On Money 💰

I grew up in a typical middle class household in Dhaka, at a time when Bangladesh was still not the economic superstar it is now. Life was modest, and my parents made it extremely clear from an early age that we did not have the means to live luxuriously. For example, we did not have a car 🚗 until I was 18. We didn’t even have satellite TV until I was 14. But we had tonnes of books 📚 at home, and even a computer 🖥 that I was allowed to tinker with! We had to earn every birthday present 🎁, and knew all along we couldn’t afford to go to a private university without a scholarship.

In other words, we had enough to get by and live comfortably, but we did not feel entitled. I am deeply grateful to my parents for this gift. 🙏🏾

However, there was something more in there as well. I think at its core it was a subtle skepticism about and distrust of money. While my mother was a banker and quite savvy with her finances (she is why we ultimately were able to buy an apartment and a car), my father came from a family of communists and activists. Even though my grandfather (“Dadu”) was a successful businessman, the stories we heard of him growing up were how he had donated most of the land he bought in Jashore (our hometown) to landless people who came to him — a known philanthropist — and asked for a place to stay (today, only the plot of land with our ancestral home is ours, the rest all around belong to others who Dadu donated to). In contrast, we rarely heard about how he made all his money and bought all his land, or how he had a Morris Minor car in the 1950s that he would drive all the way from Jashore to Dhaka. 😎 🔥

My father was never savvy about protecting and growing his money either. He has spent or given away most of what he earned, and whatever savings and investments he had was my mother’s doing. Even then he would make poor investments and trust the wrong people, again and again. Regarding my father, the story I grew up with and felt really proud of was when, faced with a situation at office where he was asked to delay processing a few files so that his boss could extract some bribes, he resigned on the spot, throwing away a promotion due for merely a month later that would have afforded him a car for personal use (while being proud of his integrity, I was also a little upset for a while because I had been looking forward to having a car to ride to school in, like most of my classmates 😤).

So in addition to the distrust, maybe there was even a hit of a superiority complex, in the sense that we had integrity while most with money didn’t.

Growing up in this ethos, I always found the pursuit of money frivolous. Post-undergrad, I pitied people who joined big corporations with meaningless 9–5 jobs just for the sake of earning a weighty paycheck. My mental model was: “Money can’t buy happiness. Ergo, I should do things that make me happy. Money will not ultimately make any difference to my life.”

Even the concept of a retirement savings account or long-term investments never occurred to me…I had complete faith in my ability to continue doing meaningful things late into my 70s, and a more than healthy ego always convinced me I would be quite fine with the salaries I would be able to earn. While my friends were investing in real estate, I always found that pointless; the only savings I made were some education insurance plans for my kids, for the unfortunate scenario I am not there to support them through their education.

Fast forward to now, at 37, all my net worth is basically tied up in equity in a couple of companies. I have told my parents that I don’t want to inherit any of their wealth, and intend to create a foundation in their name for philanthropic pursuits. And I have zero savings in my bank for a rainy day.

It was in this precarious situation that I attended Tony Robbins’s conference called Unleash the Power Within. And it was within one 30-minute session that my entire orientation towards money changed.

The session was a deeply emotional experience where I was forced to confront all the ways in which I was compromising the quality of life for myself and my loved ones, or not being able to do the things I want to do, for lack of spare cash.

The session helped me re-frame money as an important and indispensable ingredient required to live a meaningful and fulfilled life. One thing that TR said that I really loved was:

Money is an amplifier. It doesn’t make you a better or worse person. It just amplifies the person you already are. — Tony Robbins

2000 years ago, Seneca, an ancient Greek philosopher and one of the founding fathers of Stoicism, pretty much said exactly the same thing.

Wealth is the slave of a wise man, and the master of a fool.
— Seneca, Ancient Greek Philosopher and Stoic

I realized that I could do so much more for my loved ones with more financial freedom. I could give my kids a lot more of the experiences they deserve and need to grow into fully formed human beings, without necessarily spoiling them with stuff. I could have the freedom and sense of security to wholeheartedly do things that matter to me without worrying about whether it would pay for my next months’ bills. And last but not least, I could be investing or donating to causes and missions that I believe in and amplify my impact in this world manifold.

In short, I internalized that other part of Dadu’s legacy that I never quite wrapped my head around before. The reason people in Jashore still fondly talk about him and mourn his death years after his passing, is because he had both the heart, AND the money, to live a generous life.

P.S. I wonder what impact my old attitude to money had in Jeeon’s failure to monetize the business. If I had a deep-rooted distaste for money, could I ever have fully optimized my business to generate cash?