The Problem with money

This article isn’t meant to be controversial, just hear me out first. How come something we use every day and all the time can prove to be so problematic in the end. I recall the famous Justin Timberlake movie (Title: In Time) in which there was a society where there was no money but rather time, your lifetime was what you used to pay for whatever you wanted, and you worked for more time. I think in such a society it really puts things into perspective, if you were giving up your life for all those things you dream of, do you really think its worth it? In that society they weren’t working hard to earn money so they could buy fancy cars or jewelry, they were working hard in order to see another day, literally.

In a lot of ways our society today is similar, we are trading our time in exchange for a paycheck, except that we aren’t trying to live longer but rather live more comfortably. You are giving all those years of your life in order to buy that car, or that house and society has conditioned us to love and to seek for those things endlessly by making everything revolve around money. Everything can be bought and everything is sold, everything has to deal with money and even your freedom comes with a bill attached to it. Well let me start by saying money is a good thing, but like everything else it does also have a negative side to it so here I want to give you some insights about money you should be wary of. Some may be relevant to you while others may be totally irrelevant, so take this with a grain of salt.

Money can’t solve all problems

The truth is that we’ll like to believe that money can really solve all of our problems, that we can magically fix everything that is broken with the right amount, but in reality there are certain problems that money can’t fix or for which there is no amount of money which could measure up to that. It is easy to try and find a solution to every problem with money, like the saying goes

When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail

In the same way, when you have money, you feel like everything can be done with it. Every time you are faced with a difficult situation, you always think about how to solve it with money, when your friend tells you he is going through a difficult time, you calculate how much his issue might cost you, when you can’t get along with a coworker, you think about what you could give that person to make that person like you, and many other circumstances. In fact there are problems which can never be fixed by money no matter how much money you throw at it, things like; emotional problems, cancer, death. You might delay the issue just for a little while, but you can’t fix them permanently. I’ll advise you don’t always turn to money as the default solution to everything but rather consider alternative solutions which are more sustainable in the long run, since money fluctuates, fixing problems with money won’t always guarantee them not coming back in the future.

Creating Happiness

Whoever said money can’t buy you happiness was only partially true. If you have ever seen a paper burn, you would have noticed that it burns very rapidly in an instant, now imagine trying to maintain a flame all night with just papers, you’ll have to burn a bunch of papers to keep the fire going all night. This is the kind of happiness that money produces, it produces happiness which burns bright for just a short while and then vanishes leaving you wanting even more, except that your money isn’t unlimited, you will eventually run out of it. Paper might not be good for keeping a fire all night but it's very effective in lighting up some wood which could last longer, so money is very effective in building long-lasting happiness, but it should never be the source itself of your happiness.

Having much money is great, it permits you to do a lot of things, travel the world, own great things and build a very big family, the happiness comes from all the things you were able to accomplish and not just the fact of having money in your bank account. The happiness you get from having friends and family has more value than the happiness you get from knowing you have a huge bank account, the happiness you get from socializing with your friends and going on dates with pretty girls is more than the happiness you’ll get from buying the most expensive car in the world. One thing people never realize is that when you buy all those fancy things trying to look for some happiness, you still expect people to see them on you and somehow give you validation, nobody buys a Lamborghini because it goes fast, they all do it because they want to be noticed on the streets. So instead of trying to hide yourself behind some jewelry, so people appreciate you, why not just go talk to those persons for them to like you for who you are.

Money is addictive

There is a threshold beyond which money stops solving our problems and instead becomes addictive, you can’t control your desire to have even more money. You already have all what you could possibly want in life and yet, you still yearn for much more, you can’t even place a word on what it is that you want but all you know is that you have to keep making money in order to get something you can’t even imagine. Wise men know when to quit and start enjoying their lives, they know when they have had enough and its time for other persons to have their turns, they do so before becoming numb to all the pleasure that money procures to them and look for another hook. Money can be very addictive and put you into competition with people who aren’t even in your lane, you start trying to be the richest man on earth with no valid reason. Why are you trying to become a billionaire, what could you possibly do with a billion?

Slaves to Money

Asking a smoker to stop smoking is something very irrational to do, asking a drug addict to stop taking drugs is the same. Once you are hooked up on those products, your free will isn’t what it is anymore, even with your best efforts, you can’t resist the temptation of taking another cigarette or drugs. I won’t put money into that same category but its not too far from it all, there is a point where we become slaves to money and we are forced to continue making money, at that point we are no longer the ones who control the money but rather the money controls us. This could happen in situations like trying to maintain a expensive lifestyle or when we’ve accumulated problems all through the years, money then takes away our freedom and we are forced to work in order to live.

Loads on your shoulders

The more money you have the more problems you accumulate, with great powers comes great responsibilities. The money comes with the problems so don’t worry about looking for them, either you are trying to protect that money from preying eyes or you are trying to manage the inflow in cash, avoid taxes which try to rip you off or avoid all the people aim for that money in your inner circle, its a perpetual fight you have to deal with continuously. You have to ensure that the money is safe and that the bank won’t try to hack your account or overcharge you, desperately trying to avoid problems which may take away money from you and so on. The more money enters, the more your responsibilities accrue, and the more people will be trying to take that money away from. People who don’t have much money only have to worry about a very few things, health, food and shelter thats it, but a rich person has to trade those worries for many more, problems coming from all possible angles.

Emotional Issues

This is an area which is often underestimated but can really cause a lot of damage in most people, when you don’t have money you mostly worry about obtaining that money because your life depends on it. Once you get that money, you are now open to all sorts of problems which you may have never faced before, one of which are emotional problems. Now that you don’t have to worry about what to eat, you have to start asking yourself how you feel about all sorts of things. Depending on how wealthy you are, you may have to deal with betrayals, heart breaks, disappointments, setbacks and other such tribulations which are things you may have never dealt with before. Before it was all about you but now other persons entered the equation, and you can’t always tell what their true intentions are.

Thanks for reading!

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