One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is the relationship between money and time. For most people money is a proxy for time as they exchange their precious hours for remuneration.
For me, freedom is being able to transcend such a transactional relationship whereby you have enough money to simply think and be. I don’t mean for the implication of this to be to accumulate large amounts of wealth and not work. But rather generate enough funds to cover a life that should be increasing minimal. This results in a life where money can be seen objectively as a tool to create space rather than a lifeline at the end of a 40 year slog for a shitty retirement when your body is atrophying.
Well said! Virginia Woolf said a woman needs "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". Essential material needs being met unlocks so much.
I think people from FIRE often miss the point of it and get stuck in the numbers instead of using it as a map to assess the terrain of where they might like to go (and update/reference it constantly as they learn more)
I'm reminded of that tweet reply you posted about a friend that gained a lot from shifting from vibes to heady - FIRE can help people with that. But a lot of them could benefit from more vibes.
That's a great point, the precision of our calculations can delude us into thinking we have a perfect plan for the future, when really it can only ever be directional
All great points, Marlene! This one especially hit home:
“You can be enslaved by a sense of scarcity about money regardless of whether you have enough or not.”
I think you touched on it, but ‘enough money’ is so varied and loose and largely dependant on your social circle, so all of us fear scarcity in the end.
One thing I’ll counter is that whilst bartering has been an important mode of transaction in the past, it has never been a primary economy, anywhere, like ever. Many ppl think money evolved from barter, which in turn leads them to conflate its essentialness, like it’s some natural extension of the human psyche when it’s really just an accounting tool. Gift Economies, worth looking into :)
One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is the relationship between money and time. For most people money is a proxy for time as they exchange their precious hours for remuneration.
For me, freedom is being able to transcend such a transactional relationship whereby you have enough money to simply think and be. I don’t mean for the implication of this to be to accumulate large amounts of wealth and not work. But rather generate enough funds to cover a life that should be increasing minimal. This results in a life where money can be seen objectively as a tool to create space rather than a lifeline at the end of a 40 year slog for a shitty retirement when your body is atrophying.
Well said! Virginia Woolf said a woman needs "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". Essential material needs being met unlocks so much.
I think people from FIRE often miss the point of it and get stuck in the numbers instead of using it as a map to assess the terrain of where they might like to go (and update/reference it constantly as they learn more)
I'm reminded of that tweet reply you posted about a friend that gained a lot from shifting from vibes to heady - FIRE can help people with that. But a lot of them could benefit from more vibes.
That's a great point, the precision of our calculations can delude us into thinking we have a perfect plan for the future, when really it can only ever be directional
All great points, Marlene! This one especially hit home:
“You can be enslaved by a sense of scarcity about money regardless of whether you have enough or not.”
I think you touched on it, but ‘enough money’ is so varied and loose and largely dependant on your social circle, so all of us fear scarcity in the end.
One thing I’ll counter is that whilst bartering has been an important mode of transaction in the past, it has never been a primary economy, anywhere, like ever. Many ppl think money evolved from barter, which in turn leads them to conflate its essentialness, like it’s some natural extension of the human psyche when it’s really just an accounting tool. Gift Economies, worth looking into :)
Thanks Joel! I appreciate that correction, that's interesting history to dig into :)