Not caring enough about money? | Hacker News Reader

Not caring enough about money?

10 pointsbsuki16 comments

Hey all, In high school, I was into making money (day trading, startups). By senior year, I realized I could instead chase impact -- so I didn’t think about money for 1.5 years.

I feel anger when I hear people saying their reason to do things was because of money. Yet, I feel fear knowing that one day it will make all the difference. My parents are immigrants who run liquor stores. My dad unfortunately is addicted to his own product; despite what it looks like to others, money is still an issue. Looking back (19m), I realize I have an unhealthy relationship with money.

What am I not understanding?

Thanks!

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Money is like blood. It transfers resources from one part to another part. If you don't have enough money, it's pretty bad.

If it flows too fast, it's bad. If it's too slow, it's even worse. Central banks control the flow to make sure it's not too fast or too slow. Stuff like AI is like caffeine, meth, a stimulant. You risk problems with resources moving too fast, even if they moved to the right areas.

If you needed more blood, you'd work out. You'd improve muscle efficiency or lung effectiveness.

If you needed more money, you can't really chase the money, you'd chase productivity or cut costs.

Some people might say the analogy doesn't work because you can just hoard money. But it has to move. To quote Finite and Infinite Games, property must be seen as compensation. And property must be seen to be consumed - wealth is performance. If someone with wealth does not show that they are worthy of it, it will be taken from them by force e.g. taxes. The thief does not take someone else's property, he takes what he believes is rightfully his.

Food: In order to survive and thrive, we need to balance our nutritional intake (lest we die of malnutrition). We all do this. Yet for most of us, calories is not what life is about. For many of the privileged of us, it's barely what eating is about. Over-obsession with calorie-counting can become a sickness as much as neglect and overeating.

Same with your money as participant in the economy. Maintaining a healthy flow and preparing for the future is a good idea. But remember that fundamentally money is supposed to be a measure of value, not value itself (the tragedy of our society is confusing the map with the territory).

Continue focusing on impact and the money will follow. At the same time you still want to have a healthy balance and stable trajectory on the day-to-day and month-to-month without that turning into minmaxing or letting it direct your life-choices to an unhealthy degree. You'll probably want some form of income - not necessarily in the 1%.

If you make enough money, it frees you to do other things - impactful things. For example, if you make twice as much as you need, you can work half as much. That leaves a lot of time for projects you care about. The problem, I think, is that people's lifestyle usually catches up with their income, so they never feel like they have enough. They just work the same jobs for decades, but come home to slightly nicer things every year.

Money is impact. Impact is money. You're talking about the same thing. Making money is a noble pursuit, and is not something to fear.

Your parent is an unfortunate case. I know this personally, as I was an alcoholic for many years, and I only quit relatively recently. [1] But for every alcoholic like myself there are probably a hundred people who find alcohol to truly be an enjoyable addition to their lives, well worth the downsides.

I would say don't overgeneralize from your parent's experiences. It is quite possible they may have ended up in a bad way even if they didn't run a liquor store. The true lesson the is to be cautious around alcohol yourself, as it unfortunately appears to have a strong genetic component, but do continue moving towards greater money/impact - that's almost always a life improving stance.

[1]: https://andrew-quinn.me/1000-days-without-drinking/

Money isn't impact though. It is a tool. Like a laptop. Is a laptop impact? It can be if used well.

Money is more complicated in that it is non-linear. 0 to 100k is more effectful on your life than 1m to 1.1m.

Getting that laptop into your hands required one of the most sophisticated supply chains in human history to be built up. Tens of millions of people all had to work together at a distance, many of them doing things dozens of steps removed from the final product, in order to make it so that you could purchase that laptop. Money is the lifeblood of that entire system, the coordination mechanism that makes such things possible, and the instant you purchase that laptop you have injected more such blood into it to diffuse out.

That's an enormous impact even if all you did with the laptop immediately after purchasing it was throw it in a volcano. It's not wrong to realize that money is subject to diminishing returns like everything else, but it misses the most important thing about it, and that exists outside of you.

There are 2 concepts here. Problem with internet forums is the combinatorial explosion in points to talk to!

So the impact that the adoption of fungible value by human society. As you alluded to: unspeakably big and arguably good overall (lets see the next 200 years before we judge but lets say massively positive. We got vaccines and space travel.)

Obviously it is not all attributable to money. It is the inventions from the wheel to the sexstant, the schools, socialism, capitalism, invention of writing, religion, even war etc. etc.

On the other hand, "Impact is money and money is Impact". is not true.

A teacher gets a fixed wage. They can be a great teacher and inspire the kids to do great things, or they could make the kids feel insecure for life. Same dollar wage both ways.

Money is more than one thing.

It's a "tool", currency for exchange, but also a store of value, a unit of accounting, etc. etc.

A few hundred dollar notes in your wallet is a tool you can use to buy food and pay rent for a while. A company worth a few million is a measure of the impact, value to customers, net present value of future income/cashflows, etc.

https://www.rxjourney.net/when-did-i-start-caring-about-mone...

If you have enough money, the specific amount doesn't make a huge difference. Yes, maybe at some point in your life having more would make a major difference, and things you could have done may have resulted with you having enough more to make the difference. That's unavoidable.

If you have enough money and you can stop worrying about it, that seems like a healthy relationship with money. When you don't have much, it's a good thing to focus on, but prioritizing other things is great, if you can.

Money and impact don’t need to be mutually exclusive. Many people use their business as a vehicle for positive impacts on society, money is the byproduct of their impact.

You can also work a normal job to make reliable money to support yourself, and allocate some of your earnings to help others and make an impact… or even just your time. This can help bring some more purpose to your work, regardless of what it is.

Money does not make you happy, but it can solve problems.

Don't aim to be rich, but try to have enough.

A friend once told me "I'd rather arrive at the Heavenly Gates in a limo than on foot"

Money doesn't ultimately make you happy but it sure contributes to your happiness along the way.

If you are completely broke (I once was), then $100 can make a major impact on your well being. On the other hand, $100 (or lack of it) is not so impactful on a multi-millionaire.

This might lead some to believe that the poor person cares greatly about the money, while the rich person probably couldn't care less. But this is often not the case. One of the reasons why some people are wealthy and others not, is how much attention they pay to small details. Poor people can be very frivolous with money, while rich people can be very frugal. The opposite can also be true, but how you handle money is not dependent on how much of it you have.

The avocado toast economic theory!

I don't think there's enough overlap between the two populations to say that X and a certain way because of Y.

You'd probably get a kick out of reading The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.

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