Why suing Amara and earning credit card miles is of the same limiting mindset

I have just taken over my (now) beautiful new house from Amara, the property developer. It’s amazing for the most part, but also very broken in some areas, which Amara is refusing to rectify. I had already spent a few months chasing them regarding a very expensive house. And now I am spending so much time in anguish trying to get them to rectify defects, but they have opted to ghost me for the most part. So I called my real estate lawyers from Drew & Napier with the intent to file civil proceedings against Amara.

In another story, I know of at least three individuals who are fervent miles collectors. They have multiple credit cards, each used for different intents in their life. For example, a card for dining, another card for groceries, tax payments, etc. You get the picture. And from time to time, they would flex their business class travels. And for some time, it ate me up. I was asked why I didn’t optimize my spending, especially since I had quite a fair bit of it, particularly if you include my corporate spend—all of which was made on my single debit card. And for a long time, I resisted it. I wanted the business class travels, but I could never get into the game of micro-optimizing my spending on multiple credit cards. I simply did not have the headroom for it.

The Zero-sum Mindset

There is a common thread tying both of these stories together. In both of these stories, I was tempted to give in to salvaging as much benefit as I could out of the status quo. But in both cases, I always eventually gave up on being the scrooge because there was a better way.

With Amara, which is still an ongoing story, I have simply decided that the costs to fix those issues would be <$50,000. And I was expending patience and my time during business hours, and a good portion of my mental health trying to fight a stubborn bunch of unprofessional property developers. Civil proceedings would cost a lot more than the amount to recoup. So as of now, the decision is to ignore them and pay for the costs on my own, and recoup at least $20,000 of it through a claim via the small claims court. Because Amara would then be coerced to respond and properly fix things.

In the case of business class travels, I found it way easier to pay for it out of my own pocket for two reasons.

1. Business class flights available for redemption via miles are extremely limited. Miles redemption is its own game, separate from trying to win the miles collection game.
2. My time is worth a lot more than the value I get out of miles.

That said, I started collecting miles by getting a lifestyle card, although at poor rates. But hey, at least I don’t spend my headspace trying to optimize for the maximum amount of miles I can collect.

For most people, they are stuck in a rat race because they are stuck in the zero-sum mindset. They feel that because they earn $X and it is so hard to earn $X+Y (where Y is the increment they need for a promotion), they therefore have to make the most out of whatever they earn or what they feel they rightly deserve. And they are not wrong. I 100% believe that Amara should be rectifying the defects that my house came with.

But, such a zero-sum mindset will lead to a zero-sum life.

Limited Mental Cycles

You see, we are nothing more than mortal animals with a big brain. Our energy is limited, as are our mental cycles and life span. I only have a few hours a day in which I am productive. I can either spend my mental cycles considering stupid things like how much more money to save, or working on things that have compounding growth, like businesses. And the right answer is almost always to spend time on things that have a growth trajectory that compounds. My point is, it is much much easier to make more money than to save money. Because there is an infinite amount of money you can earn, but only a limited amount of money to save.

Which is why I never try to save money. What I do instead is to make sure that my growth in monthly expenses does not surpass my rate of growth of income/revenue. I live the abundance mindset.

The Abundance Mindset

Adopting the abundance mindset means rejecting a life that is zero-sum by nature. And controversially, for most people, being an employee leads to a zero-sum outcome because your income is naturally limited by your hours and your boss. You are spending most (if not all) of your productive hours every work day for someone (like me) to grow their money generating (business) machine. While I’m not strictly against anyone being an employee (because it would be hypocritical of me, since I have historically hired so many), do consider being an employee as a stepping stone to eventually being an entrepreneur.

An abundance mindset means spending your limited timespan on things that compound in growth. And I promise you that if you live by the abundance mindset, sprinkle it with some luck, diligence, and intellect, you will never be poor.

I didn’t use to think this. But I don’t think I will ever be poor again in my life, like how I used to be growing up. And one of the key reasons is because I live and breathe the abundance mindset. And you should too, even if you are not motivated by money, because it is so much a better way to live life.