If money didn't matter... and why it should
An existential inquiry spurred by a youtube productivity bro
“What would your life be like in five years if money didn’t matter?”
I heard this question on productivity bro Ali Abdaal’s YouTube channel of all places, but I didn’t have an answer right away. Three days later, I was heading to the kitchen table to feed my baby some oatmeal and my answer came like a slippery goldfish jumping out of its bowl and into my lap. It almost got away from me as I grasped at it.
The same. My life would be the same.
If money didn’t matter, almost nothing in my life would be different.
I would still choose this life nearly identically to how it is now. I would still choose to live on these five acres (for now) and work towards our homesteading goals. I would still choose to design and write and read and create in my free time. I would still want to be home and be around to teach June about the natural world and all the things that give her Dad and I a sense of wonder.
If money had no bearing in our lives, the main things that would be different are:
my current relationship with money,
our work/life - Matt and I would work less, be home more and
our timelines - we would move more quickly on our homesteading, food production, and remodeling goals.
This insight was a beautiful slap of a blessing and it helped me realize a few things:
1. I held the belief that time is money. But it’s not. Time is time.
I’ve been preoccupied with making more money because I held the incorrect belief that time is money, therefore I believed that having more money would give us more time to be together. But as I write this, I realize this is only partially true and this belief is dissolving the more I observe it.
For example, if I got a raise, it is likely my schedule would be the same or my family and I might have even less time together if that promotion came with additional demands at work. Being mentally and emotionally available to the people around me, when I am not working, is a choice within me regardless of how much I make.
In this example, the money is still attached to my full-time job. While I am working towards detaching my time from my earnings, I do not want to allow my striving for a future state to rob me of my present joys.
2. The amount of money I have is unlikely to change how I relate to it.
If I am worried about money now, I will be worried about it later, whether I have $20 or $20 million. If I feel shame about money when I receive $5, the sensation of shame will be amplified even more so when I receive $500. Because my feelings towards money are an internal projection, not an external truth. Money is an amplifier of what is already there. The only way to deal with emotional snags around money is to work with the emotion itself, not the money that triggers it.
3. Like most fulfilling things, the work itself is the reward.
My unexamined drive for more money was really a rush toward an outcome: for the homestead to be in its “finished” state. But there is no finished. The projects that we undertake on the land and in our home are *the good parts.* The work itself is the thing we always hoped for, and it will never end. I must be mindful not to rush through the good parts and savor the joy of being creative in a space that is ours.
Closing note:
Money *does* matter. A lot. Especially to me. I find it an endless source of fascination and inquiry, not just in terms of how we acquire or spend it, but in the symbolism of it, in the mythical underpinnings, in the collective psychological projection onto it, the individual interaction with it, the the way it externally expresses often hidden and taboo truths about each and every person and their relationship to the outside world.
I do not wish for world in which the mystery of money does not matter, and I feel suspicion towards those who do, because they deny a fundamental aspect of human nature in favor of a daft idealism. I believe our work in this time is to reconcile our relationship with money, work, and exchange in realistic and nuanced ways.
Thank you for reading! If you made it this far, will you share this writing with someone who could benefit from it?
I will continue to explore these topics with fervor and hope more people will join in!