About six months ago, I began the process of dismantling my relationship with Google. In other words, “degoogling”.
I’m not alone. There’s a entire subreddit devoted to the practice. And when I’ve mentioned my efforts to friends, many of them perk up and say “yeah I should do that, too”.
Why degoogle?
Long before the world ‘google’ became part of the English lexicon (a legal concept known as genericide, interestingly enough) — the neophyte search company famously vowed to “not be evil“. Twenty-five years later, the company couldn’t have veered farther from that credo if it had tried. For example, Google:
- Collects exhaustive and intimate data on users for the sole purpose of targeted advertising
- Lies about how it uses that information
- Monopolizes online advertising so advertisers pay more and publishers earn less
- Manipulates its own advertising auctions to increase advertising costs for businesses and pocket more profit
- Cut backroom deals with Meta to share private user data so both companies make more money
- Aided the US Army in training drones to identify and follow targets for assassination
- Uses its might to routinely squash negative press
- Fires employees who raise moral concerns
- Helped the US National Security Agency (NSA) illegally survail just about everyone
- Claims to be an agnostic repository of information, yet secretly moderates and censors content in its index
- Dodges billions in taxes
- Illegally used 1.6 million identifiable health records of British citizens to train its AI model, DeepMind
- Spinelessly capitulates to government demands (e.g., censorship in China; enforcing dubious executive orders under the Trump administration)
Google gets away with all of this (and more) because of their infinite power.
Courts in multiple countries have ruled that Google is an illegal monopoly. Although you might think of Google as a search engine, and perhaps a provider of apps like GMail, Google Maps, and the Chrome web browser, that’s just the beginning. Don’t forget about YouTube, the Android operating system running 70% of the world’s mobile phones (and GooglePlay, its app marketplace). There are also Nest cameras in millions of homes; Google Classroom powering online learning in public schools; FitBit devices tracking millions of users’ health stats; Verily and Calico, two biotech companies; and, of course, DeepMind, Google’s artificial intelligence play.
Google’s online dominance is so overpowering that many of us spend nearly our entire lives living fully within its ecosystem. One could be using YouTube, Google Maps, Google Mail, and Google Search using the Google-created Chrome browser that you downloaded from GooglePlay on a Google-developed Android phone (manufactured by Google, if it’s a Pixel phone). And, of course, 85% of the online advertising you see every day is served by Google in one form or another.
So even if Google’s abuses as a corporation don’t bother you, its mere size — and dominance of your online life — should. No organization in history has had such influence on and insight into our personal lives. And rather than bending over backwards to ensure users’ privacy, Google does the opposite: It blatantly collects and exploits every piece of data about you in order to profit at all costs.
The last thing I’ll say about reasons to degoogle is that the parallels to George Orwell’s 1984 should be obvious. We long worry about the government becoming “Big Brother”. But Big Brother’s already here, and his name’s Google. And given the company’s cooperation with the the US Army, NSA, and other governments around the world, it’s not hard to imagine the line between Google and the government is fuzzy at best. The old argument “I’m not worried about privacy, I have nothing to hide” just doesn’t cut it. This is no longer just about privacy, it’s about liberty. All it would take is your government taking a tyrannical turn for Google to begin using its grip on society to begin locking down the information we can access and even controlling our movement. Given events in the United States right now, is that so hard to imagine?
How to degoogle
Degoogling is no easy task. If you’re anything like me, you’ve been enmeshed in Google’s ecosystem for years, if not decades. I still remember excitedly being among the first in the world to get an invite to use GMail. That account has been my primary email address for 21 years.
Still, it is possible to (mostly) disentangle yourself from Google’s web. I’m going to explain the steps I’ve taken so far in my own life. Then I’ll provide additional Google alternatives for most of their most-used services and resources for living completely without any of them.
Fortunately, the easiest degoogling steps you can take provide a great deal of impact. Those are to: update your privacy settings to limit how much Google tracks you, stop using Google Search, and stop using its Chrome web browser.
Change your privacy settings (do this NOW)
As long as you use Google services, the company is going to know a lot about you and use that knowledge to profit off you. What you might not realize, however, is that Google is required by law to give users ways of opting out of some of this tracking. Of course, Google doesn’t advertising this fact willingly nor make it particularly easy to do.
Steps you should take immediately include:
- Turn off Google’s master privacy control
- Turn off location history
- Delete your existing data
- Limit data sharing with third parties
- Turn off targeted ads
- Turn off personalized search results
Turn off Google’s master privacy control
What it does
The Web & App Activity control is the most powerful privacy setting on Google. When it is on, Google collects details about you including your search history, locations you’ve been to, websites you’ve visited, credit card purchases you’ve made, apps you’ve installed and when you use them, YouTube videos you’ve watched, and so on.
How to disable it
When you are logged into any Google website, click the icon in the top right and go to Manage Your Google Account –> Privacy & Personalization. Turn off “Web & App Activity”.
Turn off location history
What it does
If you have and Android phone or an iOS phone with Google Maps, Google’s location history tracks everywhere you’ve ever been (and when). Turning off the “Timeline” or “Location History” setting (it’s two names for the same thing) may seem like the way to stop Google from tracking your location but, guess what, changing that setting does nothing if you leave “Web & App Activity” on.
How to disable it
Turn off Timeline/Location History by going to Manage Your Google Account –> Privacy & Personalization –> Timeline (may be called Location History) and turn it off. Make sure you have also done the first step to turn off Web & App Actiivty.
Delete your existing data
What it does
Google keeps all the specific information it has on you stored on its corporate servers for a long time. So even if you want to forget that phase in your life when you put on a fake British accent, Google won’t.
How to disable it
You can choose to delete all of your information on Google’s servers or information from a certain time period. To delete all information, go to Manage Your Google Account –> Privacy & Personalization –> Web & App Activity –> Auto-delete. Do the same for Location History/Timeline.
If you want to delete data manually from a certain time period, go to Manage Your Google Account –> Privacy & Personalization –> Web & App Activity. Choose the three dot icon in the search bar and choose Delete Activity By. Here you can not only select which time period to delete, but also choose to delete activity from some apps but not others.
Limit data sharing with third parties
What it does
Over time, you have likely given Google permission to share information with other apps. You may have allowed social media apps to sync your Google contacts or used your Google account to sign into various apps. These connections can be convenient, but obviously allow Google to vacuum up even more information about you from your use of these third-party apps.
How to disable it
When you are logged into any Google website, click the icon in the top right and go to Manage Your Google Account. From the tabs on the left click Security –> Your Connection to Third-Party Apps and Services. Click on the rows with an app’s name and then Delete All Connections.
Turn off targeted ads
What it does
One of Google’s end goals for all of the data it collects about you is targeted advertising. When ads aren’t relevant to us, we tend to find them annoying, or we ignore them altogether. But when we constantly see ads about things we are interested in (or things people like us are interested in), we tend to click them at a much higher rate and spend money at a much higher rate. I guarantee that if you turn off this setting (and do the same for Facebook and Instagram), you will save money.
How to disable it
When logged into any Google website, click the icon in the top right and go to Manage Your Google Account –> Privacy & Personalization. Under Personalized Ads, click My Ad Center. Locate Personalized Ads in the top right and turn it off.
Turn off personalized search results
What it does
As you’ve probably noticed, Google Search predicts what you might be searching for after you’ve typed a few letters. It does this, in part, based upon global search trends. For example, if it were 2023 and you started typing “T-A-Y” Google might’ve suggested “Taylor Swift Eras Tour”. But it also makes suggestions that are unique to your search history. This has the potential to be embarrassing, for example, if your boss is standing over your shoulder.
How to disable it
This feature will already be disabled if you turned off the Web & App Activity setting. If, for some reason, you want to leave that master setting on but turn off personalized search, when logged into any Google website, click the icon in the top right and go to Manage Your Google Account –> Privacy & Personalization –> Search Personalization. Turn it off.
Alternatives to Google Search
Alternative search engines have gotten much better recently. Coincidentally, Google’s own search results have gotten worse, in my opinion. The only areas were I feel Google still has an edge (for now) are local searches and image searches.
Brave Search and DuckDuckGo are free, privacy-focused alternatives to Google Search. Microsoft’s Bing is also an option, although it’s obviously also owned by a tech conglomerate that collects user data.
StartPage is a search portal that uses Google search results but delivers it anonymously so Google cannot track you.
Personally, I’ve been using Kagi. It’s an excellent ad-free search engine that can be paired with an AI assistant providing all the functionality of ChatGPT. It’s not free, however, with plans starting at $5 per month or $10 per month for unlimited searches. When comparing free and paid options for degoogling, it’s important to keep in mind that you’re “paying” for the services you use in one way or another. If the service is “free” that’s because you are the product. The company is tracking everything about you in order to sell it to advertisers who hope to extract dollars from you later. (And because the trillions of dollars spent in advertising optimization and behavior manipulation, make no mistake, they will get dollars from you eventually.)
Alternatives to the Chrome browser
Firefox is my go-to browser. Firefox is owned by the independent Mozilla foundation. It provides robust privacy tools including the ability to disable trackers and block ads. I’m currently testing Zen, a sort of “skin” for Firefox that provides some additional privacy functionality and a unique user interface.
Brave is another good privacy-focused browser. And if you’re already using it or inclined to stick with the Apple app ecosystem, you can do far worse than Safari.
Finally, in case you need yet another reason to drop Chrome, long ago I found that Chrome drained my laptop’s battery rapidly. As it turns out, Chrome requires a lot more of your computer’s resources than other browsers, leading to increased battery drain and sluggish performance.
Alternatives to GMail
If you’re a long-time GMail user, this is where degoogling gets more complicated. One can’t just close an email account overnight. What you can do, however, is begin using a new email address immediately and simply forward your GMail there. I expect it will take at least a year, if not two, to fully move out of GMail. But, when combined with the steps I describe below to opt-out of some of Google’s tracking, simply no longer logging into GMail is a worth first step.
I’m now using Proton Mail for my personal email and calendar. Proton Mail is an independent, privacy-focused email account that even offers end-to-end encryption between Proton mail accounts. Proton Mail is free for one email address and up to 1 GB of storage. I pay $10 a month for 500 GB of storage, up to 15 email addresses, and included services including a VPN and an encrypted password manager.
Other GMail alternatives include:
- Disroot (Free)
- Tuta Mail (Priced in tiers starting at free)
- Fastmail ($30/year and up)
- Posteo (Starting at 1 EUR a month)
- Hushmail (From $59.99 a year)
- MailFence (Priced in tiers staring at free)
- Zoho (Starting at $1/month)
Alternatives to Google Maps & Waze
In addition to Google Maps, remember that Google owns Waze, too. For now, I’m using Apple Maps. I hadn’t used the app much since it first debuted. At that time, most people unanimously found it worse than Google Maps. Recently, however, I’ve been impressed.
Although Apple is another behemoth tech company with its own issues, they at least seem to take privacy more seriously than Google. Nevertheless, they’re still collecting your data. It’s still creepy that, every time I get in my truck, via Apple CarPlay predicts where I’m going.
Aside from Apple Maps, Maps.me is a free, open-source mapping app that recently added support for live traffic data. OpenStreetMaps is another open-source option; it’s possible to get live traffic data with third-party plugins. Old timers like me will likely remember MapQuest. (Yes, it still exists.) Although MapQuest is another non-google alternative, it’s affiliation with Verizon keeps it from earning full-throated support in the degoogle community.
Alternatives to Android and GooglePlay
The Android operating system that runs nearly every non-Apple smartphone in the world is a Google product. Worse, it ties you to the GooglePlay store, giving the big G intel on every app you download and — anytime you purchase a paid app — a cut of that money.
The obvious solution is to leave one evil empire for an arguably less-evil one, Apple. Yes, you’ll have to buy overpriced hardware and be resigned to living within Apple’s tightly controlled ecosystem. And you’ll still be giving a mega tech corporation your data and money. I also realize that there are many Apple-haters out there for whom this is a nonstarter.
So, what are you supposed to do if you’re committed to degoogling but refuse to join team Apple?
Buy a dumbphone
Believe it or not, flip phones still exist. Not only that, there’s a growing legion of budding luddites (of all ages) who are making the switch to “dumb” phones. For the most part, these phones were seemingly frozen in time 15-20 years ago. There are no apps and no touchscreens. You can make calls, text with the numeric keypad, take low-res pictures and, in some cases, listen to small number of mp3s stored on an SD card.
A dumb phone won’t just get you off of Google, it will help you break free of smartphone addiction altogether. And that’s a beautiful thing. But for me, the existing dumb phones today are just a bit too limiting. Models are also limited, especially in the US. Flip phones available in the US through the big wireless companies are cheaply made, slow, and may have poor audio quality and/or battery life.
In my opinion, the best option right now seems to be the F1 phone from Sunbeam Wireless.
Many others agree that the holy grail of phones would be a small flip or candybar phone that includes a high-quality camera, allows streaming music and live navigation; and runs messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram.
Some startups are trying to address these needs with varying degree of success.
There’s the LightPhone, a credit-card sized, black and white, e-ink phone with a proprietary operating system. It can do most of the aforementioned things, but little else.
The Minimal Phone is a similar e-ink device with the added benefit of a QWERTY keyboard. It looks awesome but, unfortunately, uses the Android OS and GooglePlay app store.
Use F-Droid on an existing Android phone
F-Droid is an “installable catalogue” of free and open source apps for Android. This means you can access 1,000+ apps that provide wide-ranging functionality without patronizing GooglePlay. Unfortunately, some apps that many will consider “mission critical” (e.g. Uber or Spotify) will still require going through GooglePlay.
Alternatives to YouTube
Sigh, YouTube. Of all of the products in Google’s evil empire, YouTube is the one I’m having the hardest time leaving. Although I quit the crack cocaine that is TikTok/Instagram Reels/YouTube Shorts years ago, I still enjoy long-form YouTube videos from my favorite creators. In this anxiety-filled world, I love nothing more than to watch “slow TV”. It might be professional pilots gently guiding an Airbus A380 toward a rain-glazed runway at night, an intrepid Finn sailing 5,000 miles across the Arctic circle, a trucker driving his rig across Alaska, or a guy single-handedly building a modest log cabin in the wilderness.
Never-mind the usefulness of YouTube how-to videos when I need to install a new dishwasher or fix the washing machine.
Alternatives to YouTube come in two forms. There are alternative video-hosting sites, albeit without the same vast library of content. And then there are YouTube “front end” sites that allow you to watch YouTube videos away from the prying eyes of Google’s cookies.
PeerTube, Streamable, and Vimeo are all YouTube alternatives with their own content libraries (Of the three, Vimeo still uses multiple tracking scripts). Invidio.us, NewPiPe, FreeTube are YouTube front-ends for web, Android, and desktop, respectively. On these you can watch YouTube content but with less (read less, not zero) tracking.
For those of you, like me, who aren’t quite ready to unplug YouTube altogether, there’s one thing you can do to make the service far less addicting: Turn off your watch history and recommendations. When you do this, YouTube’s homepage will simply show a blank search bar. This prevents YouTube’s (very good) algorithm from constantly recommended channels and videos it knows will pique your interest and keep you scrolling. Everyone I know who has done it says it’s quite effective at reducing their time spent on the platform.
Conclusion
There are dozens of compelling reasons to get Google out of your life: Privacy, advertising/manipulation, monopolization, censorship, and political influence and corruption are just a few. At the end of the day, Google just has too much power and knows too much about us. That’s a terrifying combination for any entity, let alone a for-profit corporation.
Google has its claws in so many facets of our digital lives that disentangling is no easy task. Go for progress, not perfection. I’ve still got a ways to go. My old GMail address is still live and forwarding to Proton Mail. I still haven’t quit YouTube. And, occasionally, I’m forced to use some Google Apps for my graduate coursework because its what the University uses. But I’ve locked down my privacy settings as tightly as Google will allow, given up Google search, the Chrome Browser, Google Maps, and nearly every other Google app or service. As a result, Google knows a lot less about me and has a harder time earning money off of me.
Each time someone degoogles, they remove a mere drop of water from Google’s ocean of users. It’s easy to think that such actions are insignificant. And, taken alone, they might be. But, from what I have seen, there is a movement brewing. More and more people are waking up to the insanity of just how much of our private lives we have blindly agreed to hand Google on a silver platter. Perhaps, one day, enough people will leave Google that the company begins to feel some pain. Even if not, you can sleep better at night knowing that you’re not supporting — nor sharing intimate information with — one of the most evil entities on the planet today.
Since I sold Money Under 30 in 2018, I sometimes feel like I’ve made one bad professional decision after another. I kept trying to go back down the same road I came from, each time knowing it was less lucrative and more perilous than before.
My business coach used to ask me: “How do you know you know something?”
I struggled with that question for weeks, if not months. Whatever answer I eventually gave her was wrong.
What I now realize is that, for my entire life, I have been making professional decisions with my head, not my heart.
It’s not like I didn’t know how to make decisions with my heart. I gave up careers to follow the love of my life (twice). More times than I can count, I spent irrationally large sums of money on experiences and gifts that my heart knew were worth it.
But two forces were at play:
- A cultural value, instilled since childhood, to succeed at all costs, where success is implicitly defined as the confluence of money and prestige.
- My own financial insecurity, set in motion by my parents’ bankruptcy that permanently devastated their physical and mental health.
Optimizing my professional life for potential financial gain worked spectacularly for a while. Until it didn’t.
Over the past several years I made losing business bets totaling nearly $1 million dollars.
For quite some time, it felt like I would never forgive myself.
But then, I found a remarkable peace in radically and unconditionally accepting everything.
This acceptance gave my heart permission to take the reigns.
And when it did, there was an astounding shift.
Amidst compelling advice (both from trusted others and from within) to, yet again, pursue new money-making ventures, I felt something telling me to take a different path. A visceral, somatic sensation. Not a thought. Not an idea. Not a spreadsheet. This. This is how “I know I know”.
And so, I enrolled in graduate school to become a licensed professional counselor (LCPC).
The roots of my decision have been growing throughout my life.
As a teen, I saw myself entering a helping profession.
In high school, I volunteered as an EMT and loved it. I loved the thrill of racing to an emergency, sure. But mostly I loved having the chance to help. I loved meeting patients and their families on their worst days and begin able to hold their hands and comfort them. In most cases, to tell them that things were going to be OK. In the other cases, to simply let them cry.
Over the last decade, my own therapy has be instrumental in helping me overcome depression, increase my self-worth, be more present with my family, identify and abide by my principles, and stop wasting energy chasing wealth and external validation.
Counseling will draw on my natural strengths of emotional intelligence, communication, and introspection.
Also, I look forward to connecting with other humans one-on-one, something I sorely missed during decades of working behind a laptop.
And of course, there are the very practical benefits of mental health being a high-demand field with the opportunity to work anytime, anyplace and, in private practice, as much or as little as I want.
I am not a fan of social media. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter and the lot:
- Make us feel bad about ourselves.
- Divide us.
- Make it easy to be mean to each other.
- Celebrate materialism.
- Encourage consumption.
- Manipulate our opinions.
- Invade our privacy.
- Leverage our intellectual property for profit.
- Are owned by some of the biggest assholes on the planet.
I could rant for hours about just how awful social media is, on the whole, for the human experience. That said, I admit that social media can:
- Democratize creativity.
- Spread important news quickly.
- Connect distant friends and family.
- Provide a global meeting place for shared-interest groups.
If someone creates a social app that does the good without the bad, I’ll consider joining. Recently, I did, in fact, join Bluesky. If it can replace Twitter/X without, er, becoming Twitter/X, that would be something. But I’m not holding my breath.
I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. I also know it’s one thing to know it’s bad for us and another thing to avoid it completely, especially if your livelihood requires an online presence.
I’ve chosen to be true to my value that these platforms do more harm than good. But I certainly don’t judge anyone who uses them.
Our stuff owns us
The more stuff you have, the more time you spend taking care of your stuff. The less stuff you have, the more time you spend taking care of yourself.
The more stuff you have, the more time you spend taking care of your stuff. The less stuff you have, the more time you spend taking care of yourself.
The iconic quote from the movie Fight Club says it another way:
The things you own end up owning you. It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.
Most of us, I believe, understand that we are not what we own. Anyone who owns a home requiring upkeep or a once-new car that has grown rusty and in constant need of a mechanic understands how possessions become burdens.
But do we comprehend the second truth in these proverbs? That indeed one’s freedom and, perhaps, the very health of one’s soul, depends on owning less, not more?
I’ve always been wary of owning too much. My mother was a bit of a hoarder. My drunken 82-year old father, living in a world of online trysts with predatory sugar babies and OnlyFans models, refuses to part with a house he hasn’t maintained in two decades. The grass grows to his waist and the bricks of the front stoop crumble. He lives between walls riddled with holes where plumbers have patched leaking pipes, but not the sheetrock. Fifty years ago, the house was grand new construction. Today, it’s likely a tear-down, worth nary more than the land beneath it.
Despite all of this, the true dangers of possessing too much are becoming clear only now.
Growing up changes a lot of things. Upon turning 40, the calories add up faster and my body doesn’t bounce back as quickly from tough workouts. But it’s my worldview that’s changing the most.
Until recently, I let myself get caught up in the arms race of consumption. The more successful I became, the more stuff I needed to show for it: A bigger house, a nicer car, designer clothes. I saw through the vapidity of my consumption just as I saw through it in others. Pulling up in a new BMW never impressed me much. If anything, it showcased a poor financial decision. Yet there I went, breaking my own rules and buying such cars myself. As a reward, maybe. Because I enjoy the art of driving, yes. But, if I’m honest with myself, also as a status symbol.
Today, as my own miles tick over, I’m less inclined to buy anything that won’t have a measurable impact on my own happiness. These tend to be vacations with my family and conveniences that free up my time to do other things. Occasionally, I might buy what one can only describe as an adult toy — a guitar or the PC I use for flight simulation. But these are things I use to pass leisure time in a way that I enjoy. There is no other motive.
Anything I purchase will require a place to store it and care and attention (and perhaps further investment) to protect it. And, someday, I will have to rid myself of it. Many things, such as fast fashion clothing and plastic Amazon gizmos will rapidly become so worthless that charities don’t even want them as donations. So they will become garbage, left behind to pollute the Earth for centuries to come.
Sustainability should be a good enough reason to be a mindful consumer. Unfortunately, it’s a poor motivator for such a selfish species as human beings. I watch with a bit of envy the environmental do-gooders who renounce plastic completely, for example. I admire the commitment to filling mason jars with coffee beans and homemade shampoo. But I admit I’m a long way from giving up the convenience of grocery-store packaging.
Selfishly, though, I recognize the tangible personal benefits of curtailing my consumption. Every hour I don’t spend buying or caring for stuff is time back in my life. It’s time play with my children, walk my dogs and talk with my wife. It’s time to travel, exercise, read, write, draw, cook and eat, or just sit in the wind and listen to the birds. It’s time to take care of myself and nurture my soul.
It’s time well-spent, and money well-saved.
Financial planning isn’t the hard part
To plan for uncertainty, we first must accept it.
What a world we live in these days.
There’s inflation, war in Europe, terrifying droughts, floods and fires on account of climate change, and cracks in the foundation of American democracy. All on the back of the worst pandemic in 100 years.
It’s enough to make anyone afraid of what the future may bring. As always, fear sells. There are plenty of people using this opportunity to grow their audiences and profit from the uncertainty.
Even among my friends, I know people publishing treatises on why we’re looking at a “new world order”, “epochal change”, and even “total economic collapse”. Even moderate writers I respect are questioning the “old ways” of investing and financial planning, such as proverbial 60/40 stock and bond portfolio.
Again, fear sells. Behind every doomsday prediction, there’s something for sale.
Is any of it true?
Should you ditch your 60/40 portfolio for a more aggressive allocation? Give up on traditional asset classes like stocks and bonds altogether? Hoard cash and buy gold?
For the most part, no. The hardest part about long-term investing and financial planning isn’t making the plan, it’s sticking to it when times get tough. We are certainly in one of those tough times.
Financial planning is the art of trying to hit a target blowing randomly in the wind. Pinpoint accuracy is impossible. To succeed, you need a diversity of tools and, most importantly, the flexibility to follow your target wherever it goes.
You should try to be prepared for every scenario. But you should base those preparations on the probability of each scenario occurring.
Much of this math is already built into the financial planning advice you get from books, blogs or your financial advisor. It’s the reason mainstream guidelines like the 60/40 portfolio and 4 percent rule exist.
But these models are based on what’s happened in the past. We need to acknowledge the real possibility that things won’t play out over the next 50 years the way they have the past 50 years.
Consequently, we shouldn’t put blind faith in “textbook” advice. In particular, we need to look out for situations that haven’t occurred in recent history. Prior to COVID-19, the last major pandemic was 100 years ago. So much has changed in a century that it’s been nearly impossible to predict all the various pandemic-related effects including supply shortages, inflation and demographic shifts made possible by the increase of remote work arrangements.
The pandemic didn’t meet the criteria of a Black Swan event because it was predictable. A pandemics is a rare, but inevitable, occurrence. A true Black Swan event is something nobody sees coming. Trying to foresee a Black Swan event is an effort in futility. Instead, turn your attention to the ways we know the world is entering uncharted territory.
Political unrest and wars have always been a part of the human experience. Climate change and artificial intelligence, on the other hand, will be major forces shaping future generations. What might that mean?
At the end of the day, the best thing we can all do is become comfortable with change and uncertainty. Nothing is certain. Nothing lasts.
Doomsday prophets are just trying to take advantage of our fear around these inevitable. Are we in a period of “epochal change”? Probably, but such a change will take decades. Without the guidance of hindsight, who can know when a change began and when it will end? Even historians debate such things hundreds of years after the fact!
Your financial plan needs to be flexible. If the path you are on starts looking like a dead end, it’s time to change course. Just remember that every path has twists and turns. Only after you’ve been on the path for decades do you realize it’s been heading in the right direction the whole time. Don’t scrap your plan just because the path took a sudden, unexpected zag. If you do so at every turn, you’ll go in circles and make no progress at all.