Speaker A
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Vladimir Levchenko. And today we're going to analyze some so-called harmful advice.
Vladimir Levchenko discusses harmful financial advice, emphasizing living in the present and balancing saving with quality of life.
Key Takeaways
- Living solely to save money can degrade quality of life and health.
- Balance is essential: save and invest, but do not sacrifice living in the present.
- Inattentiveness in life can lead to costly mistakes beyond finances.
- Financial decisions should be flexible to accommodate unforeseen life events.
- Beware of manipulative financial advice and policies that may harm individual well-being.
What the video covers
- Critiques common financial advice that promotes extreme saving at the cost of quality of life and health.
- Highlights the importance of living in the present rather than postponing life for future savings.
- Explains inattentiveness and its dangers using everyday examples.
- Discusses the societal obsession with money and conspicuous consumption under capitalism.
- Stresses the need for balance between saving for the future and enjoying life now.
- Warns against rigid saving systems that ignore real-life emergencies and needs.
- Mentions the limits of algorithms and AI in modeling human life and health.
- Quotes an Indian chief emphasizing that obsession with work hinders wisdom.
- Encourages minimizing emotional purchases and understanding compound interest.
- Criticizes recent government proposals to increase taxes on passive income as misleading.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and critique of harmful financial advice
- 01:26The importance of attention and living in the present
- 02:26Society's obsession with money and its consequences
- 04:43The dangers of postponing life for future savings
- 05:53Balancing saving with real-life emergencies
- 06:55Limitations of algorithms and AI in human life
- 07:58Cultural perspectives on work and wisdom
- 09:02Smart investing and critique of passive income tax proposals
- 11:23Summary and personal financial management advice
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Yes. What, in my opinion, is the harmful nature of many tips regarding the management of one's own wealth and finances? The harm is quite simple: it’s putting your life on hold, so that instead of living here and now, we
Speaker A
think we’ll live someday later. In reality, never, if we save as most financial textbooks and specialists teach us—saying, "give up a cup of coffee, don't do this, do that, save at every step, buy less comfortable shoes," only to end up visiting an
Speaker A
orthopedist later. Right. Or, you know, wear out your feet, buy lower-quality clothing, and then get sick. Yes. And as, unfortunately, most people do, they skimp on quality food, thereby killing not just their health, but also the quality of their lives. You shouldn't
Speaker A
do that, friends. Let's analyze why. Well, first of all, there is a well-known postulate that is impossible to refute: our life is where our attention is. It is inattentiveness that always costs us the most. Right.
Speaker A
Because if we approach—well, I think, listen, you've definitely seen many people who approach a road, whether there's a crosswalk or not, even if there is one. So, a person approaches, seems to see the crosswalk, and stops.
Speaker A
What does the driver on the road do? Well, he knows. But if a person isn't walking on the crosswalk, he can drive, right? He must—we must, as drivers, yield when a person has stepped onto the crosswalk and started walking. But
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here, a person approaches, walks along the sidewalk, and stops. Usually, they are looking at something on their phone, and then suddenly—unexpectedly even to themselves, not just the driver—they find themselves in the middle of that crossing. And they have no idea:
Speaker A
"Oh, where am I, who am I, and what am I even doing here?" That is inattentiveness. Now imagine what inattentiveness will do to you in other areas. An ancient proverb states that it doesn't matter how much strength and
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resources you have; it matters how well you can concentrate them. Because if we apply a force of, say, 10 kg and distribute it over one square meter, no one will even feel it. But if those 10 kg were on the tip of a needle,
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that’s a colossal difference. The same applies to health, right? There’s a saying that’s thousands of years old—thousands. Most people in their youth spend their health to earn money. In old age, they spend money to try and get their health back.
Speaker A
But no one has ever succeeded in doing that, and no one will. The world is structured this way right now, it’s a certain stage of capitalism. We won't get into a discussion here about whether it's final or not. But it's
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certainly a stage where the attitude toward money is taken to the extreme. They try to tell us from every corner that the only real value is money, and everything is measured by its nominal amount. Furthermore, that every person
Speaker A
should earn as much money as possible and show it to the whole world. I don’t know, post it on various social networks, demonstrate it through conspicuous consumption. Because otherwise, it's like they aren't even human. And for this, you have to
Speaker A
somehow give up on life itself. You have to focus exclusively on making money, and that's it. And put your entire life off until later. Yes, it’s like one of those old jokes, where an old man is dying, his grandson
Speaker A
is sitting by his bed, and he says, "Oh, Izenka, oh, I smell something." "Grandma is probably making gefilte fish in the kitchen." "Yes, Grandpa." "Izenka, go ask for some." "I want so much to eat before I die." The grandson leaves and
Speaker A
returns empty-handed. He says, "Izenka, what happened?" "Why are you empty-handed?" "What did Grandma say?" "Grandma said that’s for later." When we always—and I stress: always—even in a case like this old joke, put life off until later just to save a little,
Speaker A
or maybe a lot, then in the end, yes, we wind up in the cemetery having never lived our own lives at all. We need to find that very balance here. Is it necessary to look toward tomorrow? Well, absolutely, yes; if we earn something,
Speaker A
we shouldn’t try to spend it all. If we have the opportunity to set something aside and invest, we must certainly do so. But you shouldn't turn this into such a rigid system that if for some month—or maybe even several
Speaker A
months—we can't manage, you know, to set aside savings for some reason, God forbid, someone close to us gets sick, or something even more serious happens, well, we aren't going to skimp on that, right? We say: "No, no, listen, I
Speaker A
absolutely have to, I don't know, put away 10 or 20 or some percent of my monthly income for investments. And I don't care that I need to buy medicine for someone." Well, that sounds wild, just wild. I think no one would argue
Speaker A
with that. But it goes beyond the limits of that algorithm they keep drilling into us. Well, so what should we do? It means we need to be alive, rather than living by an algorithm. And while we are, of course, being
Speaker A
convinced that artificial intelligence is our everything, that it will solve everything, describe everything. But so far, not a single algorithm has been able to describe the functioning of the human organism. And, frankly speaking, I personally doubt that it will be able
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to, well, at least not in a way that creates a working model. Somewhere, in bits and pieces, yes, of course, but to combine it into one model—that is, a mathematical model of the human body—they haven't been able to draw that up
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yet. Right. And accordingly, we need to be more flexible. And we understand that at some point we truly cannot set something aside for the future, to invest—and again, for what? Either, I don't know, for children's education, or improving housing conditions,
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although, in my opinion, that is not an object for investment. And this is where many of my colleagues are simply and deliberately misleading people.
Speaker A
Setting money aside for retirement, that’s understandable. Because then we won't be able to work, not just at that pace, but perhaps we won't be able to work at all, and what's more, we need to decide from the start whether
Speaker A
life is for money or money is for life. This is the key factor. Here I will cite, once again, a statement by one of the Indian chiefs. It’s a well-known story about when the Anglo-Saxons tried to force the youth of an Indian tribe
Speaker A
to work for their own needs. The chief said: "No, no, our young men must not work. It hinders the pursuit of wisdom."
Speaker A
I mean, even the Indians, who lived, well, according to the Anglo-Saxons of that time, in some sort of primitive communal system, understood much better that being obsessed with earning money leads to the degradation of a person as
Speaker A
an individual. Answer this question for yourself. Do you live to work, or do you work to live? That is the key factor. Well, from this point on, we already understand everything perfectly. Further, of course, it's all quite
Speaker A
clear, as they say, compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. If we have the opportunity not to make emotional purchases, no matter what for, just to prove something to ourselves.
Speaker A
Well, as a rule, that is exactly how it happens under the influence of certain manipulative technologies, then we can simply, well, really save money, reinvest, especially if, uh, as is the case now—which happens quite rarely—real interest rates are positive,
Speaker A
then the purchasing power of our capital increases over time. When we realize that our capital is growing bit by bit, we start to see what we can do to further that. And it is clear that there should be as few emotional
Speaker A
decisions as possible. There is a very interesting question here related to terminology. Just recently, our Ministry of Finance, well, let's just say, as the saying goes, no words, only emotions or just interjections. They put out a statement, which is, of
Speaker A
course, enough to kill flies, that taxes on passive income need to be increased. I, by the way, described this in great
Speaker A
have you. I mean, people working in the Ministry of Finance, well, meaning people who deal with finances. I mean, what are finances? Finances are part of investment activity, right? They labeled as passive the very income that these same people are involved with,
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which they, in turn, form, redistribute , and so on. Well, first of all, before formulating it that way, they should have, uh, well, at the very least, renounced their salaries altogether, just once and for all. And, by and
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large, admitted that they are completely unnecessary. But this is a passive activity, after all. I mean, what they do should, according to their own wording, happen as if by itself.
Speaker A
And for that, the entire investment sector is not needed at all. You don't need professionals there, you don't need to think at all, in principle, and you don't need to put any effort into it. But it’s passive, isn’t it? It
Speaker A
just happens all by itself. Without any involvement, really, not just from millions, but from tens of millions of people around the world. So, this is a very important manipulation that misleads people. And here it is very important to separate the wheat from
Speaker A
the chaff. Our stock market, for a certain period of time, was dividend-oriented. Meaning many companies paid out quite decent dividends. And if a person had accumulated some tangible capital, they could truly live off those dividends. I mean, companies lived, companies worked
Speaker A
, and some were developing. But in real terms, well, unfortunately, that’s not the case for our stock market, even if stock prices are rising, companies are paying dividends, and one could potentially live quite well on the amount of those dividends, or even just
Speaker A
a part of them. But that story has changed. It has changed quite significantly. And these changes need to be understood. This also suggests, again, that this income is not, by any stretch of the imagination, passive, and that people actually put in quite a
Speaker A
significant amount of effort to earn it . We simply take a look at the cycles.
Speaker A
These cycles, as I have said many times , but if anyone doesn't remember, it is natural and necessary to say it again, look very simple. They look like a basic sine wave. And if we are in some kind of neutral state, then, by and
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large, it doesn't matter where your money is invested. It could be the stock market, real estate, or bonds; as a rule, these main assets don't really matter. But, accordingly, the higher we rise in terms of stock index values and
Speaker A
, most importantly, market sentiment, the fewer risky assets you should have. These are not such cycles that you need to watch every single second. It is actually enough to spend a couple of times a week, I don't know, 20-30
Speaker A
minutes a day, to see where things are moving, what has changed, and what critical events have occurred, to understand whether it is worth making an effort or not. Nothing more than that. And at the very least, it is
Speaker A
necessary for understanding what is actually happening in the economy. And naturally, yes, any capital, it It grows the most if we truly entered the crisis well, if we realized that before the crisis we minimized the number of our risky assets; after all, what
Speaker A
happens during a crisis? Assets become cheaper, money becomes more expensive, metaphorically speaking. And vice versa , when there is some economic growth, money becomes cheaper, and assets, well , become more expensive. But the trap of many cycles, including in our
Speaker A
country, is that there were periods when assets in real terms didn't seem to grow, money was simply depreciating.
Speaker A
But that is a completely separate story , and unfortunately, it is not a topic for one lecture, but a topic of what you might call significant personal work, because here, for every person, it all really looks absolutely individual. And to sum up, what can we
Speaker A
say, why do we need capital? Well, to increase the well-being of one’s lineage. To provide children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren with an education, so that they move in a different society, so that they are, to put it crudely, not street cleaners
Speaker A
but professors and scientists, so that they develop our civilization and move the world forward. Or simply put, so that their lives are interesting, not monotonous, so that they are not the ones obeying the rules set by someone else, but the ones setting the rules
Speaker A
for others, because they are more competent, and not the other way around . Which is, in fact, what I wish for all of you, your children, and your grandchildren. All the best. M.
Topics:financial advicewealth managementsaving moneyinvestingquality of lifecapitalismcompound interestfinancial planningmoney mindsetlife balance
