3 Questions about Money Everyone Needs to Answer to Find Peace

Real talk: This article isn't going to help you - but it might crystallise some of the problems you have with money and set you on a road to solving them. If you have answers to the three questions below, I think you'll have solved all your money woes. If not, join the club.

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Warren Buffett is worshipped for one reason and one reason only: He's rich. It's not because he's cool, he gets the babes or he has a six-pack, it's because he's so ludicrously wealthy it makes your head spin.

People see Buffet - a guy who looks like he's the star of a Christmas movie called 'Santa Goes to Wall Street' - and they reason if an old man can become super-rich by moving numbers around on a screen, maybe they can too. People hang on his every word, hoping he'll drop a nugget of wisdom to excel them to unimaginable wealth.

Personally, I'm not interested in Buffett – I don't think he produces much of value, he doesn't really say anything wise or interesting and boy oh boy his work bores me.

Trading and insurance? No thanks. Where's the joy? The passion? He famously doesn't even spend his fortune, still living in a mediocre house and driving a mediocre car. What's the point, Warren?

Anyway, I guess he can do what he likes. I phoned up his people and they told me he doesn't want to hear my opinions. Weird, but ok. 

Still, Buffett is very successful by all financial markers, but is that what life's about?

I'm not posing a rhetorical question here as a set up to give you my fascinating hot-take on cash, I'm seriously asking because I haven't got a clue.

So this is question one:

1) Is life really about becoming rich?

Money is a man-made thing, it's not real, we print it out of thin air and yet it's right up there with oxygen if we want to live. 

We all want it. No one is going to say no. Think of a time when you turned down money. Is there one? I doubt it.

At times I've been poor, very poor, the not-sure-how-I'm-going-to-buy-food-or-pay-the-rent style poor. It sucked and gave me anxiety. There's no nobility in poverty, as Jordan Belfort's Hollywood incarnation said in The Wolf of Wall Street.

But just because being poor makes you miserable doesn't mean being rich makes you happy. 

How many celebrity suicides need to happen before we realise money, fame and power aren't everything?

This, then, leads us on to question two:

2) If we intuitively know being rich won't make us happy, why do we chase it?

Again, not a rhetorical question, but a real, heartfelt plea for answers. I've spent half my life scoffing at those who chase money and the other half fantasising about piles of cash, mansions and luxury holidays.

So what's the deal?

When I was young, I asked my mother would she rather be rich and miserable or poor and unhappy. She told me "Rich and miserable."

For years I couldn't work out why she would make such a decision. I eventually realised she didn't want to be miserable, she just thought if she was rich somehow she could buy her way back to happiness. She didn't truly believe anyone could be miserable if they had all the money in the world. 

Life is complicated and I'm sure money compounds those complications. No one wins the lottery and their problems disappear, they probably just get new problems, possibly worse, more isolating problems with bigger consequences than before. 

Money doesn't care about you. It's not a comfort blanket on a panacea, it will bring into your life what is already there. 

I mean, I'm guessing. I'm looking at the evidence. As Will Smith said:

"Money and success don't change people, they merely amplify what is already there."

If money is simply an amplifier, is it soulless? Especially considering it can help a lot of people. So question three is this:

3) Can money help others but not yourself? 

My relationship with money is so fucked up, if it were a parent I'd have to go to therapy. I was brought up to believe wealth meant corruption, having money was tacit proof you were a bad person. 

This was because - you guessed it - I grew up in a poor family, who were, by the way, endlessly obsessed with the stuff.

Being poor meant I got no handouts as I watched friends get bankrolled through university, I saw them given deposits to get on the property ladder, given cars when they passed their driving tests and even given a few thousand to travel the world on a whim.

I'm not complaining (anymore), but it did make me realise you want to be rich so you can provide for your children. 

Money might not soothe the soul, but helping and providing sure can.

They say a marine has two salaries, the meagre paycheque he gets in his bank account and the psychological payment of pride, service, sacrifice and brotherhood.

No one becomes a marine for the money. This is the same as many athletes. Forget football and the 100-metre sprint for a minute, think of the thousands of athletes dedicating their lives to sports no one even watches. Do you know who is the world champion of downhill skiing, judo or archery? I sure don't.

But someone somewhere is bankrolling those athletes. Sponsors, philanthropists, parents.  

Maybe having money means you can provide and that in turn means happiness. Money is best used when it is given away?

Being rich isn't a passion

The idea of being rich doesn't draw you as your passions do, it's more an empty desire, like chocolate cravings or the need for a cigarette. I'm convinced for most of us, it's not money we want, it's the feelings we think money will give us; happiness, inner peace, admiration, attraction.

Surely all these things are fulfilled by the process, not the byproduct of earnings from the process? 

Therefore, maybe we should not even entertain the idea of money but instead, entertain only our passions and calling? Only that way can we find all the things we hope money will get us.

I'll leave you with some words by David Foster Wallace on the follies of worshipping money. This topic confuses me, I have no answers, but he seems to sum it up well when he said this:

"If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings."

Amen.