In the pursuit of Wealth

I recently had a conversation with a close friend about his net worth and wealth goal by a certain age. It is a topic I have thought about at great length.

If you create a lofty goal, you set an aim. Because life is random, you may miss your ambitious goal. There will be 1 000+ different factors over which you have absolutely no control that may sink you. However, you may also overshoot your goal, and by pure randomness end up at a point far superior to your own goal! The key takeaway, however, is that you will end up in a range associated with the point that you have aimed at. Aim high, end high.

So, set a lofty wealth goal, I suggested. You might just reach it.

But, I firmly believe that one's personal philosophy, and mental frameworks, must be in place in order to achieve this.

An absolutely key element, in my view, is to follow the wealth principles of the upper class:

- leverage (productive debt, human capital, media, code)

- financial freedom (passive income > burn rate.)

- ownership of income-producing assets

In addition, I believe one should lead a healthy life. One should exercise – both strength training and cardio weekly – and maintain a healthy, balanced diet as well as avoid toxins such as alcohol/cigarettes/ultra-processed foods (‘UPFs’). Even with great monetary wealth, if you spend your twilight years (or god forbid, your 40s or 50s) in and out of hospitals, you will not be able to enjoy any of your hard-earned cash and may even have to fork out way more of it to keep your carcass going. The mental and physical benefits cannot be overstated, and will drive satisfaction in all other areas of life.

A useful and orienting set of moral philosophies and ideologies must ideally be developed, updated, and most importantly, enacted. Stoicism, that leads to discipline and perhaps some glimpse of the humility of the last of the five Good Emperors. I am personally guided by many things, especially Zarathustra, Rearden and perhaps the works of Robert Greene (especially the list with 48 items).

I believe it vital to reject the mean-reverting, conformist ideals of society at large. If you search for the most popular ideals, you will find the most average. Returning to class and our searching for the optimal pursuit of wealth, we must reject the wisdoms of the lower and middle classes.

I am reminded of an evening in Antwerpen, on a river-sea sort of pier, walking with pocket-covered hands against the European night’s cold. In the spirit of the evening’s jovial, beer-induced meaningful conversation, our older companion turned to me. He was a labourer all his life, and he wished to impart some of life’s wisdom upon me, the young Afrikaans man alongside him. He suggested my moving to Europe! And noted that I should find “een goed loon”. Then work myself up to a higher and higher hourly rate. To the aspiring Capitalist and he who aims to maximise wealth, this teaching must be rejected vehemently and outright, in my view.

Turning to the middle class, my list of their common and usually quite unquestioned wisdoms is as follows:

• Maximise on your educational outcome, be a good student so as to secure the maximum salary possible.

• Buy a house, with debt, usually consuming a substantial amount of your gross income, that produces no income itself, and annihilates an otherwise conservative and sensible approach to your finances by acquiring a massive, concentrated liability, that may completely wipe you out financially.

• Save approximately 10% of your salary, probably for retirement (in order to achieve the financial freedom of the upper class I mentioned above, Scott Galloway notes that you will require an asset value of approximately 25 times your required annual income. These must be income-producing assets. To achieve this, radical measures such as saving up to 90% of your gross income may be needed).

• Retire. Plan to march towards a single, discrete destruction of all possible meaning and purpose that you can derive from your work and productive output past that point. (I will work until the day I die, even if I have to scale down, simply to enjoy the purpose and meaning I find in my work life).

These ideals of the lower and middle classes must be rejected, in favour of the upper class principles, in order to maximise wealth accrual.

It is axiomatic, in my view.

(This writing is so raw and brutally truthful that it will likely make certain readers’ blood boil. Aren’t all deeply meaningful things controversial? I dared to speak plainly and purely about wealth and class.)