How would you like to make $257,000 in one month? That sure could solve a litany of problems. Debts could be prepaid, vacations booked, savings and investments padded. Heck, you might even donate some if anything is left over.
My boys like to watch a YouTuber, Preston Arsement, who started out making relatively simple videos playing Minecraft. Kids love Minecraft so they pointed their eye sockets at PrestonPlayz to enjoy volumes of mindless content streamed into boundless craniums.
At 30 years old today, Preston is estimated to make $257k this month just from his YouTube channel alone. Some estimates put his total annual income between $58-72M. Who knew streaming tomfoolery to children with no money could be so profitable!
Learning this, we all walk away with one conclusion: I wish I learned to stream on YouTube thirteen years ago.
Why? I love what I do and by nearly every metric live a life most in human history would accept with ravenous enthusiasm. Would $58-72M a year really make things better?
Contentedness is elusive, a primal condition propelling our motivation to improve on past iterations. It is an incentive structure unique to humans, fueling a $12 – 15 billion anxiety disorder healthcare market.
The solution to our desperation is locked behind barriers only riches can disintegrate. Our actions say it must be true. This is not a sickness; greed is our plight. To chase the carrot into the earth where all ultimately terminate.
Our desire to accumulate wealth is a phenomenon that will forever fascinate me. Reasons vary from the earthly to the spiritual, but they all grow out of the same kernel of being – ad meliora.
Money is neither good nor bad. Money is a technology, a key to a network of other humans. You can use it for bad, for good, or for nothing at all.
If you’re miserable now without money, you will be miserable with it. Perhaps more so as your despair grows with the realization of this truth. Strangely, I find that those who focus on wealth accumulation as the goal in and of itself tend to be some of the most miserable people I know.
Accumulated wealth removes basic, although poignant, problems. Most elementary needs can be alleviated with a household income of $250k per year or more. Under this threshold, the saying “money can’t buy happiness” is largely untrue. Of course it can.
But it’s a mistake to assume a linear growth in “happiness” of up and to the right. Unpleasant views not seen from society’s lower rungs come into clearer focus the higher you go.
Resentment grows within your circle of friends and family, they distance themselves. You become isolated.
Your success attracts ire and envy, and with it sabotage
A felt absence of natural complacency as you find pleasure in simple things like doing laundry
Entitlement within your children/close family hampering personal and professional development
Calcification in career leading to a sense of entrapment and loss of meaning
The more you have, the more energy you expend to keep what you have
These problems are not worse than those of poverty, but they are too easy to dismiss until they become yours. If these are your problems, give me a call. I’d like to help you.
The scales of the universe will never balance fortune from person to person. It is an impossible manmade problem anchored in our conviction that the grass is greener on the other side.
More money may solve some of your problems, but it will add others and amplify your characteristics. If you’re a jerk at minimum wage, you’ll be an insufferable cretin with millions.
The reverse also holds true, however altruistic characteristics are antagonistic to capital accumulation. Hmm, makes you think doesn’t it? Something about a camel entering the eye of a needle…anyway.
Preston may make $58-74M per year, but Mark Zuckerberg makes about $1.5B per year with a net worth of $217B. I wonder who Mark is jealous of?
Every mountain of gold is menaced by a dragon.
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.
Securities offered through LPL Financial LLC. Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory Services offered by National Wealth Management Group LLC, an SEC Registered Investment Advisory and separate entity from LPL Financial LLC.