The Truth Behind F*ck You Money

When it comes to making money, people fall into two categories that I’ve noticed as they’re trying to ascend the ladder. The first rung of the ladder is trying to achieve financial security. You know, getting to that point where you’re not really having to worry so much about money on your day to day basis. You have your basis covered. The next rung would be financial freedom. Right now, you can buy back your time. You can go do what you want, when you want, where you want, with who you want. Right? The final rung.

So I guess maybe there’s three rungs. I think I started by saying there’s two, but let’s say there’s three. There’s more. But these are the three that I noticed the most. Like, first is financial security, then financial freedom. The third one is fuck you money. And not everybody really strives for fuck you money, but a lot of people do. And the circles that I roll in these days, a lot of people, they’ve achieved fuck you money.

And really, the idea of f you money is just that you, you no longer work. There’s nothing anybody else can really do to you that you, you can’t solve with money. You don’t have to take any opportunities or take slack from anybody. You’re like, you’re just autonomous. You can do what you want to do. Another way of thinking about this is that you’re post economics. Money just doesn’t really play a factor into anything that you do anymore and how you think. And there’s no amount of money that people can really give you to buy you.

You’re just like, I don’t need this. I have enough, right? And a lot of times when people are talking about this idea of fu money, it’s this large sum of money. Like, I need to have 50 million, 100 million, $200 million. So I can be post economics and get to that point where nobody can buy me. Right? Well, I was thinking about this the other day and the fact that I feel even though I have more money today than I’ve ever had in my life, I feel less ability to say fu than I did even when I lived back in that van. And this is a really interesting thing because what I come to realize is that Fu money is less about a particular sum of money and more about a state of mind. A way of thinking about your finances, a way of thinking about your time and your relation to the world. You know, back when I was living in the van, or even pre that, like when I was just traveling around, climbing and working in climbing gyms.
I was already fu money at that point because I was living the life that I wanted to live, completely independent of money. Now, I was running up that bill with, you know, with debt and that wasn’t sustainable long term. But I was at that point where money really wasn’t playing a factor in any of the decisions I was making. So fu money in a way is really just about your state of mind. And if you’re willing to live with the consequences of your decisions, fu money is achievable with far, far less than you think. Now, what I mean by that is like the consequences of me having fu money when I was living and working in gyms and not having very much and using credit to subsidize my life. The consequence was that eventually came due, the bill came due, and I found myself having to live in the back of that van by default because I had no other choice. That was the consequence of me having fu money, or lack thereof, we’ll say, right? And I was okay with that consequence at that time.
But then it morphed and I was like, I don’t want this long term, right? I was no longer, as I got older, willing to live with the consequences in that way. The societal repercussions of, you know, the impressions it makes on my friends or my family or my inability to have an impact on my community. Like those things, those consequences of my lack of fu money I was no longer willing to pay the price of. But there was a period of time in my life where those consequences, I was fine living with them and that’s how I got to the van. But the interesting thing that I want you to consider here today is like, what maybe you, what is the sum of money that you really need to get to the place where you’re, you know, financially secure, financially free, or at that point of eff you money, where for you, you’re like, I’m okay living with the consequences here moving forward. And maybe, for instance, what that could be is like, you know, I have a couple hundred thousand saved up and I don’t need to have millions of dollars in the bank. The consequence though is that, you know, maybe your cat gets sick at some point and you can’t afford it and if you’re okay with that consequence, then you have enough where you are. I wasn’t okay with that particular consequence.
But, you know, everybody has different strokes for different folks. And like you might be just be different in what you’re willing to endure in that situation. But getting clear on like, what are the consequences that you’re prepared to accept or not accept helps you triangulate towards a number that you can work backwards from and say, that is the number I need to achieve to get to that place of financial stability, that place of financial freedom, that place of fuck you. You can’t tell me what to do anymore. Cause I don’t care about the consequences. Cause that’s really all fu. Money is at the end of the day is like the ability to say, I don’t care what the consequence is. So hope this brings you a way of thinking about it.

Maybe that’s a slightly different than you’ve considered in the past. Hopefully this brought you a little bit of value. If it did, do me a favor, leave it a review, leave it a like, shoot me a DM and say, hey, that was great, I’d really appreciate it. We’re trying to get more ratings and reviews on Apple, on Spotify and on YouTube so that we can continue growing the podcast and expanding its reach and hopefully spreading these ideas to more and more entrepreneurs to help them maximize their return on life. So if you would do that, it would mean the world to me. I thank you for being here. Thank you for taking the time to leave a review, and we’ll catch you guys in the next episode.