How to stop living in a state of “not having enough money”

AVAlexander Volchek

There is one state that unites people who are completely poor with people who seem very wealthy: the feeling that they never have enough money. What do you do about it? How do you make sure there is enough money? This is actually a very big question. It needs to be examined and understood. If you lived in the Soviet Union around 1970, perhaps you could have avoided raising the question in some circumstances. But in society, if you have any choice at all in different areas, you need to raise it. There are two ways of looking at this question. We will find a solution today: what to do about it, what to do so there is enough. On one hand, there are situations where you objectively don't have enough money. You say, "I don't have enough because I have to make loan payments. I don't have enough because I have rent to pay. I don't have enough because I need to buy food for my children; they need to eat, and I can't buy certain foods." There are objective criteria. I don't have enough because I have certain expenses for the services I use, the transportation I use, the trips I take, and the clothes I buy.

I don't have enough for the purchases I make every day. I don't have enough money. That is objective. Those are the reasons I am talking about now. Rational reasons, right? Let's call them rational. In that first case, there is also a kind of baseline: I don't have enough money to maintain my current standard of living. The second situation, alongside it, is something very few people talk about. It concerns not rational reasons but an inner state. A person says to themselves, "Ten years ago, I lived in a one-room apartment with my parents and had enough money. Now I live in a three-room apartment with my girlfriend, and I don't have enough. Why did I earn three hundred dollars a month ten years ago and have enough, and feel I was making a decent amount, while now I earn five thousand dollars a month and don't have enough?" A particular state arises, an inner attitude, an inner structure: I don't have enough money, regardless of the numbers. It is simply that person's inner state. An acquaintance recently asked me, "How much do you need to earn to live in America?

In your area, where you live," he said. I said, "That question is impossible to answer." He said, "What do you mean, impossible? How much? How much? Can you give me some kind of range for housing, for example?" You can at least explain roughly what it costs to rent an apartment or a house. There are some criteria for assessing that. But when it comes to assessing the rest of life, the range starts widening enormously, and everything depends on who you are. I told him, "Listen, I can't answer that question for you. I don't know. Maybe you will eat in good restaurants three times a day and spend a thousand dollars a day on restaurants alone for you and your wife. Or perhaps you need to travel to another city every two weeks and stay at a hotel that costs... You can get a hotel for two hundred dollars a night or for five thousand dollars a night. There is a big difference. I don't know what clothes you buy in your life. Do you buy a hundred-dollar jacket once every six months, or go out every two weeks and buy a fifteen-thousand-dollar jacket?

It all depends on your expectations. Very much on your expectations and your life. You are fairly well-off, and you understand the difference between all these things I am talking about. There is no answer to your question. In general, it doesn't exist. What does living in America mean? For someone, it means chartering a yacht for five days once a quarter, at a cost of a million dollars. Someone else doesn't even know a yacht can cost a million dollars for five days. Another person thinks chartering a yacht costs five thousand dollars for five days. It depends on which yacht and where you charter it. Some people never raise that question in their lives, while for others it is extremely necessary." He didn't like my answer. He wanted a simpler answer. I can say that enormous numbers of people make the mistake of giving money advice without understanding what the other person actually needs and values. How much advice have I been given by people who didn't understand how I am put together, who I am at all, or how I would perceive and feel things? There is an illusion that, for children to grow up with a proper relationship to money, you need to teach them about money, teach them to count it, for example.

I laugh at people. I think, who in modern society couldn't count some pieces of paper if they had a decent grade in math? What does knowing how to use money properly mean? What is that? When we see these two different causes—a rational cause on one hand, and on the other, an irrational, inexplicable state of having enough money or not having enough—that is where we need to direct our attention to resolve this problem. So let's take the rational explanation about money. What is a rational explanation about money? Someone says, again, "I have a mortgage. I have to pay it, so I need to earn money." Or, "My children need to go to college, so I will save for their education." Someone says, "My children need to go to an outstanding college, so I will save for that outstanding education and live on hot dogs myself. But I will put aside the money for an education costing three hundred thousand dollars over four years." That person considers it rational. Some consider a two-room apartment rational for a family; others consider a thousand-square-meter house rational for exactly the same family.

Some people consider it rational and say, "How else could it be?" They go on vacation twice a year. Others think vacations are unnecessary and a trip to a country cottage is enough. The fact remains that this has only a relative connection with the amount of money, because there are enormous numbers of examples in the world now that people show us: "Look how this person dresses. Clothes don't matter." I live in Silicon Valley, and some people here like to say, "Oh, cars don't matter in Silicon Valley," or "Clothes don't matter in Silicon Valley." Really? Why does Bill Gates buy Loro Piana, then? What do you mean, it doesn't matter? Sometimes I see cars that seem inexpensive, and sometimes I see very expensive ones. So those are bought by a different kind of person? Those aren't real Americans buying them? Come on! Who flies on private jets? Who throws themselves birthday parties? Look at the birthday parties they throw. And rationality in general. Take Jeff Bezos and how he recently celebrated his wedding. By the way, all of Silicon Valley attended that wedding. Well, many people from Silicon Valley attended, including people who supposedly think money...

Doesn't matter. People say, "Money doesn't matter to Mark Zuckerberg," although they have shown what his T-shirt costs any number of times. Meanwhile, strangely enough, Mark Zuckerberg bought up all the surrounding houses in Palo Alto. They say he created a space inside that connects six houses underground, built illegally. They had an illegal school for three years with twenty children, not approved under the local laws. There are enormous numbers of security staff and an unbelievable number of other staff. What rationality is everyone talking about? That he dresses differently? Maybe he has no taste? Actually, not maybe: it is a fact. A fact. It is a question of a sense of beauty, of a very sound, normal understanding that, in a particular social setting, you can bring out one state or another and understand what is appropriate where and what isn't. It is about an inner sense of taste for many things. This isn't condemnation. It is about a normal understanding of what a rational, normal life is and what it isn't, and what we descend into when people say, "Buy something simpler. Live rationally, and you'll have enough money." Lis—

"You'll have enough money." Other approaches say you need to put up a vision board: yachts, ships, boats, and scatter money around. I remember this surreal experience. There was a man in Moscow who arrived in an old Maybach. Maybachs used to be beautiful. He invited us to his house for a sauna. We went to his house, and when we arrived and entered—his house, apparently his house—some people were doing part of a renovation. He said, "They're renovating for me." We went in, and about every fifteen meters there was a bundle of fake money. Someone asked him, "Why have you scattered money around?" He said, "It attracts money. You need to be surrounded by money." You look at that and think, "Strange. What is this? What does 'attracts money' mean? Such a strange state. What kind of relationship to money is this?" Is it normal to put up a vision board, this dream board? Is that rational? Or is it rational to go and make an expensive purchase? When will it be rational and actually lead you to earn more and feel calmer about money, and when will you simply spend money you shouldn't have spent and look very strange with that bag, sweater, or pair of shoes?

You will look strange. It will be obvious that the purchase was a one-off. I have met many businesspeople who made expensive purchases, and those things looked very strange on them. Or you could see that they didn't have thirty Brioni, Kiton, or Tom Ford suits; they had simply gone in and bought that one suit. Or they had two. It wasn't a matter of their taste or their feeling for life, or their lack of understanding of how it works; it was an action that didn't fit them. Rationality has a very serious effect. People work at a job where the boss thinks spending five thousand dollars a month is normal for their own life. So why should anyone earn more than a thousand dollars a month, or more than two thousand? That is how it should be, isn't it? I have a channel about artificial intelligence, and I talked there about making a down payment on a robot. We discussed the possibility that robots would start costing relatively little. There was also a discussion about self-driving cars that should soon become available to transport people. Elon Musk promised to release the Cybercab, which would cost around two hundred dollars a month.

It is a car with no steering wheel or any of that; it will drive you everywhere itself. Someone writes, "Why pay for that self-driving car when you can hire some immigrant for a thousand dollars?" First, this reasoning misses the fact that you cannot hire yourself a driver for a thousand dollars in California, in Silicon Valley. It doesn't matter whether they are a legal or illegal immigrant, or who they are at all. The minimum wage here is eighteen or nineteen dollars an hour, and there are no thousand-dollar jobs here. Even if you work illegally, it will still be eighteen, nineteen, or twenty dollars an hour. That is not to mention that you aren't entitled to employ someone illegally in the first place, that they won't bear responsibility, and a host of other things. Wages are different. People don't even understand what they are talking about. But this person has an idea of what is rational. They do this rational thinking on your behalf. They throw a rational explanation at me. To them, it is rational, while something I do may be irrational. I remember around 1993, when they started selling bottled still water in Minsk. I kept looking at it and thinking, "Strange people buy still water in bottles when they can drink tap water."

That attitude still exists in the United States. Everyone drinks tap water, and bottled water... In many restaurants, you simply can't buy bottled still water, because drinking tap water is considered normal. People look at you and wonder, "Why are you drinking bottled water?" Many restaurants don't ask; they bring water and put it in front of you. They even add a huge amount of ice, because to them that is normal, their normal way of seeing things. Why spend money on it when it is free? Why spend money on it? It is a very interesting line of reasoning: why spend money on something that is free? Likewise, enormous numbers of people ask, "Why buy that car when this one is cheaper? Why buy clothes when clothes are just clothes? Why buy paintings, or that mattress?" Others say the opposite: "You need to invest money in this, put money into this." You look at them and think, "Why invest in that? Why do it?" It turns out that each person has a very strong sense of their own rationality, a very strong sense of their own rationality.

Notice that, in most situations, you can scale down your idea of what is rational. What does that mean? It means you can cut back: eat one hot dog instead of two, or half a hot dog instead of one. Governments often say, "It is all right. We need to be patient for now. Inflation is nothing to worry about. Just eat half a hot dog instead of a whole one, and everything will be fine." That is called scaling down your idea of what is rational. You can do it yourself too: go to some coaching program or course. Or, conversely, change your idea of rationality and make a different mistake. Again, make a different mistake. Someone rents an apartment without good reason, makes certain purchases without good reason, saves for their children's education when the children don't need that education, for example. Or saves for retirement and dies at forty-five. That too seems like an unjustified action. So what do you do about it? I had an interesting experience. I rented a fairly expensive home. To other people, it was very expensive in those years, when this happened. People's horizons and perceptions change afterward, of course. But at the time, it was a serious amount, and people often advised me, "You should rent a less expensive place and take more vacations, for example."

I said, "Listen, I spend ninety percent of my time in this home." I think I still had only one child then. "My wife spends ninety percent of her time here. I spend at least fifty percent of my time here; at the very least, I sleep here. I think it is definitely worth putting money into this. It matters more than living who knows where, or living in worse conditions so that we can go on vacation once or twice a year. It is simply my choice. This is what I choose to do." Again, many people may find that a very strange preference. Someone will say, "We would rather put that money aside for retirement." For me, it would be a big question: why should I put that money aside for retirement now? There is always this slider: where do you set it? It is a very particular question of where to place that slider. There is always a question. I remember a blogger who periodically appears in my Facebook feed. I clicked on him once, and now he keeps popping up like a nuisance. He interviews young women around Patriarch's Ponds in Moscow and asks all sorts of questions: the value of pi, or which city is the capital of which country. In one video, he asks a young woman, "How much do you need your boyfriend to earn?" She says, "Definitely more than I do."

He says, "How much?" She says, "At least forty thousand dollars." He says, "Forty thousand?" She says, "Actually, it is a different number." "What number?" "Six hundred thousand." He recoils. He says, "What do you mean, six hundred thousand?" She says, "Six hundred thousand! So we can go on vacation and go out somewhere else." You could immediately see that she knew what it meant to have six hundred thousand dollars a month. It was clear she knew about it; she understood. It was also clear that, to him, it was a very strange, unreal amount. Yet, again, if chartering a yacht in France costs a million dollars for a week, then earning six hundred thousand a month would be enough to live simply and eventually charter a yacht once for a week. But live simply. If you can afford a million-dollar yacht charter for a week, though, your other monthly expenses are probably completely different too. Or I remember watching some young businesspeople in Russia who had already made mon—

Businesspeople who had already made money, who have companies, who everyone watches, these technology leaders. They say, "We've calculated that, to stop working and have enough money for the rest of your life, you need forty million dollars." I sit there thinking: suppose he has forty years left, or perhaps they have sixty. They usually all want to live to two hundred anyway. A great many want two hundred years. Say he has forty years left. That means a million dollars a year. A million dollars a year is eighty thousand a month, or ninety thousand a month. If you charter a yacht for a week and sail around, that money is only enough to charter a yacht once a year, with nothing left for anything else. Someone will say, "Alexander, what yacht? What is this nonsense?" I can give completely different examples where forty million dollars is gone in a flash. You won't even have enough for certain investments. It won't let you participate in certain projects. You won't have the resources to create various projects. I roughly know—actually, I know for sure—that I could launch projects for tens of billions of dollars right now.

With tens of billions of dollars, I would launch projects. With hundreds of billions of dollars, I would launch projects, different projects. I roughly understand the range of what could be launched and done. I could find projects for a trillion dollars too. But in general, people have a certain inner state, an abstraction, some inner abstraction. It is unclear what it is. Someone else says, "I will try to help through charity in my life, and my goal is to give fifty million dollars to charity." Is that rational or irrational? Perhaps it is irrational, and you shouldn't give anything to anyone for charity. Perhaps it is irrational for your life, and you would be better off paying that money to your employees as wages. I remember asking one of the big questions for me about four years ago, when I was running a company that was one of the world's largest providers of IT education, with hundreds of thousands of students and millions of people in its community. Across the company, I had about thirty directors. All these people were very seriously dependent on money, very seriously. They were constantly short of money; they constantly had to be kept within certain limits. Some couldn't earn enough to pay family loans for apartments or houses, or to go on vacation somewhere.

People worked enormous amounts of time and were constantly being driven by the whip from above, from the shareholders: "Earn more, faster." People constantly lacked money. I asked myself: why, after building and running such a large company, do people not have enough money simply to live well? This is a Russian story, a Russian reality. Take OpenAI in America, for example. It is very interesting: the company has now reached a valuation of a trillion dollars; by the time this video comes out, it may be more. At one point the company said, "We are valued at half a trillion dollars, and we are allowing our employees to buy back their shares." Usually, doing that is inconceivable. Shareholders usually want to squeeze employees and give them nothing. Or they gave every employee a bonus of more than a million dollars. Every single employee, anyone, everyone formally employed there. All the employees suddenly became dollar millionaires. Some will say that is because there is a lot of money. I want to say it is a different approach: the company doesn't want its employees to be dependent on money at all. When you give people large amounts of money, you understand very clearly that an enormous number will stop working. I remember very clearly realizing this, because I have hired and fired a thousand people.

I realized it at one point, perhaps ten years ago. I remember giving someone a bonus equal to six months' salary and thinking, "Now he will really work; now he will get involved." A week later, he quit. I wondered why. They told me, "He received enough money not to work for six months. That is why he wanted to leave. Finally." It would seem that if you give someone a lot of money, they should be motivated to keep working. Some people think that way and say, "Then we won't pay them any money at all." And people leave, saying, "You aren't paying us, so we will leave altogether. We won't stay with you. If you think we are your slaves, we won't remain here." All of this is about a rational or irrational relationship to money. It is a question of rationality and the energy of dependence on money. The source of healthy energy is inside you. Look, it all comes back to energy anyway. Both of these areas: the rational side, and this other thing that arises as some force telling me I have enough money now, or some force telling me I have no money; some force that lets me save money, or some force through which all the money gets spent and I don't understand what is happening.

For example, for the past thirteen years my wife has always felt short of money, regardless of how much money she has or can access. Completely regardless of the amount. I was always amazed by her ability to leave six cents on her card. I kept wondering how that was possible. I can understand having eight, twelve, or sixteen dollars left on a card. We left Minsk in 2010 and lived in Moscow for twelve years. I was always amazed: how is it possible? In America, she can leave a dollar and twenty-six cents on her card too. I don't understand how. I kept asking her, "Please tell me: if you have four dollars left, how do you get it down to six cents? What kind of purchase do you have to make?" If someone earns four hundred dollars a month, they might have six cents left on their card, but she didn't have just four hundred dollars. How can you leave six cents on a card? Again, it was always independent of the amount. What was the inner state? What kind of energy was it? Not just independent of the amount of money, but of the number of children too.

There was one child, two, three, or four. It didn't depend on where we lived, how much money the family had, what purchases were possible, health, or anything at all. What is this state in relation to money? Why is it there? Why does it exist? Or take a state I experienced. For a long time in my life, I saved money. I knew how to save. My sister reminded me recently. We were walking in Paris a few months ago, and she said, "I clearly remember how, when you bought a chocolate bar with nuts, you would set the nuts aside, eat the chocolate, and eat the nuts later. You knew how to economize, how to save. You knew how not to eat it all immediately, not to spend it all immediately. You knew how to put something aside." I remember very clearly the year I began earning many times more. I gained access to larger amounts of money and began spending in such a way that, from that year onward, I was constantly short of money. Constantly short, whatever I did. Whether I increased or reduced spending, I never had enough. I reduced my spending and didn't have enough; reduced it further and still didn't have enough.

I start economizing, and I don't have enough money. I start spending five times more, and I still don't have enough. The interesting thing is that I was able to spend five times more. Eventually I realized I needed to stop for a moment and stop reducing my spending, because reducing it doesn't change the state of "enough" or "not enough." I needed to stop listening to people who said to reduce spending, because it didn't affect my state or the final outcome. I don't have enough, but the consumption remains. So which is better: spending X and feeling there isn't enough, or spending a hundred times X and feeling the same lack? Which is better? There is Kiyosaki, a very famous person whom everyone watches and many people cite. He recently said something very interesting that many people find controversial. He was asked, "How much debt do you have?" He said, "I have 1.2 billion dollars in debt." What does that mean? He says, "People are afraid of debt. Why? The thing is, if you owe the bank twenty million dollars, it is your problem.

But if you owe the bank 1.2 billion dollars, it is the bank's problem." Of course, he was talking about the possibility of earning money with other people's money. He said he buys things with that money, not restaurant meals or a car. The money allows him to earn money. He uses that money to make money. That is a somewhat different kind of debt.

A different kind of debt. But is it rational or irrational? In my videos, I have raised the idea that many people save money for their children or for themselves. I said you need to acknowledge and be at peace with the fact that you most likely won't use that money. There is a strong chance you won't use it. Someone I know well came to me and said, "Listen, I keep thinking about that. It is such an interesting thought; it opens up something very interesting for me. I worry about many things, save money, think about making sure there will be enough somewhere. Yet in fact, I may never use an enormous amount of the money I have saved, ever again in my life. Never." Different circumstances can arise. It doesn't mean you will die first. For example, you may start earning a thousand times more, and that money will become completely unimportant. It will remain set aside in your account just as it was. Or the country may decide to take that money away. Or you may be put in prison. Or you may go bankrupt in some other area, and that money will be taken away. There is no guarantee at all that you will use it.

Or you leave it to your children, and they give it to a charitable foundation researching how to give dogs different-colored eyes or produce a new type of fir tree. Or you keep the money for your own life, then decide at the end of your life to give it to charity and choose a very modest, ascetic lifestyle for yourself. I would point out that almost anyone can stop earning money. I mean in modern society, not people living under the threat of a grenade landing on them tomorrow. But in general, you can at least go and live at some temple. There is a very interesting aspect here that many people don't like. For example, it seems I don't have the option of stopping earning money now, while my wife has the option not to work. She hasn't worked for the past sixteen years; she can work or not work. I can't avoid working. I created these circumstances. That is a very interesting point for our discussion. I personally created circumstances in which I cannot avoid working, while she can choose not to work. I created them myself. I entered into and created these circumstances of life. A year ago, friends of my mother's visited us from another state. They told us how they came to America in the nineties, how hard it was, how they had two hundred dollars, and how difficult things were. They had to economize and avoid the subway because it was expensive.

The whole thing sounded as though... They weren't conveying this, but you could take it to mean that when I came to America, I had it easy. In fact, I have told many people this story with the following reasoning: it is actually much harder for me, because they came from the Soviet Union to another country, but financially, they came somewhere that began providing them with certain benefits and assistance. They found jobs very quickly at, say, six, eight, or ten dollars an hour; the exact amount doesn't matter. In the Soviet Union and after its collapse, what five dollars an hour could you even talk about? What five dollars? That wasn't on the table. They came to a country where they had choices, where different kinds of housing were available. They were actually given subsidized housing. There was subsidized housing in the Soviet Union too; you just didn't have much choice. I came to America carrying this enormous suitcase of requirements, things I was accustomed to living with and considered rational, conditions my children and wife were used to and that we considered rational.

We are used to that kind of consumption. You are used to certain restaurants, certain service, certain stores, certain amenities, a certain home life, apartment or house, and a certain daily schedule. You are used to drivers, a particular environment, secretaries, offices. Then you arrive in another country where you have to recreate all of it. Recreating it is very difficult, very difficult. When I say I am held hostage by the fact that I cannot stop working, that is a normal, real perception of reality and money. So can I stop working or not? Of course I can stop working. Let's be honest. At the very least, I could go on government support, or we could move to some religious community, work there, and help with local tasks in exchange for somewhere to live and sleep, or for the children to study. Obviously. Do I have that option? I do. Someone will say, "That isn't right. You took responsibility for raising your children and their development." Did I take responsibility for getting my children into Harvard or Stanford?

Or for giving them an education costing a million dollars each? What responsibility did I specifically take on, and did I take it on? Let's be honest. Did we sign some contract? Did we have some discussion? Did I definitely take on that responsibility? I remember very clearly when I went to work as a programmer. I took a job at a salary of a hundred dollars. I was so happy to have found a job in 2004, and a hundred dollars was plenty for me. A hundred dollars! Yes, I had somewhere to live. I was single. Then, in 2007, we started our own company. By that point, my salaried job paid a base of fifteen hundred dollars, plus a bonus and lots of opportunities. We started the company and began paying ourselves salaries of seven or eight hundred dollars. I had a wife by then too. I remember very clearly that we lived on a couple of thousand dollars or a thousand dollars, and life was normal and peaceful, a normal, peaceful flow, very peaceful and normal. Was that rational, then, or is rationality somewhere else entirely? When you need to think about caring for the hundreds of plants you planted, finding piano teachers, buying different paints for painting, or making endless purchases for the children?

Or thinking about the fifty or so birthdays a year at your children's schools and having to buy gifts for all of them. Taking care of where and how the family should vacation, whether to fly business class or economy, or drive. Thinking about purchases of old objects, or how to invest money properly and get involved in businesses. Or setting long-term goals within that business over decades. Producing this large amount of video and articles for some future aspects of life, putting money, strength, and work into it. Or is that irrational? What matters here? What is significant? The most important thing to begin doing is telling yourself the truth and stopping deceiving yourself. What is rational in terms of spending money? What is this aspect where you see the energy of worrying about money appear or disappear, and you don't control it? Perhaps some of you know what it is like when that energy appears: you worry about money, worry, and then, whoosh, it disappears. You think, "I haven't worried about money for the past two months, yet nothing seems to have changed."

When you don't deceive yourself. Recently, Polina and I were driving and discussing food prices at different stores. She named an American chain, Trader Joe's. She said, "That is a cheap store. I sometimes buy groceries there; it is cheap. We buy some of our groceries from that chain." I said, "No, of course it isn't cheap. It is midrange. Cheap is something completely different." Her mind doesn't want to—and this is very important—she doesn't want to allow in the idea that something cheaper exists. If she lets that in, she will start driving herself into a state of economizing, creating a sense of shortage for herself. It is easier for her to say, "I already live by constantly economizing." My wife certainly always lives as though she is economizing—

She always feels she is economizing. Situations arise where I try very hard to explain to my children that we are not economizing; we simply can't afford it. Some people save for three years to buy their child an expensive computer. Or they say, "Give them money so they can save up for it." That happens. I forbid everyone to give my children money. I outright forbid it. Others say, "Give money, and I'll save it." It is a very particular setup that can give children a completely distorted perception of money. I remember working as a project manager, earning a thousand dollars a month. A system administrator who reported to me earned two hundred and fifty dollars a month. He bought himself a phone for four hundred. You wonder, "What is happening? Why does he have a more expensive phone than I do when he earns two hundred and fifty dollars? Why spend one and a half months' salary on a phone? What is happening? What is this?" In my approach with my children, I establish a very simple picture. If you need these notebooks, these pens, this computer, or these clothes, and I can afford them, I buy them. If I can't afford them, I simply don't buy them.

I simply say, "We won't buy that." Then there is a question of rationality: what does being able or unable to afford something mean? I could probably afford any computer, but here I can see that, within the total spending, it has probably crossed a certain boundary. We simply won't do it, that's all. With so many expenses, you have to make decisions that may look irrational from the outside. "Dad, why does the dog's food cost six hundred dollars a month, but you won't give me another twenty dollars?" "Those are unrelated things," Dad says. Or, "Dad, listen. Yesterday we all went to a restaurant and paid four hundred dollars. Then you said we couldn't buy those paints for home that cost thirty dollars, because we'd had enough paints this month. What is rational about that?" We live in a very difficult time for deciding what is good and what is bad. It was much easier for people to live and feel free in the Soviet Union. Much easier. It was much easier fifty years ago. It is much easier to be in a society where everything is highly standardized.

We live in an almost impossible time of different choices and circumstances, when making a decision is very hard. Should we go to a restaurant or not? Or buy paints? Should we buy paints or go to a restaurant? What should we do? Or cut back on the dog's meat and buy some dry food? Or buy this sweater after all? Have coffee or not? What should we do? Take those videos where people say, "Do you know how much you spend on coffee?" You know those videos, Sasha: "Calculate how much you spend on coffee. Every day you drink coffee somewhere, it costs four dollars. If you spend that every day, you spend this much on coffee. If you saved that money, there you would have it." But what if I drink coffee because it is an atmosphere for me, a way of being in a particular atmosphere? It isn't about which coffee I drank. In that case, I could simply stop drinking coffee altogether. Why make it at home, then? I could simply not drink it. In general, I could just not drink it.

If I can't afford coffee in a café, I simply won't drink it. Or I'll have some at home if I want to. Maybe I won't want to at all. It is about your ability to give something up easily. To give up the restaurant, the paints, the T-shirt, and any purchases, all at once. Or your job and your apartment. To understand easily that at any moment you could move somewhere with fairly difficult living conditions. It is important to stop deceiving yourself. This is where the question of balance with money arises. Balance is a very complex energy. Do you have that energy or not? What do I recommend doing? I suggest beginning to observe the very fact of one energy or another appearing within you. Not resolving the situation by earning as much money as possible, or fixing it so there is enough, because you won't resolve this situation materially, but observing what is happening, what is happening in your life. Why are there people who don't think about money and always have enough, while others deal with money endlessly, endlessly deal with money, and constantly have money problems?