There are a lot of things wealth is good for, but one of the most underrated benefits is being able to buy peace and quiet. As I was sitting in the hot tub with my two children at Everline Resort in Lake Tahoe, I couldn’t help but feel a little frazzled by all the noise.
There was a group of five senior citizens talking at the top of their lungs, almost like they were screaming. Then there were six kids jumping into the hot tub and splashing around. And of course, my own two kids were doing their thing as well.
Instead of enjoying a relaxing soak after a morning of snowboarding, I was dodging snowballs and cannonball splashes. Ah, if only I had a spare $7 million to buy a single-family vacation home in Palisades Tahoe with its own private hot tub, my favorite luxury expense. Then I could relax in peace.
As a writer, maybe I’m overly sensitive to noise and commotion given I’ve needed silence to write for the past 17 years. Or maybe I’m onto something, and there is a correlation between wealth and the desire for peace and quiet. Let me explore.
Going From Noisy Homes To Quieter Ones
I think the desire for peace and quiet increases the older you get. Looking back at my entire housing history, it’s a fascinating progression where noise levels have decreased with nearly every single move.
45 Wall Street, Downtown Manhattan – Rented a studio apartment
My first rental was a studio apartment I shared with a high school classmate. About every 10 to 15 minutes, I could hear the rumble of the 4/5 train along with the constant buzz of Midtown Manhattan. But since I was working ~70 hours a week, I was never home. And when I did get home, I was so exhausted that the noise barely registered.
The Edge of Chinatown / Nob Hill, San Francisco – Rented a shared 2 bedroom apartment
After getting promoted to Associate and landing a new job at Credit Suisse in 2001, I rented a room in a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment for about $1,600 a month split two ways. It was close to work and affordable. It was also relentlessly noisy.
Garbage trucks beeped incessantly two or three times a week at 4 or 5 AM. One roommate seemed to talk to himself loudly in the living room and bang things in his room at all hours. There was never much peace and quiet.
Cow Hollow, San Francisco – Rented a one bedroom apartment
After a year and a half, my girlfriend and I got our own place, a one bedroom, one bathroom apartment in a two unit Edwardian building. It finally felt like somewhere I could call home. Until I discovered the long time neighbor upstairs was a drunk who thumped bass heavy music until 3 AM a couple of nights a week.
When it was time to take out the recycling bin, it was routinely stuffed with 50 to 70 empty beer cans. I was paying $1,900 a month in rent and still couldn’t find the peace and quiet I desperately wanted after a long day at work. $2,000 a month was my limit on what I felt good about paying in rent, so I finally decided to buy.
Pacific Heights, San Francisco – Purchased a two bedroom, two bathroom condo
In 2003, I stumbled across a two bedroom, two bathroom condo overlooking Lafayette Park. The asking price was $580,000, remarkable value at the time, given that a comparable park facing condo in Manhattan would have cost at least twice that.
After buying it, I finally experienced the peace and quiet I had been longing for. The two-story condo above was owned by a retired woman whose bedroom was on the top floor. The condo below was occupied by another older woman. We shared no side walls with anyone. It was a fantastic unit that I still own today as a rental.
The Neighborhood Matters, But So Does The Street
After the Pacific Heights experience, I learned that buying property in a more expensive neighborhood provided more quiet. My neighbors who owned their condos were respectful. They followed the rules. They cared about noise ordinances and HOA by-laws.
When you have skin in the game, you naturally become a better steward of your environment. The same dynamic plays out with equity compensation at your employer. Instead of walking by the trash on the floor, you tend to pick it up.
But it’s not just the neighborhood. The specific street matters enormously. The first single family home I bought in 2005 was in a nice neighborhood, but it sat on a busy street adjacent to one of the most trafficked corridors in San Francisco.
We eventually adapted to the white noise and added soundproof windows. But there was a stretch of nine months where a manhole cover outside the house rattled constantly, no matter how many times we called 311. We eventually sold it because it was too much of a hassle to manage a revolving door of five roommates.
Crime Don’t Climb
It was only after buying our fixer upper in the Golden Gate Heights neighborhood in 2014 that we found real peace and quiet again. Perched on a hill with panoramic ocean views, the neighborhood was also about 45% cheaper than Pacific Heights, so you don’t always have to pay more for more silence.
That’s when I realized just how valuable a view is for your mental health. Staring at another building all day simply isn’t the same as looking out at the Pacific Ocean.
Further, because we were on a hill, there was much less foot and car traffic overall. With fewer people roaming around, there’s less crime as well. The green circle below is on the western side of San Francisco with more hills.
Peace and quiet are also synonymous with greater privacy and safety. If you have children, these factors become even more important.
The Older You Get, The More Silence Is Worth
Now that I’m approaching 50, living on a quiet street in a cozy home with respectful neighbors matters more to me than ever. The only noise I regularly hear now is the occasional Amazon driver blasting his bass from his van.
I’d pay a meaningful premium for a home on a quiet street with a large lot that creates a natural buffer from neighbors. You can just sense the difference in calmness when homes are spread farther apart than when they are jammed together like row houses.
I’d also pay up for mature landscaping, trees surrounding the property, hedges in the front yard that provide privacy, and the feeling of being tucked away from the world.
Forest Bathing To Reduce Stress
If there’s one thing I did not fully appreciate when I was young, it was the power of nature to make you feel better about where you live. The Japanese term is Shinrin-yoku (森林浴), or “forest bathing,” a wellness practice centered on stress reduction and mental health. Anybody who has gone for a walk in the woods can attest to its healing power.
Below is a fascinating satellite map of Atherton, California, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country, with a median sale price of $14.8 million in March 2026. As you can see, the tree density is far greater in Atherton than in neighboring towns.
The ultra-wealthy understand the healing value of nature. So you might as well follow suit. Plant more trees if you can. We planted four in San Francisco through the Friends of the Urban Forest. They’ve now grown up and have softened the sidewalks for all who walk by.
Tips For Buying A Quieter Home Before You’re Wealthy
If you need to think for a living, you need silence to do it well. And if you need to recover from a long day’s manual work, that quiet is worth far more than most people realize.
Wealth helps, but it’s not the only lever you can pull. Here are concrete steps you can take at any stage of your financial journey to get more silence in your life.
1. Noise test before you sign anything.
Before renting or buying a home, visit at different times of day, a weekday morning, a Friday night, a Sunday afternoon. Sit in the space for 30 minutes at different times and just listen. What do you hear? You are not just buying square footage. You are buying a sound environment. Most people skip this step entirely.
2. Research the street, not just the neighborhood.
Living in any neighborhood with the word “forest” in its name is one hint it will likely be peaceful, but you never really known until you get there in person.
Use Google Maps Street View to check proximity to bus stops, garbage collection zones, firehouses, bars, and major intersections. A home two blocks inside a quiet neighborhood can be dramatically more peaceful than one on the corner of the main road and priced lower to boot. That pricing gap is your opportunity.
Be careful about the allure of living next to a park with facilities like a playground, tennis courts, pickleball courts, and more. It’s certainly convenient, but the noise level and parking issues can get intense.
3. Reconsider living in a highly walkable neighborhood
One of the greatest ironies I see as an investor and FIRE proponent is that homebuyers will bid more aggressively for homes close to shops, restaurants, bars, and Muni stations. Convenience matters greatly, especially for those who need to commute downtown to work under fluorescent lights every weekday. But the more you pay for these convenient homes, the more you have to grind at work to afford them, which runs against the FIRE philosophy.
If you crave peace and quiet, reconsider living in a highly walkable neighborhood. The easier it is for you to walk to shops, restaurants, and bars, the easier it is for other people to walk to your home. And the more people who can walk to your home, the more disturbances there will likely be.
I still remember, sadly, being woken up at 2:30 a.m. by a loud crashing sound in front of my house in The Marina district. I had spent hundreds of dollars and hours planting shrubs in two large clay pots outside my home on the sidewalk. Some random drunk guys coming home from the bars on Union Street, San Francisco had smashed them.
4. Prioritize owner occupied buildings and streets.
When evaluating apartments or condos, ask what percentage of units are owner-occupied. A building that is 80% owner-occupied will almost always be quieter and better maintained than one that is 80% rentals. It is not a guarantee, but it is a reliable signal. The same logic applies to single-family home neighborhoods.
I have been a landlord for 21 years. During that time, I’ve had to deal with parties, noise complaints, broken faucets, chipped countertops, holes in walls, late payments, overgrown lawns, accidents, you name it. It is natural to care less about a property or your neighbors when you rent, which is one of the main reasons I sold my previous home last year.
5. Invest in targeted soundproofing early.
You don’t need to spend tens of thousands. Soundproof curtains, door draft stoppers, white noise machines, carpets, and acoustic panels on shared walls can dramatically change how a space feels.
I added soundproof windows to our home on the busy street and the relief was immediate. The extra window behind the main window reduced noise by roughly 50%. Treat it as a health investment, not a home improvement project.
6. Assign a dollar value to peace and quiet.
Here’s a mental exercise I use: if a quieter home costs $200 more per month in rent, but it means you sleep better, think more clearly, and recover faster, what is that actually worth to you? If you earn $50 an hour, two extra productive hours a week is worth $400 a month. Suddenly, the quieter apartment is the better financial decision. Run the math. Most people never do with regards to noise.
7. Build wealth so location becomes a choice, not a constraint.
Every dollar you save and invest is expanding your future menu of options. Always think in two timelines if you want to build more wealth. The goal isn’t just to accumulate money. It’s to accumulate freedom. And one of the finest expressions of that freedom is choosing exactly how much noise you’re willing to tolerate for the rest of your life.
Silence Is Good For Your Health
There is actual science behind why noise wears you down. Researchers at the World Health Organization have found that chronic noise exposure is linked to elevated cortisol levels, higher rates of cardiovascular disease, and disrupted sleep.
A landmark study published in the European Heart Journal found that long term exposure to traffic noise alone was associated with a meaningfully higher risk of heart attack.
And a fascinating study by neuroscientist Imke Kirste found that just two hours of silence per day prompted new cell growth in the hippocampus, the region of the brain associated with memory and learning. Silence, it turns out, is not just pleasant. It is regenerative.
None of this is to say that you need a mansion on a private road to live a healthy and happy life. Plenty of people find deep contentment in busy cities and loud neighborhoods.
Community, culture, and connection matter enormously too, and many of the liveliest neighborhoods in the world are also the most joyful. This isn’t about class. It’s about awareness.
Don’t Take Your Peace And Quiet For Granted
Most of us never stop to think about how much the noise around us is costing us. Not just in productivity or sleep, but in our long-term health and sense of calm. Once you start paying attention, it becomes hard to ignore. It is kind of like getting a TOTO Washlet. Once you experience it, you never want to go back.
As you build wealth over time, let peace and quiet be one of the rewards you allow yourself. There is a profound pleasure in coming home to stillness, hearing your own thoughts, and finally being able to breathe.
Many of the best things in life are free. But sometimes, the quietest ones are worth saving for.
Have you found your tolerance for noise going down as you get older? Why do you think some people feel the need to blare their music and throw parties well past the noise ordinance? Have you used your wealth to buy more peace and quiet, and if so, was it worth it? And when someone around you is simply being too loud, how do you handle it without creating bad blood?
Invest for More Peace and Quiet
One of the best uses of wealth is optionality, including the ability to live in a quieter, safer, and more peaceful environment. If you’re building toward financial freedom, it may be worth diversifying beyond stocks and bonds into real estate as well.
Consider Fundrise, a platform that allows you to invest 100% passively in residential and industrial real estate. With over $3.5 billion in private real estate assets under management, Fundrise focuses on properties in the Sunbelt region, where valuations are generally lower and yields tend to be higher.
The more income-producing assets you build, the more choices you may have in the future about where and how you live. Fundrise is a long-time sponsor of Financial Samurai and I’m an investor in Fundrise products.
