Skip to content

Making Money is Negative Margin

In 2020 I had a hand injury that ended my career for 2-3 years. I've only managed to bounce back into being an indie consultant and educator. On the way back to being a productive member of society I've learned a few things:

  1. I have what it takes to be successful, whether that's the feeling of never wanting to be poor again, or some internal motivation, or the 'cares a lot' or the 'chip on the shoulder' - whatever it is, I believe I will be successful
  2. The gift of being enough is the greatest gift I can give myself
  3. I will likely make too many sacrifices by default, not too few, and it will reflect in my regrets later in life

Let me start with a story about my personal life.

I grew up in rural China very poor. My parents saved enough money to make it to Canada in 1999 where we stayed poor for a while longer, maybe 15 years. In that time, I saw a very strict scarcity mindset poison the home, and I knew that I didn't want to do that. I worked really fucking hard. Failed a lot, rejected a lot, and always tried to carve my own path. I never traveled, never took time off, I didn't do a graduation trip after high school and I started my first job 11 days after my final exams.

When I graduated from Waterloo I got a job that paid more than most. $280,000 out of graduation! From my first job at Best Buy making minimum wage to a NYU RA to making so much that I paid more taxes than my family's combined income was a trip. I graduated with 0 debt but about $170 in the green. I went into debt to fly to SF and lock in my deposit and rent, and paid it off paycheck by paycheck.

Once everything settled, I only had one depressing thought: "Did my parents really sacrifice their 30s and 40s so I could make an extra 100k per year?" If god had come to me in a dream and asked for half of it back in exchange for 5 good years of seeing my parents have more parties, see more friends, be less alone, fight less about bills and stress less about the prices of metro tickets and the cost of gas going on to buying the produce that's nearly going bad to save $1 on green onions, that'd just cost me 50k?

That thought stuck with me... If I believe I'll be successful, the version of myself that exists in the future will always have some regret of how much it took and how much it was arbitrary and unneeded stress. No amount of money I have was because I didn't buy a drink at a bar, it was never cause I spent more on rent so I could host, it was never the money I saved not visiting a friend or going to an event.

All the money I made was from having a good vision of the future, working hard, and making a few good bets.

Once you enter a phase of your life where you do some wages to 'capturing value' the world changes a bit. It's not about how much things cost but what you get afterwards. If confidence is the memory of success, I'm now able to take loans out from my future self at zero interest. So I invest in my own life, to make myself happy so that the future more successful version of Jason can sit easy knowing everything was priced in.

Now I'm less aligned with FIRE or aggressively saving and ok with my net worth not moving for a few years. It's scary as someone who came to the US broke.

Now I will always live with the idea that as long as I'm trading my own time for money, it's negative margin. If I'm making $1000 per hour today, the richer version of me would have paid me $2000 to have... maybe enjoyed my time a bit more, see friends, finish work before dinner, sleep earlier with my partner, go to a party with my friends, or see a show.

The cost of the experience is so cheaper compared to the value of my time. I'm not saving money for my future self to spend, a future self that literally has more money than me but less time. A little bit more back pain, friends who live a bit farther, with kids, where we have to make plans 4 weeks in advance to have dinner.

Why am I saving so much for my future self? Do I not trust them to have their shit more figured out than me? Because I know every version of my present self would have easily given a younger version of me a $10k check just to take a weekend off and explore Yosemite, or learn to climb mountains or swim with the whales.

And I'm smart, I'll change my life.