The One Purchase That Pays You Back

"Is a Stoic stingy and frugal about everything? Some take it that way, but that’s probably the incorrect view. Instead, a Stoic should think both about eliminating needless expenses as well as spending liberally on the things that matter."Ryan discusses the one thing that a Stoic can always justify spending money on, on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com. The One Purchase That Pays You Back. We've talked about the importance of living below your means, about cultivating a selling habit rather than a buying habit, about the trap of extravagance and how acquiring more and more makes us vulnerable, putting us constantly on guard, until, as one of Seneca's most powerful metaphors puts it, "The slave owner

• 0:50Ryan Holiday?

  is owned by their slaves." The scene of Marcus Aurelius selling off imperial treasures rather than live in debt is a powerful one. But does that mean that a stoic is stingy and frugal about everything? Some take it that way, but that's probably the incorrect view. Instead, a stoic should think both about eliminating needless expenses as well as spending liberally on the things that matter. The problem most people have is they never decide what's really important and what's not, so they spend and skimp blindly. The question becomes, what should we spend extravagantly on? Obviously, this depends on who you are and what your priorities are, but the finance guru Ramit Sethi does have

• 1:33Ryan Holiday?

  one rule that's pretty universal, one that is easy to imagine Seneca nodding in agreement with. It's called Ramit's Book Buying Rule. If you're thinking about buying a book, he says, "Just buy it. Don't waste five seconds debating. Even one idea makes it worth it." Books, as the great writer and book lover Petrarch once said, "are the only purchase that pays you back." Gold, silver jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, steeds, and other things of this kind offer immutable and superficial pleasure. Books give delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.

• 2:18Ryan Holiday?

  At the core of Stoicism is the love of wisdom. Cicero and Cato took great joys in their library. It's unlikely that Marcus Aurelius sold off his books when he was balancing the empire's books. Epictetus, for all his simple living, belies his book-buying habit with how easily he quotes literature and history in his lectures. If there is one indulgence the Stoics are inclined to tolerate, books are at the top of that list. Education is too. If you want to learn and improve and grow, you have to be willing to invest in yourself. You have to be willing to acquire. Books and courses and access to information, these are part of the one-buying habit you shouldn't think twice about.

• 3:01Ryan Holiday?

  In fact, it's the one thing for which we should mercilessly cut the rest of our spending to facilitate, because wisdom always pays for itself in the long run. It always pays you back. Hey, everyone. If you're stuck inside during this pandemic, there's no better way to spend your time than getting caught up on all that reading you've been meaning to do. And if you want to change the way you read so that you get as much out of the books that you do read as possible, check out our Daily Stoic Read to Lead Challenge. It's 13 days of amazing challenges designed to rekindle your connection with books, to help you rebuild your library and even more. You can check it out today. Just go to dailystoic.com/reading.