Money tales
Tu paisa paisa karti hai, tu paise pe kyu marti hai?
I didn’t grow up poor. But I understand monetary constraints very deeply. We thankfully never had to think about where our next meal will come from, but we do have to think about where my next fees amount will come from.
For the first 17 years of my life when I was in a military school, albeit as a day scholar, money was never a real thing. My life was within the 108 acres of the school campus, and all my friends wore standardized uniforms and kits. There was equality in regimentation. Money was a foreign thing that my relatives handed to me on festivals, and occasions.
When I went to college, DU’s highly subsidized fees (and my parent’s generosity) made sure that I never really quite felt the scarcity of money. Except of course when visiting friend’s lavish houses. But it was always a fleeting thought. My expenses were still manageable - rent, visiting cafes and travel. Also, having good friends who would routinely pay for me helped. Back then, money was just something I didn’t have a lot of, but it didn’t really matter too much. As long as I could still go to that good café, visit that nice garden & travel with my recent companion on the metro - money was a passive constraint.
The first event that changed my relationship with money was when I joined my recent university. The exorbitant fees forced my parents to delay their housing plans, ate into their savings and propped me on a guilt trip, one from which I perhaps will never recover. I promised myself that I will pay this back. Monetarily over time, and metaphorically by scoring well. I have kept the second promise and worry about the first. That was the first time I really understood, no - felt constraints. The extra 5 seconds my father ponders as he transfers lakhs of his hard earned rupees into a faceless university’s account is how I understand constraint. The fact that every rupee spent on my education is a rupee less in their savings fund is how I understand constraint. The fact that we have only one laptop in the household and cannot buy another, despite my father desperately needing it, is how I understand constraint. The fact that most of my conversation with my sister are either directly related to money or on ways to earn it, is how I understand constraint. I am native to the all consuming feeling of being bound.
The second event that changed my relationship with money was when I started to earn some amount through internships and other gigs. In 2021, I made around 60k and made a bunch of purchases - my academic textbooks, clothes, travel, footwear, bought my mother a phone, spent it on cafes and outings and what not. What that did was that it gave me a taste of financial freedom. When I didn’t have to ask my parents for money - I felt a kind of freedom I’d never ever felt before. I felt light, I felt free. I felt less of a burden. What that changed was that it made surviving on my own the default and asking for money from parents, an anomaly. Because the gigs and internships haven’t been regular or don’t pay a lot, I now have to struggle more than I had to earlier to ask for the same money. Even the thought of that makes me sick. That is one of the main reasons why I’m doing three internships simultaneously.
I want the money. I need the money.
I like to summarize my life as “Living in constraints, thinking about prosperity”. Because that is the truth. I think about money all the time, and I hate it. I don’t hate prosperity or wealth, or have any distorted moral idea about simplicity in lack of it. I hate the feeling of helplessness. The feeling that you want to solve this problem, but cannot. That is the foremost reason why I have started to dislike studying. I love my university and my course, but I cannot wait to start to earn money. I have started to see the remaining one and a half year as a barrier between me and money. Money changes how you think about things.
Having lived all my life in a town, we never really went out to dinners or parties. When I was little I always thought that it is because my parents aren’t the outgoing type. They like to settle in and eat ghar ka khaana. But as many things I guessed when I was little, I was wrong. The reason we never really went out wasn’t because my parents were introverts, it was because we didn’t have the money to sustain such a lifestyle. As I grew up, I realized that my parents are in fact, very outgoing. They, more than anyone else, know what constraints are.
As it so happens, I somehow have a friend circle whose average income is almost 3-4 times that of my family, at least. Me and my sister have discussed this at length i.e. why we tend to move in social circles that are defined by characteristics offered by wealth, despite not having any. Our collective guess is firstly, it is because our parents are academics. They passed on to us the skill of educating ourselves. I think reading a lot and knowing more easily puts you in the top segment of society. Secondly, it is because they sent us to good universities. Since mostly people from wealth go to good universities (good universities are of course expensive universities), it was quite natural for us to make friends with people higher up than our socio-economic class.
The only issue with that is of course, there is always an unsaid experience gap. All of my friends are particularly humble and don’t let their money get to their head. I’ve never felt out of place with them by their actions. Except it’s not about what they do, it’s about how I feel. I see all kinds of experiences I cannot relate to because I didn’t grow up with that lifestyle. I hear all kinds of childhood and adolescent tales, that I can only vaguely imagine about. There are these few moments when I’m with my friends and suddenly zone out and ask myself if I am in the right place, if I belong here? Money makes you question yourself.
Thankfully interests and education bridges a lot of this gap which has allowed me to make friends (and date) with people above my social status. But there’s a world of their lives that I just cannot fathom. A lot of my friends houses are houses I wish I grew up in, or aspire to have. I cannot believe that this sort of thinking which is only focused on the differences between you and others, does not do any damage to how you think of yourself - as a person, a friend, or a companion. I want to ideally stop thinking about it. But I can’t.
The pitfalls of limiting who I am to how much money I come from, or make, is massive. But that’s also the fire that drives me to do better. As with many things, it is double edged sword.
My sister, even though she grew up in the same circumstances as me, luckily has a better relationship with money. She doesn’t desire it and as long as all her bills are paid and she can casually buy her favorite books and attend her favorite concerts, she doesn’t care for it. She is also a good saver. She has an advantage of five years over me, and has worked a job as well, so it is quite natural. She worries about me. She worries that I covet money a little too much and that it is not healthy. Only time will tell, I tell her.
Some of the men I look up to came from broken households and now have become wildly successful. Two examples - Naval Ravikant and Chamath Palihapitiya. Chamath gave this extremely interesting talk at Stanford graduate School of business where he talks about money as ‘an instrument of change’. Money has no value as just money, its value is that it moves things, people and ideas around in this world. It makes people behave in certain ways and affords you things, experiences and relationships. He exemplifies this idea in the fund that he runs called ‘Social Capital’. It aims to solve the world’s toughest problems. At some point, I would like to join them.
My point is that even though I want money, I don’t want it so that I can buy expensive things. No. I want money so that I can solve my money problems. I want the money so that I don’t have to think about constraints anymore. Having lived all my life in them, and continuing to - money for me is an agent of removing constraints. So that tomorrow if I want to buy three books, I don’t have to think hard before buying them, so that if I want to visit my partner, I don’t have to think about travel expenditure, so that if my parents want to vacation - I don’t have to sit down on excel to find out where the money will come from. Money gives you freedom, security and stability. I want enough money so that I can wear the unseen and unpredictable challenges of life and the markets. I don’t want money to buy me nice cars and expensive watches, I want money to always afford me the capacity to do the things I want to, or would want to, at some point.
If you’ve lived your life in constraints, you want abundance. And that’s what my goal is in life now - to create abundance for myself and my family.
I summarized the popular book Psychology of money here.
Everyone has a money tale, if you’d like to share yours, please drop me an email on divyanshu3504@gmail.com and I will publish it in the next newsletter. Or, you can reach out to me on twitter.
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