Money can buy you 99.94% of all things… so why do we hate it so much?
“There are some things money can’t buy.”
I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that. I’d probably have a down-payment on a nice inner-city town house by now.
What gives me the craps though is the tone that it usually comes with. It’s the verbal equivalent of a wagging finger.
And it often comes when I’m telling a story about a deal that went well, or this nice thing or experience I’ve been able to buy for myself because a deal’s gone well.
“Well, you know Jon, there are some things money can’t buy.”
Get stuffed. Stop trying to bring me down. Get off my cloud, man.
There is some wisdom in that statement, for sure. But nowhere near as much as most people think. Nowhere near as much as we’ve been brainwashed to believe.
So you know me, I’m a man of science. I like to see the data. So I did a little research.
When I did a search for “things money can’t buy” I came up with a list of 10. Sometimes the list got up to 50.
(At least according to the memes generated by bored middle-American house wives.)
Take this comprehensive list I found at DIY Feng Shui . com
There’s some impressive scholarship right there.
Some of the items on the list seem a little spurious. Clean arteries? I’m pretty sure I could hire a dietician and a cook and have that one sorted pretty quickly. A good hair day? Likewise, just get your own personal hair dresser.
But let me be generous. Let’s assume that there are 50 things that money can’t by.
Now according to the Oxford English dictionary, there are 174,000 words in the English language. Just over half of them are nouns. So about 87,000.
So of the 87,000 things in existence, 50 of them cannot be bought.
That’s 0.06% of things that money can’t buy.
That means that money can buy 99.94% of all things.
See where I’m going with this? Money is powerful. There’s no hiding from this fact. Anyone who tells you any different has their head in the clouds/arse.
But then come back to that list of 50. Many of those things – peace of mind, a clear conscience, a sense of purpose, patience – they come from within. These are things you cultivate within yourself. In that sense they’re free.
So money can’t buy some things that are free. Well, no kidding.
But what if we go right to the top of the tree? – to the things that are so powerfully unobtainable by money that even the Beatles are writing songs about it. Love, Happiness, Respect.
Even then I’d argue, that these things are a whole lot easier to achieve when you have money.
Now of course money can’t buy you love directly, unless your definition of love involves streaming video and a credit card, but mine doesn’t.
But I have found that my wealth has given me the space in life to cultivate my relationships with my loved ones. It’s given me the freedom to spend quality time with them whenever I want.
With time, care and attention, the flowers of love grow. But money has given me the power to use my time in the way I want to use it, and I have used to it to fertilise the flowerbeds of love.
Are you going to tell me it’s easier to building deep and loving relationships when you’re working 80hr weeks on minimum wage just to survive?
Same goes for happiness. Money is not the same as happiness, but can help you cultivate the conditions in which happiness flourishes – a sense of autonomy, meaningful purpose, an optimism about the future.
These things can be easier to call into your life if you have the wealth to back up your intentions.
And respect and self-worth? I’ve worked shitty jobs where I was bossed around mini-dictators, and I’m telling you, it’s was much harder to hold a sense of self-worth then than it is now, where I’m my own boss, I do work I love, and I call the shots.
My wealth gives me the ability to say no to the things that don’t align with my values. It’s a much harder call when you’re struggling to get by.
For me, money is a tool. So why do we criticise the tool?
It’s like one time I told my wife I was going to Bunnings to buy a hammer so I could build a dog-house.
She said, “There’s more to life than hammers, Jon.”
“yes, but you asked me to build a do—“
“There are some things hammers can’t build Jon.”
The point is so trivial I wonder why we give so much energy to reinforcing it in our culture.
How many people do you actually know who have mistaken tool for purpose? How many people do you actually know who have fallen into the trap of thinking that money is everything?
I don’t know any.
I’m sure it happens, but the risk is totally out of proportion to how vehemently we pour water on anyone’s dreams of wealth and financial freedom.
Here’s a thought for you…
The space-reptile illuminati have brainwashed us into thinking is money is evil – to energetically repel it at every turn, because without financial freedom,
- we are chained to the machine,
- we lack self-respect and so we become servile,
- we don’t have time for deep relationships and so we feel a need to work out our frustrations by working harder
- we are miserable because screw humans, stupid monkeys.
And just for laughs we’ll make them feel righteous about how much they hate money.
I don’t know if any of that is true, but the next time someone tells me, “money can’t buy everything, Jon,” I’m going to take their temperature to make sure they’re not a reptile.
Agree or disagree?
Is money a solve-everything solution?
If it is, why does it get such a bad wrap?