Three box carts in one

Once upon a time, a fire broke out in a rich man's house. The father's children were inside of the burning building, absorbed in their play toys. No matter how hard he tried to call them out, they did not listen as they were too engrossed in their games.

Luckily though, the father had a brilliant idea, so he yelled: "Kids! There's something I want to show you outside, carts!"

The kids' ears perked up. Knowing how fond his kids were for cool things, his father continued: "They're not just any carts though, they're very rare ones with goats, deer and oxen to pull them!"

All of his kids stopped playing and went outside to see these new toys. As they ran out, the house did this hollywood special effects explosion thing.

Once outside, they looked around but couldn't see any carts. "There's no carts dad, where are they?"

With a twinkle in his eye, the dad said: "Oh, but I have something much more special!"

Behold, the great white ox cart. It was a magnificent chariot, pulled by a strong white ox, More luxurious, bigger and better than what the kids imagined.

"Now isn't this much better?"

The above story was adapted from the Lotus Sutra, literally the final teachings laid down by the Buddha. Just saying, this will all probably be somewhat of an advanced lesson. Heck, I'm not sure if I'm qualified to write this down, but let's continue anyway.

Fair warning, I don't do stepping stones, this is more akin to a catapult. I am assuming that you want to transcend into some alternate dimension. Please feel free to be confused. Definitely leave confused, but please resolve that confusion.

Perhaps this joke will set the scene:

Students taking a Philosophy test were asked to use all the knowledge they've learnt to prove one thing: "Why does the chair in front of the room not exist?" While many students took the time to scribble down their theories, one student simply wrote: "What chair?"

When I'm grading assignments from undergraduate students, there are always:

• Bad answers
• Good answers
• Brilliant answers

Rarely though, do you get a "What chair?"-type answer. Maybe it's because the questions posed do not allow for that element of Zen/Chan-fulness. Or perhaps it's because the system I'm in doesn't reward this sort of ingenuity (gotta follow the guidelines right?).

In life, we are usually just given the ordinary goat, deer and ox carts to pull us through. Technically, there is a religious definition on what each of these carts actually mean, but then again, you're better off not getting stuck in those definitions.

The three boxes of life

Ok ok, maybe I will use an analogy. In his book "The Three Boxes of Life", Richard Bolles breaks down the normal way we think of our so called career. Usually we think of it as a progression from study to work and finally retirement.

Maybe though, we're better off stacking these boxes on top of one another. Lifelong study, lifelong work, lifelong leisure.

The book was originally written in 1981, imagine that! I was introduced to it a few days ago at a meetup on Wednesday night that was discussing the future of education/work. To me, the three box concept itself wasn't as mindblowing as the diagram. It was so utterly simple, and yet brilliantly to the point!

There is a Chinese saying: "活到老学到老" that literally translates to "live to an old age, learn to an old age." But who says we can't work if we're a kid or a retiree? Why too should we have to wait until retirement to relax fully?

Everyday, don't we all have to learn as we need to, earn money to survive, and rest when we're tired?

More profoundly is how it relates to the story in the Lotus Sutra as preached by the Buddha thousands of years ago. The progression from a goat cart to a deer cart to an ox cart is purely arbitrary, just like the step-by-step three boxes of life. Put them together and you get one box, the white ox cart. Basically the perfect vehicle that will get us to where we will end up being.

Fundamentally, there is no sudden step when you go from one box to another, no pop up that says "Level up!". With that said, I'll touch base on how this applies to our education system, personal finance, and maybe broader existential questions.

Educating the masses

During that meetup I mentioned above, the guy who gave the main presentation was a forward looking man from the Ministry of Education. Practically every word that came out reminded me of the few old wise teachers I had before. It is not often that you hear a ministry official giving a talk called 'Transforming Education for the Digital Age'. The timeline for this was thirty years into the future, roughly the year 2050!

Having just gone through a full day tutoring two classes and sandwiching some grading in between, I was all ears. Like what's the next step really? Can we stop with the paper grading, have assignments all done online, graded by bots, and be done with it?

It turns out we still have a lot to do.

New Zealand does score highly amongst the OECD average for reading, mathematical and scientific literacy in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). However, there is a long "tail" of school underachievers as noted in this 2013 OECD report. Part of the meetup was to brainstorm ideas on how technology (machine learning in particular) can lift all facets of society up. A few people in our meetup group actually had Dyslexia for example, and that was our case study I guess.

Sadly, education in the early 21st Century still looks like this:

In fact, it's been this way for a long time. This is the education system which every one of us in the room was acquainted with. Most of us went through that system, and if not, they still know how standard this structure is across most of the world.

Inherently, we have a bias problem. How so? Well, the future of education isn't us, it is the children.

Because we have a piece of paper somewhere that shows our qualification level, some part of us deep down still thinks that that piece of paper is what counts as proof of our education. To move through the system, you need to earn that piece of paper from some institution, and transfer it to another, and another, right up until you graduate.

Maybe it's too much to ask. Resolving accessibility issues and helping underprivilleged students has a nice ring to it, and yes they are important. Yet at the end of the day, are we just finding a way to give these students a piece of paper, an electronic record, or some blockchain proof that they have passed so and so exams? Or are we truly educating them with the life skills that they need in tomorrow's society?

A thought occured to me that night when someone mentioned how parents nowadays just throw their kids to school thinking the teachers will handle their kids education. Sure, some parents do play a more active role in educating their kids, but it occured to me how we are becoming so reliant on educational institutions for education. So much so that you could call schools "Education as a Service".

I'm afraid that taking this to the extreme might just turn schools into one big app someday.

The thing I'm trying to get at is this. Students should not be treated as consumers of some "Education as a Service" app. In fact, there shouldn't be any clear cut distinction between a teacher and student. If lifelong learning is the goal, then everyone is learning always, and everyone will also be a teacher.

Maybe let that sink in for a bit.

Budgets and Investments

Onto personal finance. I'll start with one of the 'basics'. Budgeting.

Usually we'll start off with no budget, which is fine when you're young and without a care in the world. Once you start earning money though, not having a budget can be a dangerous thing, especially if you happen to have access to credit.

So you'll have people that swear by budgeting as a way to live within their means. Every dollar has its place, be it for fixed costs like housing and bills, or discretionary spending like food and entertainment.

Others then level up and do this thing called an unbudget. Basically setting a spending limit of $0 (after fixed costs). I'd like to say I'm an unbudget person, but on occasion it feels more like I'm more of a no-budget person!

A budget is a form of control. Yet we live in an uncontrollable world.

In reality, you'll need to find a way to combine all three! Put it this way, budget for fixed costs, unbudget (get as close to $0 as possible) for things like food and entertainment, and put no-budget for family emergencies or the like. With that said, do have an emergency fund in place.

Taking a step by step approach to managing your money is probably the best way for most people. Don't feel that you need to do it in sequence if you know what you're doing. That said, it is your money, you're in charge.

Onto investments.

Always start with an emergency fund, I won't say how much, that's up to you. Next is a tax advantaged account, which varies with countries. In New Zealand, we call it Kiwisaver. In Malaysia, it's called an EPF.

Basically a tax advantaged account gets you the most bang for your buck. In some cases, your employer and the government will match your contributions to a degree. If you live in a country without one, lucky you! Pass go and collect $200!

See, you could throw all of your unspent money into a savings account, or Kiwisaver. But the interest rates might not be much more than inflation, or you can't access the money until the legal retirement age. Therefore, catapult yourself into the ox cart as soon as possible. Read up on how to invest into some cheap index fund, perhaps in a geographically diversified way.

Usually someone starting out will follow these in sequence, but that's not the case for everyone! With hindsight, it should all run in parallel, but most people won't know until they've gone past that stage. Again, I'm repeating myself here, but there's no reason you have to take it step by step if you already have the hang of it (read: experience). If you have a relatively stable income and some degree of insurance, you could feed into all three at the same time.

For example, my emergency fund was depleted after spending it on plane tickets to attend a funeral. I'm slowly rebuilding it as I speak, but I'm still funding my Kiwisaver (it's automatic) and dollar cost averaging into investment funds. I'm okay with a half full emergency fund because I have a regular university stipend, part-time jobs, and could sell a few of my shares in a few days if need be.

At the end of the day, what matters is that the work we put in doesn't get wasted. An emergency fund is there to stop us from going into serious debt from emergencies, Kiwisaver et al. is a good starting point for most people, and personal investments which tend to be riskier help us get to our financial goals quicker! We could argue over the inner mechanics, but basically, it's just savings towards a goal.

What next oh non-existent chair?

I would like to think that we're all in the same boat. In fact, we are. Don't think otherwise.

It may not feel like we've reached the "Future of Work" yet. Maybe lifelong study is still up there in virtue space rather than something down to earth we apply everyday. Retirement can seem like something too long away to care about.

The FIRE movement I keep writing about is merely a hack to get to that 3 parallel box shape before the future of education/work/leisure arrives for the masses. But once it arrives, FIRE is no longer necessary.

It is not that you can't use a cart either, use it if you want, there's nothing wrong with that. We all need a vehicle to get us somewhere from A to B be it a bicycle, car or plane.

I was in Alaska three months ago, and apparently over there, it was possible to fly a plane before driving! It sort of blew my mind back then, but it does make sense. A lot of people probably drive without knowing how to ride a bicycle. So why shouldn't it be possible to fly a plane, or even a rocket, without learning how to drive! The air is crisp up there, there is more freedom, and it is a rather different way of getting from A to B.

The lesson here is on non-attachment to the boxes or carts that get us to our destination. The differences we see are like the colours of the rainbow split by a prism from white light. Is it many colours, or merely just one? Arguably, even this white light analogy needs to be discarded at some point.

Fundamentally, there is neither many answers, one answer, nor no answer at all. You are not asking to right question, and therefore the existence or non-existence of an answer is irrelevant.

If you don't understand what I'm saying, you're in the sheep cart.

If you understand what I'm saying, you're in the deer cart.

If you see and don't see what I'm saying, get and don't get what I'm saying, you're in the ox cart.

If however, you do not see yourself listening to what I'm saying even as you read these words out, then you are indeed in the great white ox cart.