Master Delayed Gratification, Achieve Financial Independence

I’m writing this in early March 2020, and I still have a few pieces of Halloween candy left in my house from 2019.  I didn’t get as many trick-or-treaters this past year as I normally do, and I was left with a surplus. 

I took most of the leftovers into my job and fed the mobs.  Two bags of Snickers lasted two, maybe three hours with my ravenous co-workers.  They’re shameless.

Regular readers know I’m a disciplined health nut, so I don’t eat candy as a regular practice.  My version of candy is 90% cocoa dark chocolate.  Minimal sugar and still feels like a treat. 

But here it is more than two months into 2020 and I have two Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and a Twix left in my kitchen cabinet.  I don’t plan on having them today, or tomorrow.  Maybe not even in March.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups just as much as the next person.  They’re amazing, a blissful sugary dopamine rush.  I will eventually eat them, but only when I feel like I’ve earned them. 

Like anyone I spend a good deal of time in my kitchen.  So how can I possibly continue resisting the yummy Reese’s when I know they’re a foot away?

 

Picking And Piling

I’ve always been really good at delayed gratification.  Take steamed crabs for instance.  I grew up in Baltimore and it’s very true that Marylanders love to eat steamed crabs. 

But as a kid in the 70’s and 80’s they were pretty expensive and it was a rare treat for my family.  When we did have them it was usually freebies from a neighbor’s uncle who had a small john-boat and would sometimes go out on the Chesapeake Bay to catch some.  I vividly remember those Sundays, when we had a dozen or two crabs to feast on.

Crab picking is a skill, and in Maryland getting together to have steamed crabs is as much or more ritual as it is a meal.  It involves copious hammering, cutting, and shell-breaking, often to get only a tiny morsel of delicious white crab meat.

The “work to eat” ratio leans heavily on the work side.  Because of this, most people consume the precious morsel as soon as they free it from its hard casing.  After all that work, who wouldn’t want the reward right away? 

Me, that’s who.  I was different.  I would extract a nice chunk of crab meat and put it in a pile, then go on to get another.  While others were in the pick-eat-pick-eat cycle, I was all picking and piling.

After all the crabs were gone, I would have a huge pile of crab meat in front of me while others had nothing but shells.  When I first started doing this my family looked at me quizzically as if I were freak.  But they eventually got used to it.  Dave was being Dave.

Once my brother tried to steal some of my treasured pile and I attacked him like a wolf guarding a deer carcass.  No way dude, go pound sand.  You ate yours in small bites.  I waited, practiced self control, and now I’m reaping the motherload. 

And to me, the more I delayed the payoff, the sweeter it was when I finally indulged.  I enjoyed seeing their envious faces as I enjoyed my massive mound of crabmeat.

This eccentric trait, when applied to money and stuff, has been a huge factor in my achieving financial independence.  Maybe the decisive factor.

 

Just Friggin Wait

There’s quite a lot of science behind the concept of delayed gratification.  There’s the famous marshmallow experiment, and the Freudian psychoanalysis of the “pleasure principle“.  To me, in laymen’s terms it’s simple.  It’s forgoing the immediate and easy reward to seek a bigger and better reward in the future. 

Yes it requires patience and discipline.  But as Jocko says and as I wrote about on Get Rich Slowly, discipline equals freedom.

When I got pay raises, I didn’t buy stuff with the new found money.  Or upgrade existing stuff.  I stashed it in my investments, and waited. 

When new technologies and toys came out, I didn’t get them. 

As a massive music fan who literally lived for music you would think I would have hopped on the CD bandwagon soon after they were invented in the mid-80’s.  Nope. 

I was a teenager then and couldn’t afford a CD player.  But even after I got my first real job and started having money I didn’t get one.  I eventually got my first CD player in 1995, 12 years after they came out.  My brother and most of my friends had 50 to 100 CDs by then. 

This isn’t deprivation.  My cassette collection was huge and sounded great.  There was no suffering involved in this smart choice.

I got my first cell phone in 2010, a full decade after most others had them.  And it was a flip phone, even though smartphones had been out for three years by then. 

I finally caved and got my first smartphone in 2013, but have never paid more than $100 for a phone and hope I never have to. 

I have lots of cycling, climbing, and water sports gear.  But when new advances come out, and they do every single day, I don’t buy them, at least right away. 

I might buy them down the road, but only if others have proven that they’re valuable.  Many of my cycling buddies upgrade components multiple times per year, and those are usually the guys I drop on the hills. 

They’re trying to buy fitness and speed, and it doesn’t work that way.

 

School Of Delay

My skills for delayed gratification were probably cultivated in hearing my parents and Nonnie talk about growing up and living through the Great Depression.  Maybe I felt an obligation to experience some of what they did by learning to wait for things and to appreciate what I already had.  

I’m not really sure to be honest.  Wherever it came from I feel very blessed that I was gifted this trait.

I reached financial independence in my mid 40’s without even really striving for it.  If someone asked me my main piece of advice to help a younger person get there, I would say to save as much as you can on the big three, mainly the big two – your house and your car. 

That’s where you’ll get the most bang for your buck in savings.  But to do that, you have to cultivate the behavioral trait of delayed gratification. 

When that first “real job” paycheck comes, or that first paycheck after a big promotion, you’re very likely to upgrade from the used Honda Civic to the new Audi A5, like most Americans.  Or move from your nice 1,200sq. foot house to a 3,000sq. foot one. 

It’s just what most people do, and it’s not the route to financial independence.

Learning to not inflate your lifestyle and delay your gratification will unlock the key to wealth and riches beyond your wildest dreams. 

So hurry up and wait. 

Your turn – do you feel you are good at delayed gratification?