Money's Real Purpose

The real purpose of money: to buy yourself the ability to walk away from idiots who think they have power over you. Humphrey Bogart called it FY money. I call it walkaway money.

How to get to walkaway money? Save a high % of your income when your earning power is high and buy the cash generating assets that will pay you when your earning power--or desire to work--drops. Then adjust your appetites to your possibilities by living where it's easiest to do so. In Barcelona, the Mediterrenean San Francisco of Europe, you're affluent on 3000-4000 euros/month. In Riga on 2000-3000. Work remotely for the US company that already pays you $75-100k that makes you feel poor in SF, and you'll be passive income walkaway money in ten years.

And live by six words: you own stuff, stuff owns you.

I learned two aphorisms from working with yachting industry clients for 20 years:

1. Definition of a yacht: a hole in the water you pour money into.

2. How to make a small fortune in the yachting industry? Start with a big one.

Both, on the supplier and the client side, illustrate our inability to delink money from ego and status metering. Money is not just the symbolic representation of property rights and a means of exchange. It's the symbolic representation of ego, respect and success--or failure. Decoupling from the symbolic element of money increases your control over money and decreases money's control over you. Hard to do, since humans are, by nature, walking, talking status meters. Why do you think I check my Medium earnings every day.....Do as I say, not as I do.