Money Is Secondary To Meaning

As a society, we are mostly already aware money isn’t what matters in life. We know if we pick a career purely because it makes a lot of money, such as investment banking, we’ll likely end up frustrated with life and hating our jobs.

So, most of us make a bargain. We pick a career that we think will make us an acceptable amount of money and will be acceptably satisfying. Common career choices of this kind include software engineering, user experience design, and physician’s assistant; jobs that are pretty enjoyable (for the most part), are somewhat meaningful (or at least, not a net negative), and will give us the financial latitude to own a $120,000 house someday.

At first, the bargain works well. We’re working a job that gives us a larger paycheck than we’ve ever had in our lives, we can finally move into an apartment where the towel bar isn’t bent from a previous tenant, and we get to go in to work at a reasonable hour.

After a few years though, the bargain can wear thin. We wonder what it would be like to spend our days reading or learning new skills instead of showing up to work every day. We daydream about starting businesses. We read stories online of people who travel and live off of passive income and, for a fleeting moment, imagine ourselves as them.

The bargain wears thin for the same reason picking a career purely based on how much money it makes: it’s money first.

What I mean by money first is this: We first assume that we need to chase money, and then, given that we must chase money, we determine the way to chase it that we like the most.

And that line of reasoning is ass backwards.

Money is, first and foremost, a tool. Money can not do anything on its own any more than a hammer can do anything on its own. The only reason people own tools is to achieve a particular outcome — in the case of money, the intended outcome is a particular kind of lifestyle. When we put the tool (money) before the outcome (the kind of life we want to live), we defeat the purpose of having the tool.

If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you’ll spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing thing you don’t like doing, which is stupid. ― Alan Watts

What we should be doing is first determining the kind of life we want to live, and then determining how much money we need to live that life. Lifestyle first, not money first.

The repercussions of misusing an innocent tool are pretty mild. If you misuse a hammer, you may bend a nail or bash your thumb, but that’s all that happens. But money is a tremendously powerful tool, and as writer Amy Chan discovered, the consequences of misusing it can be pretty steep.

What do you do when you’re not feeling fulfilled? You buy things.

I was the chief marketing officer of a national brand, making six figures with disposable income to burn. But even though I had money, I was broke. Not literally, but in the sense that nothing was ever “enough.”

I was living the Sex and the City dream, with Louboutins to boot, and not a clue of what I was working toward. I was working to sustain the lifestyle I was handcuffed to. And because I wasn’t fulfilled by what I was doing, I’d shop my uncomfortable feelings away.

— Founding My Company Killed My Consumerism and Saved My Soul, Amy Chan (emphasis mine)

So how do we ensure we don’t misuse money? How do we ensure we think lifestyle first, not money first?

It’s pretty simple, actually. Just ask yourself the following question:

If money were no object, what would I do with my life?

I’m being serious. If you had several billion dollars, what would you do with your time?

Snarky readers may be tempted to retort “snort cocaine all day” or “play video games all day” or “sail away on a yacht to China,” but if you’re the kind of person reading an article titled Money is Secondary to Meaning, I doubt that’s what you’d do. Be more honest with me: what would you really, really love to do with your life, if only money and other people’s judgments and all those constraints weren’t a problem?

The reason we ask ourselves this question is not because we are trying to delude ourselves into thinking we’ll be billionaires someday. Most of what we say we want in response to this question probably won’t happen anyway. The reason we ask ourselves this question is to set aside what society and your friends and your own fear think you should do, and honestly ask yourself what it is you want. We may not get what we want, but we definitely won’t get what we want if we don’t know what we want.

And, if you answer the question honestly, you may find you don’t need much money at all to get what you want. How much money we should chase depends highly on what it is we want to do.

• If you want nothing more than to read for the rest of your life, you really don’t need much money; you just need to be able to afford a house, your books, and enough free time to read them all.
• If you want to be a competitive mountain climber, though, you’re going to need a lot more money to afford all those flights to the Himalayas. (In that context, becoming an investment banker makes a lot more sense.)

When Chan asked herself that question, the answer she arrived at was “being an entrepreneur.” As a result, her whole perspective on wealth changed.

When I was working in corporate, I used to think I was wealthy, but I was broke. I didn’t have freedom over my time, I wasn’t building something of my own that I found meaningful, and I was attached to stuff. I’ve learned through this process that I don’t need much. My things don’t define me. The brand of my handbag doesn’t make me more or less credible. I may have less money, but I feel the wealthiest I’ve ever been.

My definition of what it means to be wealthy has changed. Wealthy means having freedom — over my time, my location, and my company. It means being able to make my own schedule. To work from wherever I want. To not be judged on my value and contribution based on how long I’m sitting at my desk or for how late I leave the office.

Wealthy is a mindset, and it has nothing to do with your net worth or designer wardrobe. It’s an attitude of gratitude, regardless of what stage you’re at. It’s knowing that even if you lose it all or don’t have much materially, you can still contribute and create something meaningful in this world.

It’s hard to imagine a more perfect example of what I mean. Chan thought money first and ended up in a career that provided her lots of money but little direction, and she ended up shopping it away. When she began to think lifestyle first, however, her entire life turned around. She realized she needed less money than she thought, and ended up happier in the process.

When you think money first, you end up limiting yourself and shackling yourself to preconceived ideas about what your income should be. When you think lifestyle first, you end up with exactly the life you want — money included.

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