You know those days when you just… don't?
You don't move farther than the couch, the fridge, or the front door to get your meal delivery order.
You don't talk to anyone unless it's on the phone, through your phone, or it's the deliverista at your door.
There's a name for that: 'bed rotting'. Gen Z popularised it on TikTok in 2023, when everything was starting to become a bit much. It's recently reached peak interest.
Some people say bed rotting is lazy and indulgent; others say it's necessary self-care.
We say: bed rotting can teach us about being good long-term investors.
Here's how.
Jump to it
- The Joy of Missing Out
- The best investors do nothing
- You don't know me
- Tomorrow's another day
- Having a day in bed? Excellent
The Joy of Missing Out
FOMO can drive some of our worst impulses, especially as investors. We act on stock tips we regret; invest in things we don't understand; assume everyone else knows something we don't; and take risks we can't really cover.
We basically feel like if we're not doing what everyone else is doing, we're doing it wrong.
The Joy of Missing Out, or JOMO, is a bit different.
It says that generally, as humans we maintain a pretty standard level of happiness, no matter how many new things we acquire.
Gaining 'more' doesn't make the difference we think it will, but 'less' can more than make up for it. It can give us Joy.
When we listen to our own inner voices instead of others', we're likely to feel less overwhelmed, unnatural, or unproductive – and make better investment decisions.
We can stick to our own plans instead of others' whims.
And if those plans include Season 5 of Only Murders In The Building, or dollar-cost-averaging into a managed fund while everyone else is losing their minds to crypto, so much the better.
The best investors do nothing
There's a book we love at Spaceship called The Psychology of Money written by a financial writer named Morgan Housel. Sometimes we share pieces from his blog in our Spaceship app newsfeed.
Housel says, "For most investors, 99 percent of good investing is doing nothing."
The other one percent? "How you behave when the world is going crazy."
So much of the world wants our attention: tuning it out to separate the signal from the noise is a superpower.
At Spaceship, we invest in the companies that inspire and excite us. But we tune out the noise by thinking long-term, and diving into macro trends, rather than jumping at every surface level news event.
Think longreads instead of newsfeeds, taking naps instead of doomscrolling, or logging out instead of panic selling.
You don't know me
It doesn't always feel very good to answer someone's, "What did you do on the weekend?" with a, "Stayed home, did some chores."
But everybody's got different timeframes, strategies, goals, bank balances, liabilities, assets, families, values and incentives, not to mention health. We're all people, but we're individuals, too.
And when you put us all together, we're what make up the stock market – and even if you don't think you're an active investor, you've probably still got a super fund, so you're still playing a role in it.
This is why listening to others can give you perspective, and you can certainly learn from their mistakes, but they can't give you failsafe strategies.
You have to think about who you are, what you want out of life, and how you want to get there, to make your plan that you want to stick to.
Remember, the only people who can give you professional financial advice are those who know your personal circumstances and are accredited to, such as financial planners and accountants.
So the only one who can judge you for having a day under the covers, or your investment portfolio on whether it meets your needs, is you.
Tomorrow's another day
It can feel slow at the start, but forming a long-term investing habit is genuinely life changing.
I love the story of Anne Schreiber, who worked her whole life for a salary of no more than $4,000 per year, retired in 1944, and was never promoted.
Nonetheless, thanks to long-term investing, when she passed away at 101 her fortune had grown to $22 million, and she donated it to colleges to start scholarships for women, living a life on her own terms such that nobody really knew of her until that point.
Writer Ryan Holiday says that, "Most successful people are people you've never heard of. They want it that way. It keeps them sober. It helps them do their jobs."
You truly can live a life on your own terms, and face the world your way. Long-term investing can help you build the fortune that backs you up.
And inaction can just be another word for persistence. Sometimes the smartest move is to not make any moves at all.
Having a day in bed? Excellent
You can still build wealth from under the covers, and keep your investing on track while you have a pit stop.
The Spaceship Voyager portfolios are one option you have for long-term investing that works hard on your rest days. You can invest as often as you like, with as little as you like, and learn as you go.
