Money. We’re all obsessed with money, stressed about money, and trying to get more money. Money makes the world go round, keeps you above water, and helps you get a new shirt from time to time. But the amount you really need is all about perspective and I bet you don’t need as much as you think you do.
Look, we all want money. You want enough to take care of your family, get yourself out of trouble, and save for the inevitable rainy days. You should be able to meet your obligations and have enough left over to eat in a nice restaurant, give to charity, or buy a miniature pony to cut the lawn. You should also have enough to buy something stupid from time to time, without your spouse worrying and calling you an idiot. If you’re a forty-year-old man and you want to buy an Xbox, you should buy an Xbox. You don’t need your wife calling you a moron. You’ll find that out in two weeks’ time, when you realize you don’t have any time for an Xbox because you’re a forty-year-old man.
As the old saying goes, “Money can’t buy you happiness,” but it actually does for a while. It’s true that the joy money affords you levels off at some point, but there’s a lot of happiness to be had in the space between worrying if you can afford to get your teeth fixed and deciding whether you should buy a limo with a hot tub in it.
There are times in your life when money is truly not important at all. When you’re young and poor you don’t need much money because you’re already rich. You have freedom and you’ll never have it again. There were times when I was young that I lived on five dollars a day. That’s what I made at the comedy club each night and it was enough. Who needs to worry about getting only five dollars when my favorite bagel with cream cheese cost three dollars?
I loved being young and poor. No possessions, no worries, driving around in an awful car. Remember your glorious first car? I had a Toyota Corolla and it was all kinds of bad. For starters it was baby-shit orange; that’s what it said in the brochure. It didn’t start half the time but it was light, so I could get a friend to push it, pop the clutch, jump-start it, and away we’d go.
I bought it for twelve hundred dollars that I made myself working as a busboy in a restaurant called the Orchards. My uniform was designed to make me look like a leaf, with green pants, apron, and bow tie. I would wake up in the dark, walk to work, and pour water for businessmen every day, all summer long. It was humiliating, but at the end I had my own car and I was free.
Free to drive to the beach. Free to pick up my girlfriend from her work at the ice-cream shop. Free to enjoy my life with less money in the bank than I spend on lunch today.
If you have a cheap car, enjoy it. You can do anything you want. If you like Star Wars and find a plastic Darth Vader head, glue it right to the hood. You can’t do that with a leased Mercedes. They won’t let you. You can with a used Datsun. You can throw on a Chewbacca mask, jump in the Vadermobile, and drive the wrong way down the freeway. Everyone will get out of your way because they know you’re poor and have nothing to lose.
Those days are long gone for me. I don’t have that freedom anymore. I made a horrible business decision. I got married and had two children. I love them, but they just keep growing and getting bigger and asking for more and more money. At this point it’s like I’m living with two unemployed coke addicts.
They come into my office every morning: “Hey, can we have some more money?”
“What happened to the change from yesterday?”
“I don’t know … the economy, am I right?”
No, they’re not right, and now I have no freedom at all, because their lives depend on me. Every single day. And I can’t tell anyone about it. I just have to swallow the stress and slowly lose my hair. I can’t wake my daughter up at two o’clock in the morning, sit on the end of her bed, and say, “Hey, honey. It’s me. Didn’t mean to wake you, but do you ever feel like you’re not going to make it? Like you just can’t do it anymore? Ah, forget it, get some sleep, I’ll see you at breakfast. If I’m still here.”
And I spoil them. I spoil the hell out of them. First off, they’re two girls so I don’t really have any control over it, they own me. Second, my father didn’t spoil us. He had money, but he didn’t want to spend it on children. His philosophy was, “I made it, I’m going to use it.” He didn’t do anything that kids wanted to do. Can you imagine living in a time when the children weren’t in charge? It sounds like a magical time to be alive. He took us to an amusement park once, saw the line, and said, “Just look at it through the fence, you get the idea.”
My daughters make me take them out for ice cream three times a week and I do it, like an idiot. I’m not making great people, they’re pretty entitled. They walk into that ice-cream shop with their thirteen-year-old friends and demand samples with those little sample spoons as if they are ice-cream queens.
“Let me try that one.… No. I think you can do better. Let me try that one.”
My father took us out for ice cream once. “Everyone gets one scoop of vanilla, no cones, put out your hands.”
We were near tears, like grateful characters out of Oliver Twist. “Thank you, Father. This is the most special of days.”
You would think that if you made enough money, you could buy that freedom back that you had when you were young, but you’re wrong. The more money you make, the more you spend on stupid stuff and the more you grow your life into something bigger, and that bigger life needs even more money. Ultimately you end up more stressed than when you started out.
The trick is to live a small, simple life, but for some reason we aren’t built that way. We always want more. And it’s stupid.
If you see the word “luxury,” run for the hills. There is a whole economy designed to separate people from their money. And it’s a con job. Do you need a Mercedes? No. Do you need a thousand-dollar bottle of wine? Hell, no. A private jet? Okay, maybe.
A private jet is worth it. It really is. They’re a gazillion dollars, but you never have to go through airport security again! What a dream. I’ve been on them. They’re amazing. They have movies and drawers filled with snacks. They even have a drawer underneath the seat that has even more snacks. And the seats are so comfortable and the planes are so fast. And the pilots are paid more so they’re happier and look like they really enjoy their jobs and don’t want to die.
Yeah, if you can get enough money for a private jet, you should do it. Even if it means not having any money left over for anything else, it’s well worth it. You’ll live in a studio apartment, sleep on a futon, and eat Amy’s frozen burritos. You’ll wear clothes from Costco, the only jewelry you’ll own is a bracelet your daughter made you, and you won’t own a car. But who cares? You’ll have a jet!
That would be a pretty great life.
The rest is a joke. The luxury hotel, the designer clothes, the luxury gym, the expensive seats at the stadium, it’s all a lie. A watch for two hundred thousand dollars? You’re nuts. College tuition for half a million dollars? Get lost.
And you know who you’re surrounded by when you pay for a hotel room that costs two thousand a night and eat in restaurants serving thousand-dollar caviar? A lot of rich duds. They’re no fun. No one plays music. No one has real conversations. They just walk around with labels on their goofy shirts and look at what labels you’re wearing and talk about interest rates and taxes.
And they do annoying things, like they wear all-white outfits so they can go summer. I can’t wear all white. If I wear a white shirt, I sweat through it in twenty minutes. It looks like I’m smuggling turkey gravy under my armpits.
And they summer. Do you summer? I don’t summer. Summer happens and I deal with it.
Here’s a secret that no one tells you. After all the money, and all the wealth, do you know what a lot of super-rich people are? They’re bored. They are truly, undoubtedly bored. When you have so much money that you can do anything and you have already done everything, there’s nothing left to do.
So why is this a goal? So you can make so much money that you end up isolated from everybody else? You go from your private helicopter to your private island to your mansion completely alone? What fun is that? We’re only here once, you have to mix it up and get out there.
Look, I’m not Pollyannaish about it. Sometimes when I’m in a crowd of people I wish I had my own helicopter. Not just to escape: I fantasize about turning it upside down and chopping everybody’s head off. But for the most part, people are pretty great.
We’re all the same, no matter how much money you have in the bank. If you have friends, family, and community, something creative to do, and you are kind to people and create a world that you are happy to live in, then money is not that important. It truly isn’t. If you have any of that, you are already rich.
But man, if you can, get a private jet!