At 20 years old, I read a book that split my understanding of money in two.

Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad is built around a simple contrast.

His own father, "Poor Dad", was highly educated, worked hard, climbed the career ladder, and always struggled with money.

His best friend's father, "Rich Dad", had little formal education but understood something about money that schools never teach.

The difference wasn't income. It was what each man did with it.

Poor Dad worked for money. Rich Dad made money work for him.

From there the book introduces one deceptively simple idea: the rich accumulate assets, everyone else accumulates liabilities.

An asset puts money in your pocket every month. A liability takes money out.

Most people spend their lives buying liabilities, clothes, cars, TVs, and call it wealth.

The most provocative example: your own home.

Most people think of it as their biggest asset. Kiyosaki calls it a liability.

It costs you money every month without generating income. But rent it to someone else and the same property becomes an asset.

The book doesn't teach you how to invest. It teaches you to see money differently.

And once you see it, you can't unsee it.

For the first time in my life, the financial world began to make sense. And I immediately did what I always do when something clicks.

I told everyone who'd listen

I've always been the type who wants to share what he learns.

So I immediately started telling everyone about assets versus liabilities and what a game-changer this was.

The jaded older adults weren't too intrigued.

I wasn't discouraged.

I read the rest of the Rich Dad series, 12 books borrowed from the local library. Then I moved on to Donald Trump's books from when he was "just a real estate developer": Art of the Deal, Think Big and Kick Ass, and many more.

This made me consider becoming a construction engineer and developing my own real estate one day.

I even took a job working as a carpenter at a mall renovation to feel what it would actually be like.

My older cousin had already become a construction engineer. And my mother had used an inheritance from her parents to buy an apartment five minutes from our house that she rented out.

This showed me in practice how it could work. My own mother had done it. She later bought a time-share on an island.

When I came into my 20s she was buying another apartment and renting her house to a diplomat family.

The dream felt real. Achievable. Almost inevitable.

What real estate investing actually looked like up close

While the apartment my mother rented out was only five minutes from home, renting it out meant she was always on call.

A clogged toilet. A broken dishwasher. Requests for different furniture.

Always watching to make sure tenants paid their rent. And when one left, scrambling to quickly find a new one who wouldn't stop paying or cause problems with the neighbors and the homeowners association.

A lot of work on top of her already full schedule as a single mother with a 9-to-5.

But for her, it was worth it.

As a state employee with no other way to realistically raise her income, real estate gave her options she wouldn't otherwise have had.

The rented apartment secured a place for her son to live when he came of age, so we could stay close even as I entered my 20s. Locking money into property also protected it from lifestyle creep in a way that cash in an account never would.

Real estate was the right vehicle for her situation.

But I watched it closely enough to see the full cost.

The comparison that changed everything

My brother, twelve years older than me, had chosen a different path.

He'd invested a portion of his take-home income into stocks and funds for at least a decade. Then one day he simply decided to take a year off and live on his investments.

That's when those numbers on a screen turned into something tangible.

I kept commuting. He could do whatever he wanted.

The contrast was impossible to ignore:

My brother could take a year off. My mother had to be always on call.

My brother's money was liquid, easily converted to cash within a day or two. My mother's was locked in an apartment that would take six months to a year to sell, with significant work involved.

My brother's money was global. He could move anywhere he wanted. My mother's was tied to a geography and a set of responsibilities that moved with her whether she wanted them to or not.

The lesson I took from 21 years of watching my mother: real estate is a powerful vehicle, but it comes with a second job attached.

Most people don't price that second job into their decision.

Why index funds won

I want the same financial density my mother built, but without the phone calls, the renovations, the tenants, and the illiquidity.

Simpler. More portable. More compatible with the life I actually want to live.

But I understand the hesitation.

My wife felt the same way. Paper assets feel abstract. Numbers on a screen. A house you can touch, walk through, and show to people feels real in a way that a global index fund simply doesn't.

So here's what I remind myself when that feeling creeps in:

When you own units of a global index fund, you don't own numbers on a screen.

You own a small share of over 1,000 of the world's major businesses. The factories those companies run. The buildings they occupy. The machines they operate. The intellectual property they've spent decades building.

That doesn't disappear because the market gets hysterical for a while.

The price fluctuates. The underlying reality is much more permanent.

Now, why index funds rather than picking individual stocks?

Because picking the right stocks at the right time is essentially gambling.

And here's the data that settled it for me: over any 20-year period, roughly 95% of actively managed funds, run by professional fund managers with research teams, Bloomberg terminals, and decades of experience, still underperform a simple global index fund after fees.

If they can't beat it consistently, the idea that I'll do better picking stocks between commutes and bedtime routines is simply silly.

So with index funds there's no stock picking, no timing the market, no watching charts.

Month by month I own a slightly bigger piece of those 1,000+ businesses on earth. When the world economy grows, I grow with it. When it dips, I stay in and buy more at a discount.

The vehicle has to match the destination

Real estate isn't wrong.

It's right for certain people in certain situations, like the one my mother was in. It served her well and I'm grateful for what it made possible for our family.

But the vehicle has to match the destination.

My mother needed something local, tangible, and locked away from lifestyle creep. Real estate was perfect for that.

I need something portable, liquid, and invisible, something that grows quietly in the background while I build something that actually excites me, from wherever I happen to be in the world.

And here's what most people miss when they compare real estate to index funds: it's not just about the returns.

Every hour my mother spent managing tenants, chasing rent, and coordinating repairs was an hour she wasn't building something else. The opportunity cost of a second job is another job.

The time I'm not unclogging someone else's toilet is time I'm spending building a business that generates its own income. That income goes into the index fund. The index fund compounds. The business compounds. Both loops run simultaneously.

Real estate can make you wealthy. But for someone building an online business with the goal of eventually working from anywhere in the world, the math only works if you protect your most limited resource: time and attention.

Ask yourself honestly: is the investment vehicle you're drawn to actually compatible with the life you want to live, or just the one that sounds most impressive at a dinner party?

My mother chose the vehicle that matched her life.

I'm choosing the one that matches mine.
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See you next week.

Warmly,

Bjorn