Growing up Wealthy

There’s this weird phenomenon I see on the internet all the time. People love guessing their “number”. Here’s what I mean.

People are fascinated by this idea of “Fuck you Money”. It’s definitely a catchy phrase. It would be pretty funny to just walk around telling people to fuck themselves because of how rich they are. I have never seen it happen. I hope I do. It would be pretty funny.

To be fair, I don’t think that people are insinuating that “Fuck you Money” is some definable sum that allows you to turn into a huge asshole and demand the world to bend to your will — quite the opposite.

For an academic definition, I decided to consult one of the more reputable sources the internet has to offer — Urban Dictionary. Here is what we got:

Ok, I can buy that. It makes sense that this is an amount of money that people would aspire to. After all, what on earth could be worse than having to deal with “employment” or “assistance” daily? Gross.

It seems clear that whatever we want to define as that “Fuck You” echelon of money, it requires one to have the ability to opt out of the traditional 9-5 career trajectory. And the reason for opting out? Happiness. An opportunity to pursue the things you inherently “want” to do with your life.

That seems reasonable. I think we can agree on the fact that most people are enamored by hitting this number because it represents some type of end state—a sign of having won the game.

Great, How do we Get There?

Now we have the why. Let’s move to the “how”.

To “over” simply things, let’s say there are two main routes:

1. You earn it

2. It is given to you

I’d like to start with the former.

Most people who have accumulated wealth on their merit or accomplishments have a pretty similar mentality. First, they have a deep-seated sense of pride and accomplishment for what they have done. Second, they tend to feel an incredible amount of imposter syndrome, and lastly, if they had to admit it behind closed doors, whatever the number they have…is just not quite enough.

On Pride and Accomplishment

For the most part, I think everyone has experienced the dopaminergic feeling of accomplishing something hard. Whether a workout, studying for an exam, completing a complex project at work, or remembering to take the garbage out on the right day, almost all of us understand that feeling of accomplishment.

What is interesting, however, is the fact that accomplishment (and therefore in this context — money) doesn’t lead to happiness. And what’s more? We have known this for quite some time.

In a 2022 Atlantic article, esteemed author, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and world-renowned “happiness expert”, Arthur Brooks penned an article on the idea of Wanting Less.

In the piece, Brooks places particular emphasis on the idea that humans have an uncanny ability to forgo contentment and satisfaction for what I would call “the optimization function”.

You see, people are, in some ways, incredibly complex and in other ways incredibly simple.

From a complexity standpoint, our wants and desires can span a myriad of subjects without too much rhyme or reason. The details of our lives and circumstances fall into one of what feels like an infinite number of possible permutations that drive us to behave the way we do. But then there is the other side of the coin.

From a simplicity standpoint, whatever it is that we want or desire, we are hardwired to go after those things with a “full send” mentality. There seems never to be a true end in site when it comes to satisfying our wants. There is inherent greed in all of us — not in a malicious sense, but rather the kind that fully renounces the notion of “enough”.

I think we all know this to be true. We hear stories about it all the time. One of my favorites is an Aesop fable. It speaks to this very idea.

In the story of the Dog and His Shadow, a dog is walking home with a piece of meat in his mouth. On his way home he crosses a river and looks into the water. He mistakes his reflection for another Dog and wants his meat also. But as he opens his mouth, the meat falls into the river and is never seen again. The desire for more led to a reality of less. Just like the dog in the story, humans have the innate ability to transition from a state of contentment to a state of longing in an instant.

And it turns out that certain fundamental scientific principles govern this behavior.

In his aforementioned article, Brooks brings this idea to light once more.

The piece is fascinating. I highly recommend reading it. But I want to focus more on this idea of Homeostasis and even more importantly, its counterbalancing force.

Yin and Yang of The Hedonic Treadmill

I will never forget how my high school chemistry teacher first tried to explain entropy to our class.

It was sophomore year and as you can probably imagine, the troublemakers had made their way to the back of the classroom. We were likely talking shit about fantasy football or something else that felt wholly more important at the time.

To get our attention, our teacher picked up a stack of papers and tossed them in the air. It was bizarre. But it got our attention.

“Entropy”. That was his grand pronouncement. Not going to lie, kind of a dud.

He went to explain just why his tossing the papers into the air was not a sign of a psychotic breakdown and instead a fair and reasonable representation of an important scientific principle.

You see, Entropy is the “measure of disorder” within a given system. The law of entropy states that when left alone in natural states, everything will eventually become disordered. Entropy is therefore a measure of a system's disorder, and it's derived from the probabilistic combinations and permutations of the system's various states.

What does this tell us? When left alone, anything and everything has a tendency to shift towards disorder, towards chaos.

I feel this in my own life. The feeling of a building unease as I sit idly trying to find something to work on. Something to care about. In times like these, I know that there is an increased level of disorder in my life and even more importantly, in my soul.

Inaction, just as the pursuit for more, can lead to a feeling of angst.

This can be a harrowing thought. When you achieve something great, the feeling is short-lived because we are naturally predisposed to assimilate ourselves to that level of accomplishment (be it money, fame, prestige, pick your poison). But on the other hand, when we allow ourselves to remain idle for too long, we move towards inner chaos.

We constantly strive for more and can never be satisfied, and when we finally earn the right and ability to give up the pursuit of “more”, we quickly realize that the stillness that we sought only leads to more chaos.

As French Philosopher Blaise Pascal famously wrote:

And here we find ourselves, trapped on this Hedonic Treadmill, constantly striving for more, never being able to sit in silence and enjoy that level of “more” we desperately seek. Seemingly never able to understand what it means to have enough.

Fuck You Money

I know what you are thinking, and yes, I promise, I am going to land this plane.

I don’t think anyone really has this whole thing figured out — how to be satisfied with what you have. But I can give a perspective from someone who has struggled with this greatly and might have somewhat of a unique perspective.

Since I was ~13 I have known that I was likely never going to “want” for any material things in the world. I got lucky. Born into a family that hit it big by the time I entered my teenage years. In the back of my mind, I have known for a while that no matter what I do with my life, I am going to be just fine.

To be clear, that is an incredible blessing that I never have and never will take for granted. But it does present its own unique set of challenges.

You see, money is just an option on time. Having money allows you to leverage your time however you want to in a certain sense.

Want to start a business? Sure, why not? Want to pursue the arts? Have at it, no problem! Want to pick up a prestige job and coast? That is in the cards as well.

Ultimately, having infinite option value can become a paralytic agent — especially when you didn’t do the work to earn that opportunity.

And therein lies the problem. You see, those who have fought tooth and nail to earn their wealth benefit in a way that I fear I will never understand. They get to live the grind.

A singular focus, a passion, and a desire to reach some financial goal gives you the opportunity to fall in love with the process, regardless of what that process is. I talk to my dad about this a lot. He lived it.

It took him 25 years and 3 failed attempts to build his business, and the look in his eyes when he gets to share his war stories is something that I envy.

You see, at a certain point on his journey, he had no choice, his optionality was zero. And through that forced focus, he was able to squeeze all of the meaning and self-worth he could out of life. Again, I envy that.

There is something to be said about the role Homeostasis plays in this. In the context of achieving wealth, the concept is predicated on the idea an intense amount of work goes into achieving a higher status. Then the exuberance of that higher status is short-lived until you get your next fix to achieve more.

But what if you never had to put in the work to begin with? I can tell you what happened. Instead of leaning on that honed muscle of hard work, you are left in a state of inaction, paralyzed by infinite options, and continually slipping into a state of high internal entropy.

What’s the Answer?

This is something I have been working through for the last year. I only recently realized how frantically I try and overwhelm myself with things to work on, sometimes aimlessly (usually aimlessly) just to hide from the impending feeling of disorder I know I will feel when I close my laptop.

It’s an insidious feeling. Trying so hard to find something that you passionately want to work on because you know you have been allowed to do whatever you want. It can be demoralizing. It has been demoralizing.

But I do think there is a way out of this spiral. It takes three primary ingredients:

1. Honestly

2. Humility

3. Longevity

Honesty: You have to be honest with yourself. It is unlikely that some mission for your life’s work is going to fall into your lap. Don’t spend the days daydreaming about when you have the perfect idea or the perfect opportunity given your circumstances — you will find yourself waiting for a long time. Instead, allow yourself the privilege of being honest and saying “I don’t know”.

Humility: There is something distorting about having money. It distorts people’s perceptions of your abilities, your intelligence, and your worth. People can and will view you as an asset because you are associated with money, but inside you know that it is likely the least important or useful thing about you. Don’t succumb to those perceptions, don’t think you are smarter, more capable, or more worthy than you are. Be humble. Do the small things. Do the hard things. Be a grunt. Earn your spot. There is nothing that will help you feel self-worth like being appreciated for nothing more than your merit. Let humility guide you.

Longevity: This one is probably the most important. If you are EVER going feel like you have “enough”, you’re going to need to be in it for the long game. Time and repetition, skill acquisition, battle scars, failure, heartbreak, euphoria, all of those things only come if you are willing to dedicate yourself to something, anything, for the long term. Learn to commit.

I want to give myself the chance to write my own story, a story that gets me to my own level of “fuck you money”. Because I know that whatever that end number is isn’t going to be what gives me peace, but learning how to fight to get there might just get me one step closer.