Money Minded
Personal development for personal finance. Learn with us as we:
🔐 Decode the psychology of money
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Money Minded
Escape Plan 2.0 | How to Make Friends with Money (The Mindset Reset)
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Is money a friend or foe in your life? Join Terry and Ryan as they strip away the myths, fears, and confusion around money to help you build a healthier, more empowering relationship with it. They’ll take you back to basics, exploring what money really is (hint: it’s not the villain in your favourite movie) and why your beliefs about it might be holding you back.
Expect eye-opening insights, practical tips, and a deep dive into the language and psychology of money—because you can’t master what you don’t understand. If you’ve ever felt stuck, conflicted, or overwhelmed about finances, this episode is your money mindset reset.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
- The surprising cultural myths that make us fear and loathe money.
- Why money is completely neutral—and how to use that to your advantage.
- How your subconscious beliefs might be quietly sabotaging your finances.
- A step-by-step process to rethink and redefine your relationship with money.
- What happens when you stop projecting fear and start seeing money clearly.
Ready to redefine your money story? Tune in now. 🎧✨
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Hello, legends. Welcome to the Money Minded Podcast and welcome to the first episode in this series we've been talking about. Ryan, welcome back. We've just jumped off our introduction straight into this next episode. You excited for this?
Ryan:Great, man. I'm bloody excited. Let's crack in.
Terry Condon:This is probably one of the most interesting discoveries, I think, in our whole last five years together. Really understanding what the fuck money is. It's hard to think clearly about money and make it your friend if you don't know what you're thinking about, isn't it?
Ryan:Yeah. I think most of our perceptions around money are pretty distorted. And it gets in the way of us actually using it well.
Terry Condon:I reckon you're right, like, we just, hear what people say, we watch how people behave around it, and then we just project all our sort of fears, hopes, dreams, and desires onto it. Without really knowing what it is, but money itself is 100 percent neutral. that's what we're going to do in this episode, we're going to really go down to a first principles understanding of the construct that is money. Because once you can see it for what it is, you can make friends with money. And it's really hard, really, really hard to do better financially, if deep down you have bad feelings around money, because you just push it away, repel it. yeah.
Ryan:what you just said there, you said you project our, Hopes, fears, dreams onto money, our desires, I think was the other one. But we massively emphasize the fear part of that. The other things, yes, partially, but probably more so fear than anything or lack, you know, and sense of lacking. I think money. Mostly conflated with that. Do you think?
Terry Condon:Do you remember reading Thou Shalt Prosper? Remember that book? We read it before we started the business? Yeah, so like the first five chapters of that book, he just talks about how culture teaches us to fear and loathe money, because it's perceived as the opposite of art, and most of the people that create art are Usually have this creative tension that comes with the people who are managing the money side of things. So they are all projecting their ideas about it. So you watch all these movies, the evil, the evil person is usually a business person. The problem is usually the pursuit of profit, you know, like it's, it's always the same kind of messaging and it really sets us up to fail when it comes to money. Because if you think about money as a person, right? And you've got this complicated relationship with where you go, I kind of want more of it. I kind of want to do better with it. But also I hate it. I think it's bad. I think it's dirty. Like get it away from me. You have this kind of like schizophrenic relationship with the thing. It's so much harder to think clearly, act clearly to be able to get results with it. So that's why I think it's so important to be able to go, let's just strip away all the bullshit. and figure out what it is we're talking about, so we can think clearly about it and actually achieve what we're setting out to achieve. So I'm really pumped to get this episode out. Cause I know that a few people have listened to this and they would have heard us talk about it in a debt series. They would have heard us talk about it in the Bitcoin series. But if you haven't listened to any of those, and this is the first time you're coming across it. This is actually pretty mind blowing, I reckon.
Ryan:Why do you think it matters so much to be kind of talking about the same thing, like to be more objective about it?
Terry Condon:Well, just. The way we talk about it impacts the way we think about it, and how we think about it determines how we act on it, and how we act on it determines our outcomes. And so it's really, really important to go, let's get really clear like, lawyers do this, right? When they're trying to solve a case or when, or when a merger comes together, the first thing lawyers do is they create a definition of terms so that they know very clearly, when I say this, what I mean is this. Because you cannot think, act, collaborate and get a result if you are not clear on what you're actually thinking about. So, it's just so fundamental, before you even get into talking about how to manage your money, to know what it is you're managing.
Ryan:Yeah. It's interesting to think about what you said there and like your thoughts. Your thoughts are in a language. Like the logic that you actually problem solve with is in a language.
Terry Condon:I'll give you an interesting example of this, right, like, I don't know when this was, but it happens repeatedly, like, sometimes I'm in the house and, Elise and I are sort of trying to make something happen, she's like, hey, the keys are on the table, and she's using the word table, but what she actually means is the bench, so I'm going to the table going, where the fuck are the keys? And she's like, they're on the table. And I go, they're not on the table. She's like, they are on the table. And then so she comes and she's like, see the table. I go, that is a bench. And so, so that's why language matters. Cause it impacts what you're thinking about. I'm not even, I'm actually in the room in the vicinity, but I'm just looking at the wrong thing. So my frame of reference is all wrong. And if your frame of reference, the way that you look at money is all wrong, It's so much harder for you to think clearly about it and that's why I think like you can have As much financial intelligence as you want But if you don't actually understand what it is you're trying to manage like you've studied at a master's level and so have I when it comes to this and None of it talks about what money is.
Ryan:And we, you know, it's only till recently that we probably went back and stripped that apart. And now we want to help share that with you guys in this episode. Don't we? So, you know, it's no surprise that people are confused.
Terry Condon:Yeah
Ryan (2):if you listen to a podcast episode, even of ours, probably at some point, glossary of terms used so interchangeably that they all lose their own meaning. You have singular meaning, don't they? Like, definitely we find that if you can see money for what it is, not what you've been taught and what stories you've wrapped around it, then it's impossible to manage it well. To actually turn that into really valuable things in your life. So, let's unpack it mate. What are we going to learn in this episode?
Terry Condon:so we're going to do a couple of things in this episode. We're going to unravel this money mystery and explain exactly why this is so difficult to think about. And why we get so confused with this, and go down to a first principles level, go down to the mechanics of how money originated, how it comes about and what a world looks like with money and without money. And I think what you're going to find at the end of this episode is you want a world with money and you want more money. As much as you possibly can get. And, and if you don't want that, it's probably because you're misguided, and you might even be a little bit selfish. Which is weird, right? It's weird to say.
Ryan:Ooh, sounds hectic. Mate. You were talking about planets before, Cameron, you said you've got an analogy to, or some, some kind of model around planets, But it explains the deep personal finance problem.
Terry Condon:Yeah, I was trying to think about a way to explain, and really unpack why we find it so hard to think so clearly about this. And why we're all so confused by it and why we don't trust ourselves. Why we trust external sources who have very categorical views and just follow dogma when it comes to this. we see that a lot in our space. Just follow the 50 30 20 rule. Just set up these, set up these prescriptions, do this kind of thing. And why we just give over our power to that and just let people tell us what to think instead of learning how to think when it comes to this. And I'll really trying to think about what, why do we do this? Why are we? So insecure in ourselves and don't trust ourselves in this way. and I came back to history really. And there used to be what's called a geocentric model of the universe. And what that means is we thought humanity used to think that earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around earth, the sun, the moon, the planets, everything went around earth. And this was kind of like the way that it was kind of set up. It kind of wasn't challenged. And it was widely accepted. Authorities, and the authorities at that time was religion, the institution was religion. And so you just pretty much had to take on board the dogma, the doctrine, and just trust what they said, and just have faith in them. And, the problem with this is, that Earth isn't the centre of the universe. And actually it works completely differently. But we didn't know that at the time. And so we actually could not navigate society. We couldn't navigate reality. We couldn't navigate the world and explore it effectively. Because we had a backwards or a limited view. And so, this was what they called the Dark Ages, right? This is where it's like, you know, priests running around in the crusades, and if you didn't follow what the, what the priest said, you could be strung up, and, hung and burned, and all that sort of thing. This is the kind of reality that we used to live in. And people used to live in fear.
Ryan:Sounds like a good
Terry Condon:Yeah. But, get this, this new guy came on the scene and his name was Copernicus. He introduced this idea of the heliocentric model of the universe. and what that proposed was that the sun is the center of the solar system and all the planets, including earth orbit around the sun. And that obviously flicked everything on its head and. You know, you can think about change. Humans hate change, right? All these institutions have been built up around this set of conventions. All the religions are in control. So you can imagine that this is a dangerous idea for a lot of people. But Copernicus knew that. And so he actually kept it mostly to himself and he didn't really publish it too widely. But this other guy, Galileo came along and he found that and he said, actually, that's right. And he's the guy that's like, I'm going to popularize this. I'm going to make this happen. And do you know what his fate was? Yeah. He got put to death. And so. But, but the thing that he gave the world is science. So once we had a better understanding of actually how the universe worked, this was the basis for science and all the technology that we use today. That helps us navigate reality like the compass, you know, the GPS, all that sort of stuff. None of this could be possible without a better understanding of reality. And it's because we went away from making earth the center of the universe. We thought a little bit more broadly. We zoomed out a little bit and had a, had a different look at things. And I think it's, it's very analogous to the way people are taught to think about money. We make money itself the center of the universe and we conflate it with all these other ideas. They all kind of just get mashed together and I reckon it's really interesting because these other words that we use interchangeably, wealth, rich and success, we use all those words to mean the same as money. But they're actually not money. None of those things are money. You can use money to get those things, to have those things, to experience those things. But none of them actually are money. So we have the same problem that I talked about earlier with my wife. It's on the bench. It's on the table. We don't even know what we're talking about. So it makes it really hard to be able to navigate reality effectively. Does that make sense?
Ryan:Yeah. And I think, you can see why we tend to see money as the center of the universe, because you think about what most people do most days, it's get up, go to work, try to earn money, enough money to do the things they want in life. And so it does control and dictate a lot of what we do every single day. How's the, how would you challenge that fact when you go, well, maybe money is the center of the universe, but it is determining what we do every day. Mm hmm.
Terry Condon:Well, you think about it like this, like, Those three things you can get from money, but money is the mechanism for making it happen. So, I use this analogy of like, tickets and travel, So, wealth isn't money and money isn't wealth. money is to wealth, what plane tickets are to travel. Yes, you need tickets to have travelled, but having a lot of tickets doesn't make you well travelled.
Ryan:hmm.
Terry Condon:And so, if you get stuck collecting tickets and you think that the whole game is just to collect tickets and all you think about is tickets, You never really actually realize the whole game is to travel. And a lot of people get stuck collecting tickets and die with an empty passport because we don't actually realize the job of money and what it actually does do for us and what it doesn't do.
Ryan:Yeah, I fucking love travel and I did not want to have an empty passport. But I thinking about the words you threw out before, right? So wealth, rich, money, success. They're all kind of interchangeable and different. you know, you listen to someone talking about finance, you can use any of those words in a sentence and people would still get to the same meaning of that sentence. And I guess it's more about how people use those words than the words themselves, I guess. But what we're talking about is, improving the definition of those words so that we can use them better to give ourselves a clearer way of thinking, right?
Terry Condon:Yeah, because money is a measure and we'll get to, you know, the mechanism and what it is later on, but it's a measure and it's an externalized measure. you hear us talk a lot about having an internal scorecard and an external scorecard. Money is an external scorecard. And if you measure yourself on an external scorecard it makes it easy to compare and contrast to others, which for some things is great, but for the quality of your life is actually terrible. It doesn't help you improve the quality of your life in that way. So it is really important to be able to define, differentiate, decouple, and define those other things. for themselves and make sure that they're actually defined by you so that you know that your pathway is your own pathway and you're running your own race. Otherwise we just get caught up in these memetic rivalry sort of money type games where we're competing to keep up with the Joneses and we find ourselves getting dragged around by our memetic desires instead of driven by our intrinsic wants, having a sense of real direction and purpose that's important to us. But just to give you a sense of proof, like you can Google the 10 wealthiest people work, Google 10, the 10 wealthiest people in the world. Now just take out wealthiest and replace it for rich, you'll see the same names. Take out rich and replace it for success, you'll see all the same names. And so you can see how pervasive this is. It's just, like, it's everywhere. You go into the Oxford Dictionary, and you're like, no, but the definition of wealth is this, right? So we're very confused about this as a society and as a race.
Ryan:Which is the actual true definitions that all still make sense. But what we're talking about is kind of shifting our thinking around those definitions, right? Like, if you look at the definitions in the dictionary, like you mentioned, I did pull it up, and they do share meanings, but we want to make those better. We want to improve upon those definitions, which we will do in the next couple of episodes and really kind of add layers. We're thinking really clearly and logically here. For this episode, though, we're double tapping on money, aren't we? Mm hmm.
Terry Condon:yeah, we just need to decouple those things. So we know, look, if wealth isn't money, rich isn't money, success isn't money, what is money? And this is where I think we get into a bit of history, isn't it? Do you want to talk about the coincidence of once problem? Cause this is where this whole thing starts.
Ryan:Yeah, for sure. Coincidence of wants is basically why money exists. It's because once upon a time, if you were a blacksmith that makes swords and shields, and I'm a fisherman that holds in trout, and you want to eat fish, but I don't want sword, The trade can't happen, and that's because only one person will have what they want here. So if I want what you have, but you don't want what I have, then we're kind of stuck there. And we've really got three options at that point. Either option one, we choose violence and, you know, I'm a fisherman. which means you're taking that sword, and you're slicing me open, and you're taking my fish. Now, that can be a really great, fast solution. But there's obviously a big con to that, which is it cuts off future supply of fish. how are you going to get more of it in the future?
Terry Condon:what about the moral dilemma? It's just not a great thing to do. Just
Ryan:kill fishermen.
Terry Condon:don't do it. Just don't do it.
Ryan:Or there's option two, which is triangular trade, which is you ask me what I want, and maybe that's leather for my fishing bag. And then you go and find someone who has leather and wants swords. Then you trade your sword for that leather and come back to me with leather to trade for your fish. Now obviously this is a lot better because it's less violent. And it also means you won't cut off the fish supply, but that requires a lot of energy and effort.
Terry Condon:That's a terrible way to build an economy. It's very inefficient, very laboursome, very exhausting. And there's a reason why triangular trade didn't work because it doesn't work.
Ryan:Well, you'd be fin you'd be spending more time finding someone that has what you want than you would be actually catching the fish. Yeah. That sounds like a bloody nightmare and they didn't have technology back there. They didn't have social media. So you couldn't just post up on marketplace and see who's, see who's operating there. which is why then the emergence of option three came into play, which is the currency trade. So instead of offering me your swords, you offer me something that I know that I can use to exchange for leather. Which is currency, And that could be anything. Everyone just needs to want that thing and it needs to be able to be broken down to exchange really easily for different values of things. So a good example of this is agribids were used in in Africa, in Ghana, Africa, as money. People would wear them around their necks and use them for payment. And so that's how they basically allowed you to transfer something big into something else that was more malleable that could then be traded on for something that you want
Terry Condon:It's kind of interesting, isn't it? Because you think about necklaces now, it's jewelry. It's like a signal of status. but it's not the actual thing really anymore. Whereas before it it actually was your money.
Ryan:What was the last time you wore a necklace?
Terry Condon:Oh, geez. Good call. I don't know. It might've been like 10 years old I don't wear, I don't wear a necklace. No.
Ryan:Embarrassingly, I wore a beaded necklace at one point, but they weren't
Terry Condon:Oh, I can see that. Did you have spike, did you have spiky hair at the same time?
Ryan:I was writing to Xavier Rudd for a little bit there.
Terry Condon:Got it.
Ryan:Anyway, anyway but you can see now currency trade, right? Better than a triangular trade because you're not spending all that time looking for, that coincidence of once, you're actually turning what you have into something that can be traded into anything. And that's the problem that money solves for. And obviously the pros of that is no one gets hurt. There's no violence and it's easy and fast to facilitate those trades. And the other thing is it encourages specialization. It makes you want to get really good at what you do so that you can trade more into agribids, for example, to money so that you can get more of what you want, all the other things, not just shields and swords, but, uh, you know, build a home, furniture, et cetera, et cetera. And
Terry Condon:That, that point there on specialization is actually really underrated because in a world where there isn't money, your best bet is to get good at everything yourself. Because it's so hard to solve that coincidence of wants problem. The triangular trade doesn't work. Your best bet is to learn every single thing yourself. And so that just means your whole life. Is not necessarily getting ahead. It's just always, it's only ever going to be getting by because you spend all of your time figuring out how to just get what you need to survive. That's subsistence. And so money basically unlocks this route, this world where you get to focus on one thing and let other people focus on other things and be able to have all of us get more of what we want. when you think about it, it's actually a very, it's a very metaphysical concept. It's, it's almost like you get to transmute, what you're doing, your time, your talent, you get to transmute it into something, store it in this thing. And then you get to use that to give to somebody else who can then translate it into something, whatever they want. it's kind of magical when you think about it. Very cool idea.
Ryan:It's leverage for civilizations, isn't it? Like when you think I can do less and get more, if I just get really good at one thing. Versus, obviously, the learning cost of everything, the amount of time it takes to do everything. I don't know, I'd have a pretty crooked ass, I reckon, if that was the case.
Terry Condon:but look, it's gone through, you So that That concept of money holds true across time, but the shape and the form of money has changed. So, you know, we we just talked about agri beads there, that's a form of collectible, it started with collectibles. And money will always go through. different stages of development. And the first one is, it's a collectible. And everyone says, I like the look of that thing. And somebody else is going to like the look of that thing as well. And so the collectibles becomes the first kind of stage. Beads, shells, teeth, these are all things that we used for money. But then we went, then we went to commodities. So we went bronze, silver, and gold same thing. and then we went to paper money. So we started with receipts. Then we went to bank notes and that's kind of interesting as well, because. It actually used to be the opposite. Now, we get paid to store our money at the bank. And there's a reason for that. But we used to actually have to pay to have our money stored at the bank. And the reason why is because they were actually storing your money and securing it for you in a bank vault as gold. It was, it was kept on hand. We went to paper money because gold is very hard to lug around, particularly if you're moving big amounts, and it's not easily divisible as well, and so what we decided to do was like store gold in banks, this is used to be like blacksmiths, they used to basically say, look, you guys have got the best security, so store this gold and then the blacksmiths were like, well, I'm going to give you a receipt, I'm going to give you a receipt so that you know that I've got your gold. And then people just started trading the receipts. So I gave you that receipt so you can go back to that blacksmith and actually get my gold. And then what happened was, the blacksmith realized, Hey, I could just create more receipts than I have gold. And that's how we got into the banking system where we have fractional reserve and they start loaning out money and that's now why you get paid. To store your money there. You're getting paid because they're using your money to go and loan out to other people. I know that's like a pretty simplistic way of saying it, but that's kind of how we started to shift and change things, didn't we?
Ryan:Yeah, I think you can see how you, we used the word efficiency before, you can use triangular trade was very inefficient, and then you went to a currency trade, which allows you to be a lot quicker. And then if you look at these things we've used as money, collectibles, commodities, paper money, now digital money, each time we've evolved. It's come to a form that's a whole lot more efficient over time we've we've found forms of money, forms of currency that hold its value, but then also can move around the globe as quickly as possible. And so you can see why receipts were more popular than gold. And now, how long does it take to transfer money from me to you on the other side of town or even on the other side of the world? It's only, only getting quicker.
Terry Condon:Exactly. I think that's a really good observation because it is, it's all about speed and it's all about ease. money is a, is a form of technology. We're going to get more into it in a second, but it's, it's actually technology money can be anything. People are using Pokemon cards for money. They're storing their value and and they're trading those cards over time. So, the main point to get is that money is anything that sits in the middle of two people who both want different things. And who can use that middle thing to get whatever they want. That's it.
Ryan:Let's, unpack that just a little bit further, right? So there's four functions of money. It needs to do four important jobs. it needs to be a medium that lets you move value. Let's transfer it around. Say I've got it, move it to you. needs to be a good measure of value. So that's often the price and it needs to be a good standard. Let's just speak the same language, which is obviously. Very topical in this episode. And then the fourth thing is it needs to be a great store of value. It needs to let you transfer for something in the future. Because I might want to sell some fish today, but I don't want to just sword today. Maybe I want to sword in three years time when the war breaks out. So it needs to let you hold it, but also keep it over time. So You know, that doesn't have to happen on the day at the point in time, which that triangulation gets even harder. So if my neighbor says to me, I'll pay you 20 bucks to mow my lawn. What he said is, I measured the value of you doing that for me at 20 and then I go and mow his lawn and he gives me 20 bucks. As he hands me that 20. That's the medium of exchange. It's him moving it from him to me. and we both agree that that's the value, the 20, that's a standard. We've agreed that, yep, cool. That's, that's worth something. I put that 20, I go to the ATM and I put it in the bank and I save it for a rainy day. That's me then storing it. Did I get that right? was real basic mind working
Terry Condon:No, I think it's important though'cause fundamentally that is what is happening. Because the economy is the social network. It's, it's allowing other people to send messages from them to you. When he pays you the 20, that's the message that I value you mowing my lawn at 20 and that's more than the money in my pocket. That's the message. you can take that message, and you can interpret that message, and you go, Ok, cool, so that's 20 dollars. How many people would value it at 20 dollars? And what would it mean to be able to make that 30? How would I need to improve my service? And it forces you to be kind of be thinking, about how we can work together. And how I can give somebody else what they want, and, I think the greatest thing about money is that it lets strangers instantly establish trust and collaborate to fulfill their mutual wants in a way where both people walk away with more of what they want. That is a cool technology and without it, we live in a very violent world.
Ryan:And that's just the world flourishing, isn't it? Like if you think about instantly by trading, we're both better off. If I value the 20 more than the time it takes me to mow your lawns and you value a really nicely mowed lawn more than that 20, then we're both better off by some margin
Terry Condon:So much better than I have what you want, but you don't have what I want. What are we gonna do about that? So that's why I look at it. It's an information technology that powers that original social network. It lets strangers collaborate instantly without actually having to know each other and get more of what they want. And also I think it's like a distributed scoreboard, right? Because wherever the money's sitting is where the value has accumulated. So if you've accumulated more value, what it actually says is I have contributed more than I've consumed. Because if I consumed more than I contributed, guess what I'd have? I'd just be in debt. And so, it's a scoreboard in that way. And you can sort of look at it and go, okay, where is all the value? And you can actually work your way backwards from what people value. So, people say follow the money. The money is telling you something. That is where the actual value is. And you can see how the value in society shifts and changes across time. We were in an industrial age, and then we went into an information economy. And we're moving into a different time now, and all that value is shifted and changed. The people that are on top of it now are the people that understood this information economy, and how to use and mine data and information and attention. And these are the people that are quite well off these days. But if you go back, you know, 50, 60 years, the companies at the top of the world then, where all the value was accreted, They look like very different companies. And so it shows you where society's at in terms of its own evolution. And if you can start to understand this, you can start to play the game. And every game can be gamed. But you just need to know the rules. You need to know how it works. And you need to know fundamentally what is actually going on. So that's why I think it's so important to get down to the studs when it comes to this. So you can stop hating money. You can start to love money. Very difficult to do better if you have this confused relationship with it. You think it's a bad thing. You've been convinced by all the movies that it's a toxic, toxic thing for society.
Ryan:Not even just movies. Like, it's also, like you said, as a scoreboard. If you look at the scoreboard, you read out the top 10 richest people before you go, well, are they working harder than everybody else? And everyone kinda looks at and go, why should Jeff Bezos have, you know, a hard, I dunno what, he has$60 billion that I'm working probably just as many hours, but I don't have 60 billion. And you look and go, well, there's something unfair about it. But. The truth is he's solved a bigger problem for people in society than I have by some margin.
Terry Condon:Think about the number of transactions he's facilitated. So we've established that the transaction is the center of wealth. Two people walk away with more of what they want. Jeff Bezos has facilitated more transactions across the world than most people could ever dream of doing. And he's built a living, breathing organism that makes that possible for more people. So he makes more money and he has more money because he's facilitated more of those interactions than most people ever have or ever will. And that's a, that's actually pretty, that's quite a selfless thing to do when and so the money is a scoreboard of that. I'm not saying that Jeff Bezos is a flawless person who's golden boy who's done everything right for the whole of his life. But what I'm saying is society has valued what he's done for society. Quite highly, because he's actually done a lot for society. He's created a lot of jobs, and he's facilitated a lot of transactions, so a lot of people get what they want.
Ryan:Massive. Yeah. Yeah. and that's where I think these specific examples help you break down some of the jaded relationships that people have with money, where you go, it's unfair. Why would someone have that? You know, the elitist and all, all those types of things. But if you do really look at it and go, well, what did they? What have they done for people, for civilization? I guess the other part to this but is also the fact that it's, it's not always the person, it's the people that came before them in their family uh, can make this a little bit tricky where you, you kind of really question, like, do people only get money by doing good work and solving problems for other people? Yes, they do. But it might not have been you in the line of succession. It might have been someone before you in your family.
Terry Condon:Well, this is where it's really interesting, right? So, most people that inherit money, most of them within two to three generations, they've gone back to zero again. And because they haven't, actually haven't learned what actually created the money. opportunity, that value that they actually ended up inheriting. And so the scoreboard goes back to zero for those families, because that actually didn't internalize the lessons, that the people that came before them should have, or could have taught them. Which is quite interesting. So it's interesting to be able to decouple the concept of like a good moral person versus somebody who has a lot of money, they're not necessarily the same thing. It's just, well, whether society is valuing the thing you do or it's not. And so, it's quite interesting, isn't it? Because like, you hear about the starving artist thing. The starving artist only cares about what they want. Whereas if you switch it around, and you go, what does society want from me? You can actually do quite well making great art. So one of the best examples of this is Andy Warhol. And if you don't know Andy Warhol, he was a famous artist. he was known for his pop art. So he produced this new kind of art. But he actually figured out how to mass produce it. So he figured out that society liked it and people were paying a lot for his art. But then he actually built like a factory, where he taught other people to take on specialized parts of each artwork. And he taught them how to create more of these pieces. so he could get more of his art out to more people. And he did famously well as an artist because of that, and a lot of artists used to hate him because of that as well. Because it's that whole mentality of like, oh, he's sold out. Not really, actually what he did was, he thought, what do people want from me and how do I give them more of it? And I think this is where the real realization is, money turns your self centered desire into a selfless pursuit if you're doing it well. You got to figure out what people want from you and your earning doesn't come at the cost of somebody else. It's a reflection of the contribution you've made to somebody else and how much they've valued it and measured that at for you. So it's a, it's just an interesting inversion, I think, to sort of feel good about money. And I think the last thing I want to sort of talk about here is wants, right? I brought up this little experiment, Daniel Priestley is a guy I've been learning a lot from more recently. And he talked about. This little thought experiment and he says, I want you to write down the amount that you want to spend over the next year to cover all your wants and needs.
Ryan:a long list.
Terry Condon:You know the
Ryan:You know the money. I know the answer
Terry Condon:Yeah, you know the answer. So if you're listening to this, I just want you to write down the number. Just have a little second, just write down what is that actual number? What would the amount be that you would want to spend next year to cover all your wants and needs? And this is what he says. Yeah. If you've written it down, he says, if you only thought about yourself, your number's probably going to be pretty modest. You're probably going to say something like, I just want to be comfortable, I just want to have enough to kind of get by, just do a little bit better, maybe double, triple your salary, that might be kind of where you start. But he says, if you thought about your family, your number's probably going to be a bit bigger, but it's still going to be, you know, pretty small. If you thought about your extended family, and what you wanted to do for them, And if you thought about the big issues that we face as a planet and as a race, then your number should be trillions. So coming back to those examples, Musk, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, these guys are all trying to solve global problems for the race, human race. It's not a coincidence that they have more means than most people, because they're thinking, so he's got this interesting quote that comes after this he says, I'm really hoping that you have wants and needs that extend past your own family and your own self. And so it's kind of an interesting kind of flip, isn't it? Like, if you're only thinking about yourself, then you're going to keep your wants pretty small, but if you're thinking much bigger than you, you're going to have much bigger wants.
Ryan:The take home for me there is money is good, and wanting more money is good.
Terry Condon:if you get one thing from this, money has done amazing things for society. It's done amazing things for the world. And it's actually A technology that can create a lot more peace in the world. A lot less violence when it comes to this. it's what you said before. It's the, the way we project our stuff onto money. That's the problem, but it's actually not money. Money is a neutral technology that's built to help us be in relationship with each other. To create transactions, to create, facilitate wealth, and to have people live better lives. better, more vital, more interesting lives. So money itself is good. It's the way we're looking at, thinking about, and using money that's the problem. And wanting more money, Is good as well because you're extending your own thinking beyond yourself
Ryan:Quick caveat here, that's as long as you don't, choose option one and choose violence. long as you're not stealing it, it means you can even specialize getting it better at what you do to solve more problems. Yeah. very good, mate. That makes me feel good about money.
Terry Condon:Good that's the whole thing because I just think we said this at the start if you have a complicated Confused relationship with money you will repel instead of attracting it and you'll be afraid you'll be One foot in, one foot out, you won't be consistent with your actions, which means you'll never be consistent with your results. So before we even worry about trying to figure out how to manage money to get more of what we want and do better with it, let's get really clear that money's a good thing so that we don't, have that confused relationship and we're just moving forward, you know, with clarity, and getting momentum because of that.
Ryan:Yeah, yeah. I think if you leave this episode thinking and knowing that money you earn is a certificate of appreciation, it lets you know that you've helped someone and how much others value what you've done for them. And so that's the definition we hold around income specifically It's a really good scoreboard, like you said before, just shows that you're actually doing great things for other people.
Terry Condon:Making money is proof that you're adding value to people's lives and aiming to get rich is aiming to be useful to the world. It's, it is striving to do more for others.
Ryan:Love that. we've covered a lot here, mate. Let's quickly recap, can we?
Terry Condon:So the big thing here is, before we can manage our money effectively, we need to know what it is that we're managing. And in order to do that, we need to know what it isn't. What we've established is it isn't wealth, it isn't success, and it isn't rich. It is an information technology that allows strangers to connect with each other, collaborate, to be able to get more of what each other wants. And it is a really, really, really good idea for humanity. And if you're giving more to the world, then you'll be getting more money. And it's a scoreboard in that sense. So that's the whole journey that we've been on. And the reason we've done that is so that going forward in this series, we can now start to think about how do we manage our money effectively once we've got it and how do we do it in a way that helps us improve the quality of our life. And we're going to be coming back to those words that we talked about before in order to be able to do this. we're going to go back to wealth. We're going to go back to rich and we'll go back to success. And. Separate those things out, define them for ourselves in order to be able to do that.
Ryan:And I think at the highest point, if you just feel better about money for having listened to this and feel better about getting more of it, that in and of itself is a really healthy thing. It tends to, yeah, reduce some of the, internal friction that we often feel of resistance to actually getting more of it as well. so Let's get more of it. mate. And so, excited about the next chapter of this series, mate. What's in the next episode coming right up?
Terry Condon:So we're going to be talking through, I guess, the framework that we end up coming up with after this five years and figuring out what are the five money skills that we must learn in order to be able to manage you effectively Get what we want, improve that quality of life. So we're going to talk about how we came across that, what those skills are, before we do a bit of a deeper dive into each of them for the rest of the series.
Ryan:Which, it's funny thinking about the currency trade we were talking about before. It's become so easy to trade we trade for dumb shit. Big part of this is also figuring out how do we not trade for dumb shit and only trade for what we value, right? nice. All right, mate. See you in the next episode.
Terry Condon:Beautiful. See you mate.