The Purpose of Wealth
I usually write about creating and growing wealth, but I’ve never written about why I believe it to be a worthwhile pursuit in the first place.
I believe wealth is valuable because time is valuable and wealth is stored time that can be used in the future. When we save or invest our hard-earned income, we are parting with our time in the present with the expectation that we will have more or better time in the future. The money we save and invest beyond our basic needs of survival is wealth.
“Humans are distinguished from other species by our ability to create miracles. We call these miracles technology. ”
My primary motivation for growing wealth is to earn my freedom to pursue the creation of miracles.
I’ve been doing F.I.R.E. since my first paycheck, long before I’d ever heard of the movement. I’ve always wanted my financial independence, which to me just means having the financial resources to pursue my interests, to thrive, without having to worry about the day-to-day struggle for survival.
Why is this so important to me?
You might think it’s strange, but I’ve had an obsession with money and wealth since I first learned about the so-called “robber barons”, Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller, in my 8th grade history class.
But it was never their money that really fascinated me. The money was always just a measure of their impact on the world, on the wealth that they created for all of us. The “robber barons” gave us inexpensive oil and steel, paving the way for the modern miracles of skyscrapers, cars, airplanes, ships, and the rest of the modern industrial economy. How much time have those inventions saved us? It is unfathomable.
I was in absolute awe of the things that until then had seemed so ordinary, the technological miracles of the second Industrial Revolution. I still am.
When my wife and I first moved to North Carolina, we visited Kitty Hawk while on vacation with my family in the Outer Banks over the Christmas holidays. It was a casual visit, something to do outside on a cold day, but I found myself unexpectedly mesmerized with awe and wonder, enthralled by the story of how the Wright Brothers made the first human flight in 1903.
I stood staring there, staring in wonder at this monument to their greatness. It took all of human history, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of years, for these two brothers to achieve the miracle of flight for the first time.
This is where the Wright Brothers made the first human flight. Kitty Hawk, NC
I reflected on all the time spent with the people I love that would have been impossible without these two brothers’ miracle. I thought of the times in my childhood spent fishing with my aunt and grandpa in Alaska, the summers visiting extended family in Pennsylvania, the family vacations on Hawaiian beaches, the journey that brought my wife and I to North Carolina, and then to this sacred place. All possible because of their miracle.
The Wright Brothers were exceptional, but miracles are all around us. Even cake is a miracle. It took humankind millions of years to get a single moment where one human could mix that unique combination of ingredients and heat it at just the right temperature for just the right amount of time to produce a cake for the first time. And while there is no doubt that 2020 was a disaster with so many people needlessly suffering and dying, it is also true that 2020 was a year of miracles in a nation of miracles.
We witnessed SpaceX achieve the impossible, becoming the first private company to send astronauts into space, rekindling the exploration of space as a frontier.
Zoom and other video communication platforms enabled hundreds of millions of people to work from home, keeping us all safe from severe illness or death.
Instacart and Amazon Fresh brought food directly to people’s doorsteps so that they would not have to risk life and limb simply to put food on the table.
And Pfizer, Moderna, and other pharmaceutical companies designed and deployed vaccines for Covid-19 in record-setting time.
There is no doubt in my mind that if we did not have these technological miracles millions more people would have suffered and died from COVID-19 in the United States and around the world.
I believe that human beings need transcendent purpose to lead meaningful, satisfying lives. To paraphrase a line from my favorite movie, Interstellar, “If we do not look up at the sky and wonder about our place in the stars, we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.”
My transcendent purpose, my reason for being and growing wealth, is to help create miracles for the benefit of all mankind.
What is your transcendent purpose?
Thank you to my friend, Daniel O’Connell, for editing my scattered thoughts.