What It Feels Like to No Longer Worry About Money

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.

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. I shit you not.

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 twenties traversing the corporate ladder.

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, ten to twelve 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. 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—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, 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 a hundred grand,”…[Read more on The Minimalists]

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THE THINGS WE ARE PREPARED TO WALK AWAY FROM

Courtesy of The Minimalists

What are you prepared to walk away from? This oft-unasked question shapes one of the most important principles in my life.

We are all familiar with the age-old hypothetical situation in which our home is burning and we must grab only the things that’re most important to us. Of course most of us would not dash into the inferno and reach for material things first; we’d ensure the safety of our loved ones and pets. Then, once our loved ones were safe, we’d grab only the irreplaceable things. Say, photo albums, computer hard drives, family heirlooms. Everything else would be lost in the conflagration.

I tend to look at this situation a tad differently, though, taking the hypothetical a bit further…

There is a scene in Heat in which Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) says, “Allow nothing in your life that you cannot walk out on in 30 seconds flat.” Although my life isn’t anything like McCauley’s (he’s the movie’s bad guy), I share his sentiment (for the most part). That is to say, almost everything I bring into my life—material possessions, ideas, habits, and even relationships—I must be able to walk away from at a moment’s notice.

Many of you will disagree with me because this ideology might sound crass or insensitive to you, but I’d like to posit to you that it is actually the opposite: our preparedness to walk away is the ultimate form of caring.

If I purchase new possessions, I need to make certain that I don’t assign them too much meaning. Being able to walk away means that I won’t ever get too attached to my belongings. And being unattached to stuff… Read more on The Minimalists