How I’ve become better with money
Reflections on some dumb ways I used to think that still afflict far too many others
I turned 40 last month. Maybe, I thought, I should write a list of ’40 things I’ve learnt about people’s relationships with money’ like one of the cool-kid bloggers.
Yet such lists (however good!) – because they are lists – help you nod along in pleasant passive agreement rather more than they help you make a serious attempt to improve anything. So screw that. I think we can do better.
So here are five dumbass beliefs I used to be infected with, and three as-important-as-anything-gets connections between them.
Only the terminally troubled actually say these beliefs out loud. I never did! I regularly said the opposite to them! But having shaken them, it’s inescapably obvious I once believed them, and tilted my life away from wisdom as a result. Infections are all the more dangerous when we not only aren’t aware we’re infected, but are confident that we’re immune.
Believing a higher monthly expenditure meant a better life – This newsletter has often asked: ‘Why do we believe that achieving the same result with fewer resources is better, except when it comes to the only result that ultimately matters: living a good life? Why do people brag about spending 10,000 a month to live as happily as someone spending 1,000?’ There was a time when (judged by certain actions and the way I advertised certain life choices) I believed this too. I’m better now.
Believing in a ‘financial freedom’ ‘number’ – As I wrote here: ‘Whether it’s a total asset value, or an income (usually a naively pre-tax one), or even a total asset value “calculated” by multiplying a desired income by 25 because you heard something about a 4% “safe withdrawal rate”, most people have an oddly accurate idea of what their “number” is.’ As detailed in the linked post, there was a time when I believed this too. I’m better now.
Believing that a life well lived would be characterised by ‘one day’ ‘arriving’ in the perfect set of circumstances – We are all in pretty constant danger of falling victim to the Arrival Fallacy – the idea that the Good Life is something we arrive at, usually found in the formula: ‘When X is sorted, then I will be able to do Y and feel Z’. This is often accompanied by dreams of ownership, with life becoming one long story of trying to build the perfect nest of accumulated acquisitions. Yet, as I wrote in ‘The value of (almost) everything to you is nothing’: ‘the end of the majority of acquisitive dreams isn’t to “one day” wake up in paradise, but to live asleep.’ There was a time when I believed in ‘one day’. I’m better now.
Believing a higher number (e.g. salary, bank balance, price tag) actually meant something vaguely important – If asked directly, I would’ve denied that higher salaries represented anything other than an incidental aspect of one’s chosen industry. I would’ve said things about how higher-paying jobs almost always require a level of daft hours or ethical flexibility that’s hard to square with being a non-shitty human. I was never this dumb. But I still felt the same common reluctance to talk about how much I earned, and dropped those pathetic subtle-not-subtle hints at how much stuff had cost… each pointing inescapably to the fact I was suffering. I’m better now.
Believing that ‘optimising’ component parts was the way to a fulfilling whole – For example, believing that great clothes, cocktails, and chat added up to a great date. Or, more fundamentally, believing that ‘working on’ ‘life’s’ component parts (physical health, mental health, financial health, and so on) would – inexorably – add up to living well. As this newsletter has said many times before: ‘By all means break a life down for analysis, but if the aim is the living, not the analysing, don’t forget to put it back together again.’ Or in Iain McGilchrist’s words: ‘We can move from an insight to analysis, but not from analysis to insight.’ There was a time I did this to a laughable degree (and have the spreadsheets to prove it). I’m better now.
The refusal to look because you know what you’ll see is silly is sillier still
To reiterate: were you to have confronted me with each of these beliefs – made me speak the quiet assumptions of my model of the world out loud – I would’ve denied each one.
Of course spending less for the same end is better than spending more!
Of course the contents of one’s heart and head is more important than the contents of one’s wardrobe!
Of course time with loved ones under storm clouds is better than an evening with bankers under Michelin stars!
Of course salary levels and price tags don’t signal anything beyond the intersection of the world’s supply and demand of something, or what some enterprising salesperson thinks they can get away with!
Of course the very idea of a ‘Number’, let alone letting it direct one’s day-to-day activities is calamitously silly!
And yet what was I prioritising? What was driving my life choices? How was my attention shaping my world? I undeniably lived well enough. But now I see the ways in which I was blind before, and the excellence of my life has deepened as my vision has cleared.
Because of how easily points like these can slither into a numbers-focused interpretation, there’s something I’d like to make really clear: I spend the same in absolute terms today as I did 15 years ago, but this is not in any way because I’ve tried to do so, e.g. by focusing on my savings rate, as per the pronouncements of the early retirement gods. It’s happened as a side effect of prioritising attempting to live well as a whole healthy human, rather than ‘optimising’ a mechanical collection of component parts.
The deeper connections
There’s an obvious connection between each of these examples: our old financially-supercharged friend, a craving for certainty.
Not sure how well you’re living? Grab for what is most easily measured! Not sure how to direct your life? Grab for a number!
(Probably best to overlook, while doing so, that if something can be measured, it probably isn’t important, that those spending the most are often miserable, and that you’ve likely not seen much personal correlation between your credit-card bill and how delightfully you dance through each day.)
Merely spotting the role of grasping for certainty doesn’t help much, though. If you’d’ve pointed it out to me back when I was believing this nonsense, I doubt I’d’ve done anything differently.
So what did I do?
There’s a temptation here to reach for a list of ‘what’s’. Do this, don’t do that. Meditate. Spend time in nature. Download your credit-card statements and read them like a monk reading the Bible.
There’s nothing wrong with any of these things. But to focus on the things is to double down on the problem: for what are ‘what’s’ but another form of craving for certainty… another veiled scream of the six most dangerous words in finance: ‘Just tell me what to do!’?
Meditation, is, famously, a good way to rewire yourself to become more comfortable with uncertainty, but treat it as a ‘thing’, and the same person, on the same cushion, for the same time, can go to radically different places.
Looking back, it’s clear that moving away from paying attention to the ‘what’s’ and towards the way in which I pay attention has been a non-negotiable foundation for all the fun that’s followed.
Build character, not wealth
A craving for certainty always signals a lack of strength of character. The stronger your character, the less you’re going to reach for the crutches of certainty, or even believe that in an inherently impermanent world such supports even really exist.
The best way I know to change anything is to tilt your attention and intention towards spotting a crappy way of doing something, and then consciously go a better way instead.
The best way I know to do this is to be acutely watchful for a handful of triggers, such that they alert you in much the same automatic way as hearing your name across a crowded room.
Two of the best I know for living better with money are:
1. Am I focusing on possessing something, or becoming a person that doesn’t feel the need to?
Drawn to believe that life will be better if you buy an object, an experience, a thing?
Stop and check.
Pretty much any use of the word ‘have’ from possessions to time to ideas can be a signal you’re seeing things stupidly.
You can attend to the world in ‘having’ mode – disposed towards ‘having’ ‘things’ as the direct ‘answer’ to the question of what to do with your life, or in ‘becoming’ mode – disposed towards ‘becoming’ a particular type of person.
If you’re living in having mode, you relate to the world in terms of possessor and possessed. People, experiences, esteem, a picture of how you are seen, health, beauty, youth, profound insights, even the identity as someone who’s not interested in possessing anything… As Erich Fromm put it:
Virtually anything can be possessed if a person orients his way of life toward having. The issue is not whether one does or does not have something, but rather whether a person’s heart is set on what he or she does or does not have. Orientation toward not-having is a having orientation, too.
At its crudest level, this could be the difference between choosing a restaurant (and fussing about where you’re sat) because of how it’ll look on Instagram versus its conduciveness to camaraderie. The reason having mode is so pernicious is because this could be the same restaurant, with the same people; it’s less about where you go and more about the intention and attention you go there with.
2. Am I focused on a relationship, or a distraction from one?
Crudely, you’re either cultivating a relationship (with yourself, others, or the world) or you’re distracting yourself from doing so… often by buying something believing full well it’s in the name of cultivating a relationship… blind to the fact this is impossible.
The point of a consumerist society is distraction. And maaaaaaaan, have we got good at this. Not only the obvious stuff about smartphones. The cleverness comes in all the subtle stuff that feels like we’re doing it as an antidote to the more obvious smartphone stuff.
All those actions we justify because we’ve ‘attached them to a value’ in some well-meaning but myopic ‘align your actions with your values’ exercise, but which are actually both leading us astray and making it harder to see that we’re drifting off course… like spending £450,000 on being worse parents.
Circumstances can be measured, connections cannot. So we focus on the former, believing we’re efficiently serving the latter. Becoming better at spotting when such beliefs are bullshit is one of the best presents I’ve ever given myself.