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. Maybe in the next life.
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’s 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.
Agree. Older I have gotten, more I really appreciate serenity. The house I have now is along a somewhat busy road, it really only wakes me up from bed in the dawn hours, but at one time I thought after buying the house, oh no, what have I done. It has gotten better, but I’ve always yearned for more peace and quiet. So finally after many years, I finally bought a 23 acre farm with great views of a nice pond, no noise, and neighbors far away. I will renovate this farm house and move in a year or two, once my last child out of school, farm is in a different school district. So, in summary, what Sam writes might be one of the most important things in getting a home, buy peace and quiet above all else, everything else can be changed.
The worst part of the last apartment I lived in was that the fire alarm would go off 1-3 times a year because of someone’s cooking incident. Then we all had to muster outside and wait for the fire department to clear the alarm. One neighbor on my floor actually started a fire during his move in when he put a cardboard box on his electric stove and bumped it on. Fortunately it did not damage my room.
A house is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get….even if you surveil a neighborhood before buying. My advice is to give up on the luxury of the silent home and save a ton of cash by investing in great stereos and noise cancelling headphones instead. Allow me to elaborate:
We raised the kids in a house on a cul de sac near Seattle that was fairly quiet, but I never really noticed because the kids were loud and I was busy. When the kids disappeared, we downsized to a small house in a “vibrant” community, as in vibrant-ated with noise from dense housing and walkable entertainment. The noise really wasn’t that bad because our neighbors were cool and our location dodged the worst of the through-traffic. It was fun for a minute, then it wasn’t.
So we moved to a house in Seattle overlooking the ocean in a quiet neighborhood with multimillion dollar homes, big lots, a HOA, and little through traffic and it was great – so quiet we could hear the neighbor talking normally on their deck 4 houses away or hear a coyote’s paws on the street….until the neighbor’s retired parents started coming over literally every single day to invent noisy house and yard projects and yell mean stuff at each other…and then they craned in a combo pool/hot tub and started throwing parties every single weeknight and weekend night. There is rarely a time on a nice day or evening that we can enjoy relative quiet in that house or yard. The parents also live in the neighborhood and I soon learned that they are universally hated.
So we bought a cabin dead center on an acre of land on a private island that is off the grid and only accessible by private boat. The island is heavily wooded with beautiful big trees, and when we checked it out, it was oh-so-quiet but for the sounds of bird, bee, tree and wave. Aaahh! But alas, because it’s off the grid, people acres away often run generators for hours at a time and break out their chainsaws to hack at nature so they can better enjoy it, or get primal and noisily cut trees into shapes they can build something with. Also, I accidentally burned down the cabin.
So we bought a house outside a tiny town in Asia. It’s on a quiet street with a large lot surrounded by trees and no neighbors who can see us. There is an idyllic rice field on one side, separated from our house by a row of trees, and on the other side of the house a small stream feeds the tall trees that sway gracefully above it. Birdsong, frogsong, and various bugsong gently lull us to sleep at night. A dog occasionally barks, a tractor occasionally, almost whimsically, drives the dirt lane along the rice field, and trucks sometimes drive the small lane in front of the house. I mean, its quiet. It’s peaceful.
But here’s the thing – it ain’t gonna last. Someone’s gonna start a war and fighter jets will practice over the house. Or someone is gonna start a business nearby that fails but makes tons of noise on its way to failing. Or a desperate politician with nothing to do in a this small town will suddenly decide that the empty city lot behind us needs to be developed into a drum center for troubled youth.
So we bought really nice noise cancelling headphones and keep a pair at all the properties except the empty acre on the private island with beautiful trees surrounding a pile of ashes.
Hahaha, this is a top 1% comment of all time on FS! And there have literally been hundreds of thousands of them in the past 17 years. So good!
What an image, to wear $500 big muff noise cancelling headphones on your quiet island in the middle of nowhere somewhere in Asia.
Another great post!!! And SO true!! We raised our kids in a great neighborhood outside of Chicago but it is close to O’Hare Airport. I cannot listen to planes anymore. We bought a condo overlooking the ocean in Florida and it is heaven! You are right about views! And I love the idea of forest bathing. Any other states/neighborhoods you would consider that have great nature all around? We are looking…need peace and quiet as we age for sure.
Good to know about the planes.
I’m completely biased for ANY type of water views. They are like mind massagers. So for folks like me who write a lot, it’s very helpful. The ideas keep coming!
This is so true! Your suggestion to stop by a potential new home to assess the noise level is such a good one. I live in a quiet area, but there are some “pockets” of homes in our general area that, for some reason, seem to funnel noise from a highway that is a couple of miles away. I’ve always wondered if people have buyer’s remorse because of it.
I’m completely with you on this. I used to live in the city and had a lot of fun doing so, but after starting a family I moved to a quiet, tucked-away valley in the foothills, surrounded by mountains and red rock formations. Now I’m bordered by three county parks, and when I look out my windows, I see nature. Deer, elk, rabbits, and birds are my most frequent neighbors, with the occasional dog walker passing by. It’s hard to put a price on that.
The only downside is for my kids. Most of their school friends live a few miles away in a tightly packed community.
This is real. I spent my 20’s living at the beach in San Diego. It was incredible, I can’t think of a better place for the 20’s. It was very loud, chaotic, I slept on floors, couches, totally broke. I have since spent the last 25 years in the fire service in a low income area with lots of high acuity calls and fires. At 52 my capacity for noise is completely gone and I know I don’t process most stressors nearly as well as I used to. I’m actually taking a leadership class right now and the first section explains the bio physiology of leadership. Look up allostasis and allostatic load. Point being noise is a stressor (among many other things) and our capacity to process stress as we get older declines. Of course this all varies based on life experiences. Can you imagine, Sam, if you were still in that high intensity finance career?? I think everyone is built differently but we all have our limits. I just don’t know how people stay in high intensity jobs past 50, there has to be a physiological cost.
Damn between this and your article about moving to a nice big house when kids are in the house are making me look at better houses! My current home is in a great tree lined historic street. Unfortunately it’s also one of the busier intersections in town!
When I was in my 20s, I wanted to be near the hustle and bustle and have walk ability to everything. Once I got into my 30s I was well over that and wanted it to be somewhere quiet and away from it all. So I totally understand how and why you love quiet neighborhoods!
Isn’t this the truth. When I met my wife in our 20’s I was living in a downtown condo in Austin. We went out every night to shows and to dine. It was great at the time. Each subsequent move was further away from the central business district. By our late 30’s, we refused to go downtown at all, choosing alternative dining and entertainment locations. And now as we’re approaching 50 years old we have already started working on our eventual retirement place on140-acres in the Texas hill country with no neighbors in sight and at the end of a dead end dirt road. Talk about peace and quiet. The coyote howls will wake you up in the middle of the night though :)
Same. I wonder if it is because we got older, or because we actually experienced living in a busy area and realized it…kind of sucks?
As we age, we gain wisdom. And yes, in comparison, the peace and quiet is far better than commotion. We also get less active and don’t need all the stimulation anymore.