3695: What It Feels Like to No Longer Worry About Money by Joshua Fields Millburn of The Minimalists on Money Mindset

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Finance Daily, What It Feels Like to No Longer Worry About Money by Joshua Fields Millburn of TheMinimalists.com And I'm Justin Malek, I read articles and give some commentary to go along with it to give us both a little reminder about what's important every day of the year. So with that, let's get right to it as we optimize your life.

[00:00:26] What It Feels Like to No Longer Worry About Money by Joshua Fields Millburn of TheMinimalists.com Growing up in a poor neighborhood with a single mom was not, as they say, child's play. Drinking and drugs and familial anarchy permeated the walls of our cockroach-infested apartment. Not to mention all the baggage that comes with that lifestyle. Discontent, anxiety, uncertainty, depression.

[00:00:56] To add insult to injury, we were broke. Like flat broke, dead broke, poor as church mice. I'd have to remove my shoes to count how many times our electricity got shut off on Warren Street. By the time adulthood was at my doorstep, I thought if I made enough money, I could circumvent mom's path. I could somehow achieve happiness or at least finance it. So I spent my 20s traversing the corporate ladder.

[00:01:24] Fresh out of high school, I skipped the whole college route and instead found an entry-level sales job with a corporation that let me work six, sometimes seven days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day. I wasn't great at it, but I learned how to get by and then how to get better. I bought a big screen TV, a surround sound system, and a stack of DVDs with my first big commission check.

[00:01:51] By 19, I was making over $50,000 a year, twice as much as I'd ever seen mom bring home, but I was spending even more racking up the credit card debt. I obviously needed the three M's in my life, make more money. So I worked harder, much harder, and after a series of promotions, store manager at 22, regional manager at 24,

[00:02:16] I was, at age 27, the youngest director in the company's 140-year history. I'd become a fast-track career man, a personage of sorts, which meant that if I worked really hard and if everything happened exactly like it was supposed to, then I could be a vice president by 32, a senior vice president by 35 or 40, and a C-level executive, CFO, COO, CEO, by 45 or 50,

[00:02:46] followed, of course, by the golden parachute. I'd have it made then. I'd just have to be miserable for a few more years to drudge through the corporate politics and bureaucracy that I knew so well. Just keep climbing and don't look down. And so I didn't look down, I looked up. And what I saw was terrifying. You shouldn't ask a man who earns $20,000 a year how to make $100,000, a successful businessman once told me.

[00:03:15] Perhaps this apathem holds true for discontented men and happiness as well. All these guys I emulated, the men I most wanted to be like, the VPs and executives, were not happy. In fact, they were miserable. Don't get me wrong, they weren't bad people. But their careers had changed them, altered them physically and emotionally. They'd explode with anger over insignificant inconveniences.

[00:03:43] They'd scowl with furrowed brows and complain constantly as if the world was conspiring against them. Or they'd feign sham optimism, which fooled no one. They were on their second or third or even fourth marriages. And they almost all seemed lonely, utterly alone in a sea of yes-men and yes-women. Don't even get me started on their health issues. I'm talking serious health issues.

[00:04:11] Obesity, gout, cancer, heart attacks, high blood pressure, you name it. These guys were plagued with every ailment associated with stress and anxiety. Some even wore it as a kind of morbid badge of honor, as if it was noble or courageous or something. A co-worker, a good friend of mine on a similar trajectory, had his first heart attack when I was 28. He had just turned 30.

[00:04:39] But I was going to be the exception, right? Really, what makes me so different? Simply saying I was different didn't make me different. Everyone says they're different. Says they'll do things differently. Says things will be different when I'm in charge. Just need to sacrifice a few more weeks, months, years until I make it there. But then we get there, wherever there may be. And then what? We don't work less.

[00:05:09] If anything, we work more. More hours, more demand, more responsibility. We are dogs thrashing in the collars of our own obligations. On-call like doctors, fumbling through emails and texts and phone calls on the go, tethered to our technology. But unlike doctors, we're not saving anyone. We can't even save ourselves. You see, money didn't grant these men happiness.

[00:05:37] Money didn't bring them a sense of security. The pursuit of money, the blind quest for more, crippled them, transmogrified them, actually made them less secure. I knew guys who earned half a million a year, but who were such a financial mess that they couldn't get a loan for a Toyota Corolla. And all these men had one other thing in common. Many moons ago, they too thought they'd be different.

[00:06:05] Like them, I figured once I achieved a certain level of success, as soon as I'd made it, I no longer need to worry about money. But the truth is that, back on Warren Street, it wasn't the lack of money that made us poor. No, mom and I were poor because of poor decisions. Repeated poor decisions. These days, I earn far fewer greenbacks, but my decisions are better. Last year, as a 31-year-old indie author,

[00:06:35] I brought home less money than my 19-year-old commission check earning self. Way less, actually. But I also paid off debt, traveled the country, felt more secure. Most importantly, I didn't worry about money. So I guess this is what it feels like to no longer worry about money. A feeling I didn't need to earn a pile of cash to feel. It turns out that repeated good decisions, not money,

[00:07:04] allow us to let go of the worry that plagues us. Once I let go of the worry, I had nothing to worry about. You just listened to the post titled, What it feels like to no longer worry about money. By Joshua Fields Millburn of TheMinimalists.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. You've heard me talk about how I started tracking every dollar in and out of my life back in 2010.

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[00:09:25] That's 15% off at oneskin.co with code OFD. After your purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support the show and tell them we sent you. Thank you to Joshua. This one mentions something we don't say enough for a podcast about money. We tend to assume the worry just goes away once the number gets big enough. Make it to that next income level and then you'll finally relax. But his whole point

[00:09:53] is that it doesn't work like that. And if you've ever listened to the other narration show I host, Optimal Living Daily, you've definitely heard this before. But a part that stuck with me is when he realized that back when he was broke growing up, it wasn't really the lack of money that made them poor. It was repeated poor decisions. And later earning way less as an author, he actually worried less because the decisions got better.

[00:10:22] It's a good point. And for me, it's true too. The stress comes more from habits and choices rather than the actual amount coming in. More income just gives you a bigger budget to make the same mistakes with if the decisions underneath don't change. So if money is a source of worry for you, I don't think the fix is only to earn more, it's to take a closer look at the decisions. So thank you again to Joshua

[00:10:51] and thank you for being here every day and learning along with me. Have a great rest of your day and I'll see you tomorrow as usual where optimal life awaits.