“I’m called ‘the poorest president’, but I don’t feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle, and always want more.”
Jose “Pepe” Mujica – Former president of Uruguay
One of my favorite books is The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. In the book, Ravikant talks about the three things everyone’s after. Those are wealth, fitness, and happiness. The investor adds, “We pursue them in that order, but their importance is in reverse.” Overall, being rich isn’t that important, or at least, not as important as being healthy or happy. That said, we often (myself included) focus on money first.
Why do we love money? Companies constantly encourage us to upgrade our lifestyles and the message works. Instead of optimizing our lives to consume more, we should optimize our lives for freedom. Freedom should be our ultimate goal and that’s the best thing money can buy. In The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel wrote “The ability to do what you want, when you want, for as long as you want, has infinite ROI.”
Similarly, Epictetus once said, “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” Once you develop the skill of “having few wants”, as Epictetus puts it, you save more, but more importantly, you’re more at peace. This is something that few people can master and the fact that a former president was able to do it makes the opening quote to this article meaningful.
There’s something even more important to consider regarding money: how it affects your character. If you end up with a lot of money, don’t change. I read every book about money and few of those books talk about your actions and behaviors once you get rich. In The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss said “Money doesn’t change you; it reveals who you are when you no longer have to be nice.”
If any of what I wrote in this article resonated with you, read The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. It’s free on its website or you can always read my summary. Naval Ravikant teaches you the principles behind wealth and happiness in the book. It changed my life and hopefully, it can change yours too.