MAKING VS SAVING

If you measure your success by your bank balance, then you are never going to be able to achieve the American Dream of buying happiness. A rising bank balance feels like a solid metric. It’s concrete, it’s a number, and it’s how Forbes determines the richest people. But holding money, and placing value on the amount you are holding, only leads to the spendthrift mindset of a person unable to take action. You have to trust that more money is on the way, and feel free to responsibly spend the money you have.

Money is like electricity. It is not a matter of having it, but of creating it, moving it, and using it. Electricity has terms like amps and volts that help us discuss the flow and potential of its energy. Money lacks that everyday vernacular because we only talk about money in terms of acquisition. Discussions of stored energy and the potential inherent in money only occur when people are personally divorced from the money they are talking about. This happens with high-level financial wizards and government finance officials who are able to escape the deeply personal aspect of discussing money by the sheer amounts they are discussing (billions/trillions).
You have to no longer peg your own value to the dollar. It’s not a 1:1 ratio, which means money a terrible tool for measurement. Imagine if inches fluctuated like the value of currency… You’d never know how tall you are.

I’m not saying to never save any money, just that it doesn’t really matter how much you have at any one time. What matters is how much you can spend. A person saving for a house might have a lot saved, but they are still eating ramen and stealing their neighbor’s wifi. This is not a “rich” person. A person who earns minimum wage and can barely make her rent each month can be incredibly busy collaborating on video shoots, zines, and blogs, thereby living a much richer life exactly because she is financially poor and doesn’t have the responsibilities of a career. She is free to spend her creative energy how she see fits.
Making is the action of the optimist, saving is the fear of the pessimist.