Money is a funny thing.

It consumes an enormous amount of our energy and attention in adulthood, but very few of us learn anything about it in childhood or adolescence.

If we're lucky, our parents teach us a few of the basics (and maybe we get a boring course or two on it in school).

But we're pretty much left on our own when it comes to one of the most influential elements in our lives.

I'm 34 years old and I've spent a lot of time thinking about money over the last few years. I've had conversations with thousands of people all across the financial spectrum, from those just scraping by to ultra-billionaires living with incomprehensible wealth.

Today, I'd like to share what I've learned...

34 short lessons on money from 34 years:

(For a deeper exploration on many of these lessons, you should order a copy of my NYT bestselling book, ​The 5 Types of Wealth​)

Being Mega-Rich is wildly overrated. There are really only four basic levels of financial wealth: Poor, Not Poor, Rich, and Mega-Rich. Each incremental leap has significantly deteriorating benefits. Being Not Poor is dramatically better than being Poor, but being Mega-Rich may actually be worse than being Rich. This has to do with the types of problems at each level and the ability of money to solve them. All the major money-solved problems are eliminated at the Rich level, but all the major money-created problems seem to pop up at the Mega-Rich level.

There are a lot of rich people who spend all their time trying to impress even more rich people. It strikes me as one of the dumbest games you can play, but I'm willing to bet very few people realize they're playing it.

The best uses of money are those that create one of four things in your life: Time, experiences, purpose, or health. Above a certain level, money is best viewed as a tool to create those other things, not a goal in and of itself.

The highest Return on Investment in my portfolio is on the 12 months of emergency funds I keep in cash. We tend to ignore the value of peace of mind when thinking about our money, but it’s worth its weight in gold. Knowing you have that security allows you to see and capitalize on exciting opportunities when they come. What you give up in financial return on that cash you make up for 10x from the clarity and vision.

You can’t improve what you don’t track. Use a financial tracking and management tool to get a clear picture of your finances. There are several good options, but my wife and I have used and loved ​Origin​ since our son was born in 2022. Highly recommend (not an investor in it, though I wish I was).

20 years from now, the only people that will remember you worked late are your kids. True, but 20 years from now, your kids will also remember the lesson that working hard to meet your responsibilities is essential. Navigate this tension. Be present as much as you can, but when you have to work late, make sure your kids know why you're doing it. They'll remember both.

Alignment with your partner about money is a must for a successful relationship. If one partner wants to live simply and the other partner wants to live lavishly, that misalignment is going to manifest in a variety of unhealthy ways. I've had friends work long careers in jobs they hate simply because they had to continue providing a high-flying lifestyle to a partner who demanded it. It's sad. Have the conversation early to avoid the challenges later.

There are no hacks or shortcuts (and you should run if someone tries to sell you one). The worst mistakes in life are made when you try to do fast what's meant to be done slow. Every single time I've tried to make money quickly, I got punched in the face. Play the long game. Create value, receive value. That's the golden rule.

How you earned it is more important than how much you earned. I know a lot of people who assume that making a certain amount of money will get them the respect from the people they admire. But that's not quite right. If you win the lottery, you aren't suddenly respected by Fortune 500 CEOs because you have money. How you earned it matters.

Never, ever carry credit card debt. I’ve seen too many friends and family members held back by the insane interest rates on credit card debt. Treat your credit card like a debit card: Only spend money you actually have and pay off the bill in full every single month. If you’re in credit card debt today, make the tough short-term lifestyle cuts and create a plan to pay it off as quickly as possible. It’s almost impossible to get your compounding engine going until you eliminate that drag.

Run disaster simulations to be prepared for the unknown. Your willingness to imagine bad times during good times is what allows you to safely navigate them. What if you lost your job? What if you had a major healthcare expense? Failure to imagine the bad is the surest way to be crippled by it.

Lifestyle Creep is really just a byproduct of Expectations Creep. Expectations are your single greatest financial liability. Your expectations for what you need to be happy will steadily increase if you don’t keep an eye on them. The changes are subtle enough that you won’t notice them in the days, but they’ll have a dramatic impact in the years. Always maintain a healthy ​Margin of Freedom​ (the gap between your expectations and your reality).

Relatedly, your environment governs a lot of your expectations. Your happiness with your money situation often depends less on your bank account and more on your comparison set. Living a simple life in the country can feel abundant, but that same simple life in NYC can feel deprived. It’s important to recognize that your default expectations for your own life are mimetic: You adopt expectations that match those of your surroundings. Choose your environments wisely—and create the space to question those default expectations to make sure you’re living by your own design.

Liquidity is much more valuable than you think. Whenever you consider a new investment, you should consider (1) the potential returns and (2) the liquidity (meaning the ease of access to the money after it’s invested). Most people think about (1) but completely ignore (2). The ease of access to the capital is worth something, especially in a downturn.

But liquidity can also be a bug if you’re prone to emotional decisions. That same ease of access that has value can lead you to make poor short-term decisions (like panic selling in a temporary market pullback). I think there’s a liquidity sweet spot for most people: Easy enough to access that you can get to your money in a few days, but hard enough that you can’t make a bad short-term decision from your phone in the heat of an emotion.

Being likable is a legitimate competitive advantage. Put simply, people want to do business with people they like.

Nothing will accelerate your career more than building a reputation for figuring it out. Early in your career, you'll be given a lot of tasks you have no idea how to complete. There's nothing more valuable than someone who can just figure it out: Do some work, ask the key questions, get it done. If you can do that, people will literally fight over you.

If your self-worth is dictated by where you vacation or your kid’s private school tuition, you need to rethink your life. Sadly, I know too many people like this.

The time associated with an investment is just as important as the money. When you make an investment, you’re putting both your money and your time into it as an input. There are some investments that require money and no time (index funds) and some that require money and a lot of time (active multi-family real estate). Make sure you consider both money and time inputs when evaluating the return profile.

Sometimes the cheap option is the most expensive. When purchasing products for their utility, always invest a bit more and opt for quality. They’ll last longer and create less headaches. Cheap may sound good right now, but you get what you pay for. It’s just Buy Now, Pay Later (with interest).

Would you buy that thing if you couldn't tell anyone about it? I call this the Bought Status Test in ​my book​. It's an important way to cut through the noise when considering a material purchase. It reveals how often you're simply living for the benefit of others, for extrinsic validation. And unfortunately, no one is that impressed by your purchases. There's always going to be a bigger boat.

Never finance a luxury material purchase if you can’t buy it 2x in cash. I think the single worst unforced error in personal finance is using debt to buy a depreciating asset (fancy cars, boats, etc.) that you can’t actually afford. If you want the thing, that’s fine, but make a rule that you won’t take on debt to buy it unless you can afford to buy it twice in cash. It’s the best guardrail against using debt to live far beyond your means.

Time-for-money trades aren't as bad as the internet gurus want you to believe. It's nice to know that you can earn more by working more if you need to. And at the end of the day, everything is a time-for-money trade, so it's really just about (1) whether you enjoy the thing you're trading your time for and (2) whether you're being attractively compensated for it.

Cash flow is king. There are a lot of online debates over what amount of money is enough to retire (or at least stop grinding on a job you don't like). These debates are actually just about cash flow—the cash flow that the portfolio throws off without doing anything. No matter how you want to slice it, cash flow is king.

Don't waste time trying to outperform the market (unless it's your full time job). Ordinary returns for long periods of time can create extraordinary wealth. Keep it simple. Focus on creating value in the real world, growing your income, earning equity in things you build. That’s where you'll create asymmetric upside.

Never think twice about investments in yourself. Books, quality food, personal development, mental health, etc. All of these are "expenses" that are better regarded as investments in yourself.

Follow a 24-hour Cool Off Rule for non-essential purchases. This reduces impulse purchases and improves saving and investing rates. If you still want to buy the thing after 24 hours, go for it.

Side hustles are usually just distractions masquerading as productivity. I've made this mistake too many times. Having 5-10 income streams may sound nice, but it's quite rare that an income stream is truly passive. If it requires your mental energy (or creates headaches), it may just be a distraction pulling you away from the big picture that matters.

Conduct a regular audit of your recurring monthly expenses. I've found hundreds of dollars in monthly burn through random subscriptions that I never use and didn't know I had. Any financial tracking tool (like ​Origin​) will do this for you.

Automate the payment of your regular expenses that are below a threshold. When you ruthlessly eliminate the cognitive burden of tiny, unimportant tasks that can be easily automated, you free up that headspace for executing on bigger opportunities and end up earning more.

Be wary of using money to optimize the life out of your life. When you start making more money, an entire menu of options materializes to reduce life's minor frictions. You can hire a personal chef, a full time cleaner, a staff, a driver. But sometimes that friction was what created meaning, and the obsessive removal of friction does more harm than good. Cherish the good friction in your life—the friction that makes you slow down and embrace the ordinary.

Enough is the most important word that very few people understand. It's not a number. It's a life. What does your Enough Life look like? Where are you living? What are you doing? Who are you spending time with? What are you thinking about? What is the money for? Get clear on that vision and the path to get there will come into view.

Live frugally first so you can live wonderfully later. Early in life, before you accumulate responsibilities and expectations, focus on growing the gap between your cash inflows and outflows. That gap is your most important asset in your journey to financial independence.

Generosity creates significantly more happiness than consumption. I've made great bonuses and I've paid great bonuses. The latter feels far more rewarding than the former. Generosity compounds in your life.

Your Wealthy Life

In ​The 5 Types of Wealth​, I offer one line that summarizes all of this:

Money isn't nothing, it simply can't be the only thing. Your wealthy life may be enabled by money, but in the end, it will be defined by everything else.

Understanding money is the key to unlocking the life you want.

Not the life others have told you to want.

The life you want.

I hope this short list of lessons is a helpful start on the journey.