You want to be time-rich, not money-rich

Money is nothing without your time. The real goal of being wealthy is to have control over your own time, and there are multiple paths to this goal.

Most obviously, you can get enough money so that you don't have trade your time for money anymore. But often in these situations, people continually upgrade their lifestyle so that they still need to work to stay afloat.

You could also be doing work you love -- work that you would do even if you weren't paid.

You could be living off of your financial investments, and doing exactly what you want with your time, even if that's still working (which it probably will be).

Being wealthy doesn't mean having a lot of money, it means no longer trading your time for money. The point of financial freedom isn't to not work, it's to spend your time how you want to instead of wasting it on money you won't use.

I think it is extremely useful to come up with a dollar figure for how much an hour of your life is worth, even if you don't currently make it. If the figure is 100 dollars, then it is truly not worth doing anything you don't enjoy for less than 100 dollars an hour. Of course the marginal value of the money you make to eat and survive is much higher, but after that it's likely you'd be trading away time that you'd find more valuable elsewhere. (Idea stolen from The Almanack of Naval Ravikant)


TLDR:

Stop wasting your time on money.

Money is nothing without your time. The real goal of being wealthy is to have control over your own time. Many conventional paths to wealth like a high paying job don't give you your time back when you're locked into that job or adjust your lifestyle to your income.


References:

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

Well, one way is to have so much money saved that your passive income (without you lifting a finger) covers your burn rate. A second is you just drive your burn rate down to zero—you become a monk. A third is you’re doing something you love. You enjoy it so much, it’s not about the money. So there are multiple ways to retirement.

Another way of thinking about something is, if you can outsource something or not do something for less than your hourly rate, outsource it or don’t do it.

To the extent money buys freedom, it’s great. But to the extent it makes me less free, which it definitely does at some level as well, I don’t like it.