It’s all about the money, money, money

“It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.” – Albert Camus

Imagine this: having enough money that you do not even need to go to work for the rest of your life. Enough but not necessary rolling in piles of money. No need for savings and all the bills are taken care of. How would you spend it? And more importantly, how are you gonna spend your time now that you are free from the usual 9 to 5?

Growing up from a middle-class background (at least in our country’s standards), our parents worked hard to provide for us. We did not have much but we never did go hungry and we did the get the best education our parents could afford for us at that time. We had conveniences that some could not afford while others have the advantages we are not so fortunate enough of but we did get by regardless.

And with that, if I would be given the opportunity of not having to worry about money. I would like to…

• Spend my time by being hands-on in raising my daughter (solo parenting is hard especially when you are a man). Being a father is what I have been working on ever since I became one and it is only proper to spend the majority of my time to be one.
• Taking care of my mother, I owe her a huge debt of gratitude simply by raising me the way she did.
• I wanted to take care of our house, and how our house operates.

Aside from that:

• I wanted to make some investments and let the money do the working for me. Because you will never know when enough is enough until you needed it and life is pretty much a series of unexpected events so I choose to prepare for it.
• The rest of my time, I wanted to spend by learning. I wanted to learn to cook formally, I do love cooking and it gives me pleasure in cooking for myself and to others.
• I would love to learn about first aid and marksmanship, I would like to spend time in the mountains and just test myself. I wanted to learn judo, I wanted to train again in boxing and Brazilian jujitsu. I wanted to do weight lifting consistently.
• I want to collect books, lots of books and have a small library.
• I want to have nice shoes, nice clothes, a nice watch, maybe a nice perfume and just feel good about myself…

Writing this made me realize what kind of a man I am, and what my priorities are. I wanted to be my best self, the best father and the best son I could be. This made me realize what my aspirations are, what I wanted for myself. It also revealed to me my character and made me realize the steps I needed to get take to get there.

Maybe I will never have the chance of having enough to stop working, maybe some of us were meant to keep on grinding. But maybe I could not let that stop me from forging the life I wanted for myself, taking care of business, learning, growing and acquiring. Making good with what I currently have, and still have the best life I could possibly make.

If only money and time is never a problem…