Money As Energy

Money is energy. It buys food, goods, services (all different forms of energy). We never really own money, yet the more you possess, the more "energy" you control. Viewing money as energy, makes it easier to moderate spending. E.g., if you're running low on gas, would you suddenly take a cross-country road trip without filling up the tank? Yet, people “running low” on money frequently take out risky loans, go into debt, and continue poor habits.

When Money Hurts

I had a great friend in college drop out because he couldn’t afford tuition. It hurt. When I moved to the Bay Area (I lived in Berkeley at the time), I ate pancakes and Pop-Tarts every other night to save money. How many stories like this have you heard? What about someone who can't afford proper medical treatment? These heart-breaking stories make us hate money. The city of San Francisco is notorious for people begging in the streets. I witness it every day and feel sympathetic every time. These are hard problems.

Is Money Evil?

Money isn’t “evil”. What people do with money or how people obtain money can be embarrassingly evil, but money itself, as pure energy is just money. Philanthropists do amazing things with money. They spend the same stuff. Possessing money gives you options. That’s it. If you control mountains of cash, you can choose to do absolutely nothing with it—leave it in safe, stuff it into a mattress, bury it on a deserted island and paint a big “X” over the spot so you don’t forget, your choice. You’re no less of a person if you’re penniless—you simply have fewer options than someone who controls more "energy". 

Making Money Work For You

If you fill a bucket with water and the bucket has a whole in the bottom, you can run the water as long as you like but the bucket will never remain full. Would you waste time doing this, trying to fill a bucket with a giant whole in the bottom? Amazingly, people choose to live like this—working 9-5 jobs so they can pay off debt, ultimately trapped in a loop like our poorly designed bucket. The way to make money work for you is to patch the whole in the bucket. Maybe you get a second bucket, build a faster faucet, two faucets, three buckets, etc. If you’re not scaling, it’s time to rethink your bucket. 

How Investors View Money

Investors look at money as energy used to generate more money. There’s a physics law called Conservation of Energy that states energy can neither be created nor destroyed. With money, investors bend the rule. This is why you read articles about the “rich getting richer”—they’re putting money to work. The money “the rich” control (working capital) generates more money than initially invested and in some perverse, physics-breaking economy, it works.

Summary

I see money as energy. It doesn't dictate worth, you decide that--rather, money provides options. The secret to making money work for you is avoiding "hamster wheels" going nowhere.  Instead, look for ways to scale. That's how entrepreneurs and investors do it, and in time they're rewarded. You don't need a fortune to make a fortune but you must understand "the rules". Businesses and people rely on money to survive. It's energy flowing from one pocket to another, not having it can hurt, sometimes it makes people do horrible things, other times it's donated to fund research. However you view money, it's not going away anytime soon. Those are my two cents, hope it was worth it.