The Difference in Thinking Between Poor and Rich People: On the Question "How to Stop Worrying About Money?"

AVAlexander Volchek

With money, it's important to understand what happens when we compare small and large amounts. Someone says, for example, “I've never had big money in my life, but you've been around it with someone.” They're comparing amounts that seem small or large to them. If someone living in a poor African country says, “I'm poor because I earn five dollars a month. You're rich because you earn five hundred,” those two people will have very strange feelings. The second person certainly will, because they're earning five hundred dollars and thinking they're poor. Their attitude toward money may be worse, and they may feel much worse, than the person earning five dollars. The division between big and small money is very relative. There's no upper limit to big money. There may be a lower limit to small money, in the sense that there's always some concept of zero. Yet there are debts too. We look at certain businesses that have always lost money and still do. What's more, a business can have enormous debts.

Or imagine this situation: I'm born, and my father has a hundred-million-dollar debt and eighty million dollars in the bank. He borrowed a hundred million at some point, spent twenty, and has eighty left. I think, “Can I spend another twenty, and my son will have a sixty-million-dollar debt?” Or should I earn twenty to repay the hundred-million-dollar debt and have nothing to eat? What choice will I make? What would you choose at that moment? What would you choose in that situation? How would you feel inside? I could simultaneously feel very rich because I have eighty million dollars, and terribly poor because I don't have plus eighty million: I have minus a hundred, a hundred-million-dollar debt. Having eighty million dollars in my account is also a problem, I'd say. First, I mustn't lose it. Second, it shouldn't shrink. Third, it should probably grow. Fourth, how to spend this money and make spending decisions is a whole problem in itself.

Fifth, how will I make decisions involving the people around me? I could spend twenty million and give another fifteen to my friend. And distribute some among the children. Somehow, the debt will remain with my family after my life ends. Someone else will say, “Wait, in the next generation, your family won't have any money.” All right, consider another example. What if I originally had a billion in my account and have nine hundred and eighty million left? I'll spend eighty and leave nine hundred, putting them in exactly the same situation as before. Exactly the same situation. What's worse: a hundred and eighty million dollars, a hundred thousand dollars, eighty thousand dollars, a hundred billion, eight hundred billion dollars, eighty billion dollars? Say my father borrowed a hundred billion dollars and left me eighty billion. What's worse? Our minds start calculating: how much can I spend now? Where will it be enough? How do I live here? But I was born into these circumstances. That means I can begin making decisions in very different ways. Some people earn money and buy absolutely nothing for themselves. They don't spend that money. Don't spend it at all.

They live in the same house their entire lives. They're even often held up as examples: “Look, this person is a dollar billionaire and lives in the very same house.” Other people earn money, perhaps not even in the first generation—the first or second generation doesn't matter—and live it up: boats, ships, yachts, the most expensive jewelry, anything at all. They spend money. The first important thing to pay attention to is that “a lot” or “a little” doesn't correspond to a specific amount. Poverty and wealth are our internal assessments of certain parameters. Someone lives in a village, earns nothing, grows a garden, and never even thinks they're poor, even though they have nothing at all. They simply feed themselves and sustain their own life. They might sell a little of what they've grown to buy foods they don't grow or don't have. They maintain that standard of living, making those exchanges. Certain thoughts never even arise for them. Someone else lives in abundance but feels inside that everything is very difficult.

Look at the United States and people who moved there from other countries. I'm Belarusian. I lived in Moscow for thirteen years. Now I live in the United States, in Silicon Valley. I observe many people and how they talk about the States. Some say, “It's great here,” without bringing money into it at all: expensive, difficult, high taxes, and so on. Others constantly say, “The States are great, but so expensive.” Expensive compared with what? They're comparing it with some circumstances in their life. Which life, exactly? The life they had in the large city they moved from? Or the town where they were born? Which period of their life, at what age, are they comparing it with? In terms of feeling that it's expensive—expensive when? I was born in 1983, and I remember that in 1991 or 1992, you could have a birthday celebration for a hundred dollars. My parents would celebrate, ten or fifteen people would gather, and you could put on a spread for a hundred dollars. I don't know where you can do that now. In Belarus, you certainly can't put on a spread for a hundred dollars. Well, you could serve potatoes. You could probably make something for fifteen people.

Of course you can feed fifteen people for a hundred dollars. Even I could do it. I'm being a little disingenuous here, but that's not the kind of spread we're talking about, right? Now you have to spend much more. This judgment, this expression of a person's inner state, belongs exclusively to that particular person and how they assess things. Someone calls and says, “Sasha, why do you live in California? It's so damn expensive. I live in Florida, where the taxes are lower.” I wonder what they're comparing. I don't understand. Maybe I live in California because my work is here and I earn fifty times more than they do. What difference do my taxes make? Or maybe I earn nothing and pay no taxes, benefiting from a place where everyone else pays them. Actually, I'm being disingenuous. I always support the place, because at the very least I pay for a home, property tax, or rent. Then the landlord pays property tax from that rent. I buy goods in a country where there's tax. Tax is always there, in any case.

It's there in any case. In the same way, I could say I've paid enormous amounts of tax in countries where I used to live and no longer do. Will I receive social benefits or a pension there in the future? This anxiety about pensions, which was pushed so strongly, is very interesting. I sit here in America thinking how great it is that I've never worried about a pension in the countries where I've lived. Maybe I should start worrying about retirement in America. But again, I don't know whether I'll be living here when I retire, or whether I'll never receive a pension because I'll die earlier. Or I won't need a pension because I'll have enough money to pay for retirement myself. Or I'll have good friends who help me in retirement. Or my sister will help me. Or my four children will easily support me in retirement. Or during—

Retirement, I'll work and keep earning money. Or I'll have businesses that bring me money, or suitable outside investments that produce income. Or we'll live in a society and a country that pays for everything, and at that point you won't need anything else; your pension will be enough. What's really happening, then? These people who say the age of artificial intelligence will lead governments to pay citizens regularly so no one needs to work—are they saving for retirement themselves, I wonder? We should ask them that. Now I understand. That's what I'll ask them from now on. It'll show how much they believe it. If they believe it, why save for retirement? Then there's no need, and everything will be great. Money has completely different layers of perception. The first thing to do is look at it with a broad outlook, a very wide view of what's happening, and understand a little of what having or not having money really means. Where is it: as cash or as a balance in a bank account?

Bitcoin has risen sharply over the last six months. Someone is sitting in my house saying, “I've made so much money.” I ask, “Have you sold it yet?” They say, “No, it's in my account. Look at my app: I'm up two times, or three times.” I say, “You haven't made anything. It's sitting in your account.” They open the app, having named some figure, look and say, “Oh, yesterday it fell twenty-five, twenty, or twenty-five percent.” They say, “See, I lost it. I made it, then lost it. Every day, you make and lose money.” But nothing has happened in their life. Then they tell me, “Sasha, I actually bought Bitcoin just to hold it for years. Diversification.” Then there's no question at all of whether they've made money or not. I had a situation involving money. I remember saying to my father when I was young—I was at university—“Dad, don't you think I should start setting aside some of what I earn...?” Back then, I think you could pay about two hundred dollars a month toward building an apartment.

That's probably impossible now. “Maybe I should start doing that?” He replied, “Don't you have enough apartments? Don't you have enough places to live now?” It happened that my father provided housing, an apartment each, for my sister and me. Paradoxically, after a fairly short time, just ten years, I no longer needed the apartment he'd bought me, because I could buy one myself. It was a very good apartment, and I'm deeply grateful, but I could have bought it with a snap of my fingers, very easily. There were periods when I could easily afford an apartment like that. I thought how good it was that I hadn't saved two hundred dollars out of the four hundred or three hundred I was earning, but simply spent it all on life. I lived. Later, an entirely different compensation came to me. I hadn't needed to do that. Honestly, up to now, I haven't received anything from the apartment my father bought. Nothing from it. There's an apartment—so what? If I sold it, and I'll probably sell it and convert it into money, I could even say my father probably lost money.

It would have been better for him to buy me shares in American companies like Apple or Google twenty years ago, back then. That would have been fantastic. I'd have been very happy about that. Incredibly happy. This shows that money is a very relative word, parameter, judgment, and everyone experiences different inner states around it. One of the most important things to understand is that money comes through two kinds of cause-and-effect relationships. On one hand, it comes from work, from a person working. On the other, it comes karmically. Let's use another term we need here: luck, or chance. We all observe and know many people to whom money suddenly came because circumstances aligned. Certainly not because of work. Can a great deal of work lead to a great deal of money? Yes, but karma and particular circumstances will be involved there too. It's considered good when money comes both ways. Most importantly, though, you can earn money through work. If money comes only karmically, it will always lead a person into tragedy and a very difficult experience of having, living with, and being with that money.

Having money come only through work is already an incredibly good, strong factor. It's a great blessing, because for many people money doesn't come through work, and for many it doesn't come karmically. It simply isn't there and never will be in their lives. Likewise, many people who once received money through work or by chance, through certain circumstances, will never receive it again. And many people who have never received money either way still have both ways ahead of them. Or just luck. It'll simply come. People often ask, “Do I need to be ready for that kind of money to come?” I wonder why you're asking. Receive it, then find out. What exactly do you want to prepare for? Spending it? Looking at the balance in your account? Knowing it's in the safe? Giving it all away? Preserving it? Holding on to it? Protecting yourself from it so you aren't killed for it? Avoiding falling out with all the people around you?

Or, on the contrary, building relationships with those around you? Opening a business or closing one? Starting work or stopping work? What exactly do you want to prepare for? What, specifically, do you want to begin preparing for? Eating well, enjoying each day, feeling joy, doing what you love, having children, finding a wife or husband, making peace with your parents, getting some rest, taking a trip? What exactly do you want to prepare for? An inner state of joy and freedom certainly doesn't come from money. Money can improve your sense of freedom and joy, or make it much worse. I knew someone with more than a billion dollars of personal funds in their account who was intensely afraid of losing it. Far more than you could imagine. What exactly do you want to prepare for? What do you want to get your sense of happiness and freedom from? Work hard, get money, go on vacation—is that happiness? Of course it often is. For some people, having that opportunity and giving their family that gift is an incredible joy in life.

You should create and do those things when they work out. But they might not work out. Happiness in our lives is twenty-four seven. Happiness in our lives is constant. Happiness in our lives is today. What will you choose? Three days of joy in the Maldives, three years from now or this year? Or three hundred and sixty days of happiness at home, waking up and looking at your wife, your husband, or yourself in the morning, having breakfast, brushing your teeth, walking outside in any weather? What exactly will you choose? It's very important not to lead yourself into an illusion.

An illusion. Don't lead yourself into a fog. Remember the happiness of life happening right now. Even if there's darkness in your life now, seek that happiness now, here and now. Happiness isn't found through abstract things, but through observing yourself and understanding the cause-and-effect relationships I'm discussing. Through genuinely understanding them. Otherwise, we build an illusion of future happiness that we associate with money. I'm not against earning money; I'm for it. I'm for a grounded life here and now. A grounded life here and now isn't only earning money, or only labor and work. A grounded life here and now is planting a bush. A grounded life here and now is making yourself lunch. A grounded life here and now is reading a book to your child in the evening. A grounded life here and now is looking at how you behave toward other people and doing good things for them. A grounded life here and now is accepting what's happening in your professional development now and working. That's a grounded life here and now. Right now, at this moment. No one is forbidding you to earn a lot of money.

No one is forbidding you to dream. No one is forbidding you to set different goals. No one is forbidding you to achieve them. No one is forbidding you to rest, buy expensive things, open businesses, or sell businesses. No one is forbidding you to do that. But don't tie it to your inner freedom. Don't tie it to joy, happiness, or your own experience of each day, living each day kindly and well, studying this life, observing it. There's a view that people who live in such harmony and development can't lack money. Or that people with a great deal of money acquired it because they give so much back to the world. That's a false cause-and-effect relationship. False in what sense? A great deal of money won't come to someone without the karmic experience for it. That is indeed a cause-and-effect relationship. But who put it into your head that this relationship arose in this lifetime, and that in this lifetime they gave the same amount of benefit and support back to the world? That's the paradox. In exactly the same way, you can bring incredible benefit, an enormous amount of incredible things, in this lifetime and have no money.

You might have it in the next life, or the one after, or you've already had it. Or the energy of exchange isn't about money. The very framing of it this way, these statements, reveals how incredibly egoistic that energy is. It's deception, elevating yourself before others: “I made a lot of money because I bring enormous benefit to the world.” Money is a very complicated mechanism, a difficult one. It's difficult even to talk about, observe, look at, study, or earn. And it's easy to observe, study, and spend. And difficult to spend. We pay off a loan and feel happy. Very strange: the money's gone. We earn money and feel happy too. So it would seem right to borrow, then earn and repay: two moments of happiness against one of unhappiness when we borrowed. Actually, we take a loan, have lots of money, and feel happy. Then we earn a lot separately and feel happy. We spent the borrowed money and were happy too. Then we repay it and feel happy again. Or we borrow and feel unhappy. Spend it and feel unhappy, because we spent borrowed money and have none left. Earn money and feel unhappy because we'll soon have to part with it, and we're afraid. Repay the loan and feel unhappy. To me, there's no pattern at all between spending and earning. It's our inner state. Don't deceive yourself about cause and effect. Look more broadly. It's very difficult.

Look more broadly. It leads to an incredibly large, rich life, with enormous events, major events, huge numbers of events, layers, currents, and energies. You may say to yourself, “If I think this way, money won't come to me.” If you think this way, your life will expand enormously. But it's very hard to struggle with that fear. The fear of having no money, of not knowing what lies ahead, consumes a person. Salvation is in our hearts. Salvation is in love for other people. That's where the whole answer lies in this case. Of course, you need to work, look closely, and be systematic. I have a great many videos about that. Expand, grow, build a business properly, build a career properly. But do it through love, through your heart, from an understanding of joy, kindness, and a sense of beauty. See you next time!