Chasing Wealth Without Going Nuts [from the archives]
“No matter how rich we get, we will always want more.” So what can we do about it?
“No matter how rich we get, we will always want more.” So what can we do about it?
Before we jump into it, check out these poll results from Instagram & Twitter:
“Is money the epitome of wealth?” 92% said no…
“Do you think personal wealth is important (qualities and mindset)?” 100% said yes…
“Wealth is a state of mind as well as a monetary state of being” 68% said yes…
sample size = our social media audience
Although we’re on a mission to build financial wealth, part of the journey includes adopting a mindset that best guards us against the darkdarkissues which stem from solely: chasing money & material things while disregarding personal wealth (traits, habits and mindset). Often we are conditioned from a young age to believe that becoming rich solves all problems and is the only key to a happy life. How wrong were we?
Over the last 5 years, 3 of which was spent at university and the other 2 working in banking, my attitude towards chasing wealth completely changed. I spend a lot of time with various types of wealthy: old money, new money, fast money, slow money, temporary money, hustle money, and probably a ton more. One common denominator has been money alone has not solved all problems and yielded a happy life. In some cases it created more headaches than it solved i.e. lack of meaningful relationships & friendships, feelings of emptiness & purposelessness to name a few. In other cases, the great chase led to stress-induced illnesses and in the worst cases led to suicide.
Let’s illustrate this statement: personal wealth is just as important as financial wealth, it’s the best hedge…
Example 1: a colleague recently attended the funeral of his ex-boss, a high flying banker who earned a 7 figure salary still in his 30s. Money and things weren’t sufficient.
Example 2: there is a certain emptiness that arises when the initial euphoria of reaching a financial goal calms down. This hole is filled by the adrenaline of setting new goals and the emptiness gets deeper and harder to fill the more you smash the goals. Over time, one can become increasingly desensitised altogether which easily increases the risk of things like purposelessness creeping through.
Example 3: money comes and goes, is made and lost but personal wealth is durable, entrenched from within and doesn’t have to be contingent on the economics of dealmaking. For instance, you can lose money on a trade or lose your job but if you have a good toolkit i.e. personal wealth, the bouncebackability can be epic (yes we just made that word up).
The most telling example is probably something we all observe from time to time, happy less-rich people and sadder rich people. As we chase becoming happy rich people, setting a personalised foundation of contentment (Think Maslow’s Hierarchy type -ish) i.e. re-conditioning oneself to be satisfied with simple/cheapish things like warmth/food/working out/good company and separating this from the aggressiveness and intensity one displays in the financial realm. By doing so, we guard ourself from the fact that no matter how rich we get, we will always want more. Discipline, persistence and mental strength have been the most useful keys here from the personal wealth savings account.
In a nutshell, the point is solely having an insatiable desire to stack racks without having a solid base of personal wealth opens us up to risks which may trigger issues in the future or the even the present.
To mitigate this risk, we ensure we pursue personal wealth with the same intensity & rigour in which we chase £££ so that we can draw upon it whenever we need to… We try our best to make the parallel evident in our deployments but finance is louder so bear with us in advance. Cheers, peace out.
@nizzynomics
Until next time 🥂
(written by a 24 y/o London based investment banker)
*now 26 y/o London based investment banker