So, I’m assuming you are here reading this because you want to get yourself some more money.
And since this is Mr Money Mustache and not a standard financial publication, you’re willing to think about the bigger picture:
Not necessarily “Maximum money at all costs so I can have a nice, spendy retirement!”
More like “A good, fun amount of money so I can walk outta this cubicle with confidence and never look back.”
Making that mental leap is a huge one. It takes you from a life of permanent pursuit of the unattainable to one where you get to the “Enough” stage pretty quickly. This alone will change the course of your life for the better.
But what if there were an even bigger mental leap that we were leaving out? One that starts with the hard-nosed math of living off of your investments, but then puts it on a more flexible scale that allows you to take shortcuts and attain the freedom you want, much sooner?
Well, there is such a shortcut of course, and there is even a story right from my own life that illustrates it.
The Unnecessary Fears of Teenager MMM
Since I was a kid, I’ve always had confidence issues. I was afraid to attend the birthday parties of other kids if there were too many strangers around. I was afraid to try new foods or join any teams. It took me a long time to become outgoing enough to start meeting girls in high school.
I compensated for these things by trying to be really good at everything, in an attempt to alleviate feelings of worry. Insisting on A+ grades even on the most pointless of assignments, just because I felt that “winning” was a safe defence against bullshit workloads.
I engaged in slightly compulsive weight training with a gang of close friends (and probably fellow misfits) until we were all well-dressed two hundred pound muscleheads, safe from the risk of bullying and gleefully (but needily) soaking up the status rewards of having fancier outer appearances. We would have all claimed it was for fun reasons or health reasons, but there was plenty of teenage insecurity driving up those barbell plates at 5:30 am as well.
Even as a young adult, my desire to build up a massive financial surplus was probably at least partly driven by a desire to protect myself from things that could go wrong – like unemployment or being stuck in a job that I no longer enjoyed.
I’m not ashamed to admit all of this, because you need to see your opponent clearly in order to beat it. I went through this journey of insecurity and came out in a good place – in the safety of a well-designed life with lots of advantages. But since then, as I have spent the subsequent thirteen years learning more about that life, and meeting new people with entirely different successful lives, I have come to realize something I wish I could have known earlier:
I had nothing to worry about in the first place.
It turns out I didn’t need all that money, because my needs and wants will never be more than I earn from my natural desire to do useful work. You don’t need to be a musclehead in order to have friends or meet attractive people or deter bullies – normal fitness is just fine and being friendly and open is much more attractive – whether your goal is finding love or running a powerful enterprise.
You don’t have to OVERACHIEVE at everything you do – you can be strategically great at things you truly enjoy, carve the rest of the unnecessary crap out of your life, and spend your days in a much healthier balance of work and play.
Many of us are focusing our energy on building up the wall of protective money and insurance policies around us to ever-greater heights, working one last year and funding one last insurance policy against an obscure risk when really our deficit is not in money. It’s in confidence.
And thus, it turns out that Money and Confidence are Interchangeable.
Figure 1: With no confidence, you need a shit-ton of money to feel comfortable. Find a smarter balance.