations. Nurture it by always working on it, or even when nothing is directly threatening it. Use tools to protect healthy coping mechanisms to manage and consistently work on these mechanisms to nurture it.
Number six: your increasing right to vote with your time. The world is changing in a way that's giving you more right to vote with your time. The question is, are you using it wisely? With your right to vote how you spend your time, you could choose to use it to improve your financial literacy, to have hobbies and interests that keep you entertained without needing to spend a lot of money, and to upskill yourself to have access to higher-paying job opportunities. Society and culture now place more value on work-life balance, personal development, and seeing our time as a vital part of our personal autonomy.
When society's beliefs and values around something change, innovators create tools to help us realize those new values, and those things buy you more time. So where are you going to spend that time? You better spend it wisely.
Number seven: your in-depth reports on your stages of struggle. Now, your stages of struggle are about any kind of hardship, challenge, or obstacle that you've faced in your life. Most of us automatically go into analysis mode when we're faced with an obstacle. It's part of our biological survival toolkit.
The problem becomes your sole focus, and you're able to shut out the noise and things that don't matter. You develop a solution, and you implement it. Sometimes it works quickly, and sometimes it takes years. If you grew up in poverty, then you might have realized the only way out is through a good education, which you need scholarships for, which you need to work hard for, so you put your head down. Or you realized that a formal education wasn't for you, so you looked at other routes for escape that matched your strengths.
Your mind develops an in-depth report on that struggle, analyzing every decision, mistake, and successful moment. You become resilient; the path to wealth is paved with obstacles. You're not going to make it if you are not resilient.
Number eight: your ability to be honest with yourself. You know, as humans, we've got a pretty impressive ability to be brutally honest with ourselves. We are incredibly hard on ourselves when we mess up, which shows us that we're using this innate honesty quite poorly. We often use it to criticize and doubt ourselves and our abilities when we should be using it to plan how to realistically reach our goals.
When we sit down and plan our goals, we have these big dreams and ultimate achievements. We tend to have an overly optimistic idea of how much work, sacrifice, and sound decisions we are actually able to make. Take planning out a budget, for example. You start off with your income and expenses, and you plan out how you're going to allocate your money. You try to be as honest as possible about how much you do spend on certain things. But then you get to the middle of the month, and you see you are not on target at all. You were not honest enough. If that brutal honesty was directed towards your behavior when you were planning that budget, well, you would have shocked yourself into sticking with it.
Number nine: the freedom to choose the people who influence you. We know that who you're influenced by influences your actions, but your invisible asset isn't the people who influence you. It is the fact that you have the freedom to choose them, especially in today's digital world. Sometimes their influence is obvious, right? But a lot of the time, it can be more subtle. It's a mind trick that you aren't even aware of happening.
So, you have to allow the right people in and not bank on the idea that you can allow anyone in and just filter out their thoughts and actions you don't agree with afterward. Psychology tells us that's not really very possible. We're too socially and biologically connected to people to pick and choose how much they influence us once we've allowed them into our circle. Your algorithm has to be methodical, intentional, and most importantly, aligned with your goals.
Number ten: the capacity to overcome creative uncertainty. Listen, okay, we are all innately creative. Just because you didn't win the painting competition in third grade, or weren't the person who thought about Uber, or you didn't make culture-altering ad campaigns, it doesn't mean that you're not incredibly creative. Creativity is the ability to generate valuable ideas and solutions. The more new and original the idea is, the more valuable it is.
But just you thinking about an idea, even if it's been done a thousand times before, that's still creativity. That is your mind analyzing a situation, seeing different paths to take that will help or fix it, and then just deciding on which path is best. It can all happen within a few seconds. We often think that creativity should stay out of your personal economics because it's unpredictable and risky. Financial goals need discipline and structure, which seems like the opposite of creativity, and these goals can only be achieved through tried and true methods like saving, investing, and budgeting, not through creative approaches.
But that's not really true. Your creativity is an incredible asset to your personal economics. When you lean into it, it can lead you to think of different, even fun ways of spending your time, entertaining people, generating income, and investing your money. Sacrificing and saving is hard enough, but leaning into creativity can help you to find ways to make it a lot more interesting.
Number eleven: the ability to think about multiple concepts simultaneously. Now for some of you, this one will be really obvious. You might be thinking, "Duh, of course I can think about multiple things at the same time! How does this help my personal economics?" Though, some of you might be thinking, "Uh, actually, I kind of struggle to multitask and multi-think. I don't know if I have this invisible asset." But trust us, okay? You do!
Most animals can only focus on a single task, and their behavior is totally instinctual. But humans can hold abstract concepts in our minds. We can think about things that have not happened at all. We can be realistic in our imaginations or we can be totally absurd, and we can do it all within a few seconds. We can try it out right now. Let's all go to space!
Okay, let's imagine that right now we're with those two astronauts currently stuck in space because of an issue with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they went up on. They were supposed to go for only eight days, and they've already been stuck there for more than two months. They might not be able to get home until February 2025, and we're all right there with them!
Okay, now let's come back to reality. You're at home watching me in my recording studio. Even that you imagined and you don't even know what I look like! That ability underpins human intelligence and strategic thinking that helps you to weigh out different options about your work, money, and personal finance without ever feeling overwhelmed. It allows you to create some kind of context or understanding of how your choices might work out, even though you cannot predict the future.
It allows you to see how changes in one area, like the Federal Reserve Bank increasing interest rates, or you spending a big portion of your savings to pay off credit card debt, can affect changes in other areas, like a decrease in bond prices leading to them dropping in value, leading to a potential loss for your personal finances. Eliminating the high interest in debt would have accumulated frees up more cash flow in the future, but also your current depleted savings leaves you more vulnerable to unexpected expenses. As a human, you can weigh all of these concepts at the same time, and that's a major asset.
Number twelve: understanding curiosity as an evolutionary advantage. So many people struggle to thrive in the traditional education system. It’s just not a good system for everyone. When you find learning something too difficult, of course, you're going to think that you hate it. But you probably don't hate it; you just hate the way you're being taught. You see, humans are naturally curious. Curiosity is totally innate, and it's within you. It's in your nature to want to learn more and to know more; it’s what brought humans to where we are today.
So if curiosity is a fundamental part of being human and you want to learn more, why are you struggling to dedicate yourself to learning about things that you know will help your personal economics and well-being? It must just be the way that you're learning. You need to find a method of learning that suits your unique brain trust that your mind wants to take you further. You just need to find a method that works for you.
Number thirteen: past experiences that help you to develop good judgment. Now earlier we spoke about how your mind builds a report of your most impactful past experiences, and you then use that report to build resilience and learn from your mistakes. So these experiences also give you good judgment—not just about situations, but people too. But the thing is, the warning signals for this judgment are very subtle. It can be hard for you to pinpoint or explain what you don't like about someone, which makes it easy for you to dismiss that feeling.
Nine times out of ten, though, at some point, you'll hear a story that explains your initial feelings: paranoia and concern about someone doesn't develop out of thin air; it develops because your brain is picking up on micro facial expressions, language, tone of voice, and behavior of this person in front of you, and you’re connecting these attributes to a person you knew before. Those warning signs can save you from people and situations that might ruin your mental health or totally overthrow your financial goals.
It's the signal that goes off when a deal sounds too good to be true. When a client is sketchy about paying a deposit before you start working. It's the friend who never pays you back but will always ask for more. Trust and examine your mind's warning signs, no matter how subtle or ridiculous they might seem at the start.
Number fourteen: being able to manipulate your personal brand perception. Your personal brand is the telling of your story, and a good story gets people invested. They want to know you, help you, and walk alongside you on your road to success. When people perceive your personal brand well, they're willing to invest their time, money, and effort into your ideas, expertise, and vision. This story is told through your attitude, actions, what you say, and how you treat people.
So while you can manipulate it, you have to do it fully and wholeheartedly. You can't pretend to be a good person when your actions don't reflect that. Negative behavior, either through what you do and how you treat people, will affect the way that people see your personal brand. A strong personal brand gets the message about you across to people who've never met you, and who knows what doors they could open for you? You have the power to shape your image and your story, especially in today's digital world. Companies will go through your social media, your LinkedIn, and your previous posts to determine what kind of person you are. If you're not thinking about how your personal brand is being perceived, well, you're going to miss out on some great opportunities.
And number fifteen: the willingness to ask for help. Let's be honest here, okay? Asking for help is not an easy thing for most people. Sometimes, you just have to put your pride aside, and it feels like you're sending the message that you weren't good enough to do something on your own.
But look, okay, we can assure you the person you're asking for help only got to where they are now because they were willing to ask for help from someone else. You can learn so much more from someone who's willing to share what they've learned and use that information alongside your own research than you just trying to figure things out on your own. Being willing to ask for help directly affects your ability to grow, learn, and solve problems.
You tap into expertise and the experience and resources of others, which can save you tons of time, limit your mistakes, and help you make better decisions. This access to collective knowledge—from mentors, coaches, a colleague, your friend, the Alux app—is just invaluable.
And since you stuck with us until the end, Aluxer, you're getting a bonus! Today's bonus asset is the content of your character. Now there's been a paradigm shift in the way society views the concept of wealth. It's not just about money anymore. Wealth is a means to an end, and the end is well-being—total well-being in your mind and body.
The mega-rich are already investing in it. Look at how much they spend on their personal health, experiences, influences. Look at how most of them talk about mindfulness and having a growth mindset. Your personal economics isn't just about working on making money; it's about working on all of the things that are valuable to you. It's your friends, your family, it's your experiences, it's how you take care of yourself in your mind and in your body.
It's the good things that you do for people, the genuine apologies you give and receive. It's being able to share your success with people you love and have them be happy for you. It's about getting to the end and knowing that you matter to the people who mattered. You did your best to be the best, and when you made mistakes, you owned up to them.
At the end of everything, Aluxer, if you can look back on your life and say, "I was a good person, I loved deeply, and I was loved in return," then my friend, you have won.