The Wisdom of Money: How to Be Rich Without Being Greedy

We all feel that there are too many rich people, but we also find that rich people do not stop to enjoy life, but continue to work hard like ordinary people.
According to French scholar Pascal Bruckner, many rich people lack the wisdom about money and do not recognize the essence of money.
He said in his book “The Wisdom of Money”: “Today, the common people seem to despise work like the aristocrats, while the rich are overworked all day long, boasting that they have 60 to 80 hours of work per week.” Even
if If they are millionaires, they will also complain that they do not earn enough money. Only doubling their wealth can make them feel comfortable.
If he has saved 5 million yuan, he will want 10 million yuan, and when he has 10 million yuan, he will want 20 million yuan. “There is nothing to soothe his anxieties and satisfy his vision of a comfortable life. Everyone is thinking about what they don’t have, instead of measuring what they have.” A survey by UBS found that only 500 people with assets of 500 or
more Talents with US$10,000 have a full sense of security for the future.
It is not a shame to be keen on making money, but being addicted to making money is tantamount to being simple-minded and delaying more important things.
Brückner wrote: “Money is so desirable that everything else is worthless. Nothing can compete with the infinite possibilities that money contains. Work, worldly beauty, and close emotional connection Why does it matter? Money doesn’t need us, it has its own pleasure. Having it makes us happy, even if we have nothing else. Money has a horrible double face. It is both a gateway to happiness and a barrier to people A high wall of happiness. Money is cold and burns people, depriving us of the ability to beautify our daily life, and ordinary days can construct the poetry of existence.”

It is easy for people to become greedy for money. “The most direct meaning that money gives to existence is that it is easier to save a few million yuan than to reach the pinnacle of life. A greedy person has one and only one desire, and it will never be satisfied: Carefully peeping at numbers, adding decimals with an almost drunken joy. Greedy people enjoy the pleasure of decay or glory from every adventure. When a group of people worry, worry, or When they are working hard, they have no time and leisure to focus on other problems or worries. Dr. Johnson said that there is no more innocent way to kill time than making money. Because then people stop thinking about other things. Greedy people Lacking imagination, they isolate one thing, the only thing, from the complicated world, and dedicate themselves to it. Nietzsche said that our age only knows about earning money and working, just like no longer There is money to be made and no more work to do.”
There are many people who make a lot of money and are under a lot of pressure in their daily work.
“Some banks have turned against depositors by selling their customers depreciated securities, thus creating a new character: the confession broker. This type of person extorts money from clients and defrauds them of most of their fortunes, but society allows them to own Higher social status. The agent is in a state of excitement for a long time, taut strings, 24 hours online. This is a game that will be highly addictive. This excessive passion will be in the form of detox treatment, moral lectures, yoga exercises, Zen, meditation, even prayer.”
Last year, New York Times reporter Alex Williams wrote “Why Billionaires Keep Working.” Karasu, a professor of psychiatry he interviewed, said top entrepreneurs and financiers are often adrenaline-fuelled, nonconformist people who tend to have hyperfocused digital brains that are always in transactional mode, and the more they do, the better they get. Biggers are lonelier because they have no sense of belonging.
Brückner first introduced Westerners’ concept of money from the perspective of cultural history, and also borrowed psychological theories. “Money is a problem because as people grow older and fear losing it, money becomes the center of society. No one is indifferent to money. People who think they hate it often see it as a god in their hearts. Pretending Anyone who despises it is deluding themselves.”
Psychologists have noticed that people are reluctant to exchange one 100-euro note for five 20-euro notes, he said. Because it intensifies the sense of loss. The larger notes themselves are worth more than the sum of the smaller notes. Many people like to feel the presence of money in their pockets, they have a smooth feel. Money breathes through our fingers. It says, as long as I am here, everything will be safe for you. A lot of money has become numbers on accounts, but wealth will not completely “become a string of numbers on a screen, it will still be materialized into bundles of banknotes, jewelry, high-end watches, diamonds, etc.”
Bruckner also compared the status of the dollar and the euro. “It is a mystery that U.S. dollars of different denominations have the same face size. This may indicate that no matter what the face value is, the method of payment is equally sacred, even for the smallest denomination of coins.” Mentioned in the book, the French philosopher
Sa Tet once took a walk with a million old francs with him, and randomly distributed it to passers-by and beggars, so as to get double the joy.
Both doing good deeds and expressing contempt for money through profligacy. On the one hand, it embodies the generosity of the aristocratic class, and on the other hand, it embodies the lofty spirit of liberalism.
“Wall Street Journal” reporter Robert Frank introduced how the rich spend their money in the book “The Country of the Rich”: The two founders of Google bought a wide-body Boeing 767, which could have carried 224 people, but was rejected. It has been transformed to accommodate up to 50 people.
Larry Page said that they did not choose a private jet because of practical considerations. A Boeing airliner costs less than US$15 million, which is only 1/3 of the price of the Gulfstream 550. Sales of private jets in 2005 were 750, more than double the figure in 1995. The price has also risen a lot. In 1995, the most expensive Gulfstream was the $27 million G4, and now it is the $47 million G550. If you want to buy it, you have to wait in line.
Those who don’t want to wait can jump in line, and the transfer fee for the index is 1 million US dollars.
In Brückner’s view, the wisdom of money is to be neither humble nor overbearing towards money, to realize, “Money cannot create happiness, strictly speaking, nothing can create happiness, without any tricks and techniques, but money can alleviate misfortune , so that we can avoid it, it is a shield against the blows of fate. Money determines whether we can be cared for, receive high-quality education, and live in a decent house. Money takes us away from the misfortune caused by adversity, providing Give us ways to overcome adversity.”