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When you are done reading this introduction, you can head to "The System" to see how Money Monk turns the definition of wealth that we explore below into action.

Whether you are just starting out and interested in learning about how to make money do more for you in your life, or you have been wealth-building for a while, Money Monk is a community-focused educational platform designed to help you reach your goals and rise above with the mindsets, strategies, and actions to fuel your growth.

The challenge with money and discussions about wealth is that there are so many definitions, bad information, or helpful information that only focuses on one part of the journey. It’s hard to know where to start, who to trust, and what to do to be successful.

This post can be your first step along a purposeful path of wealth-building. It is intended to ground you on what wealth-building even is, what "wealth" means, and what we are doing when we talk about empowering your finances and living out a life vision supported by money.

It is essential that you start here with this foundational understanding because it informs everything else about how we will approach the strategies and tactics to make you successful. It is also important to be clear on definitions - because how you define something is how you will approach it. And if we do not define our focus correctly, we can be lead down the wrong path. Given how hard we all work for money - it's important that we get it right!

I have been building wealth for 14 years, and long before that have spent years struggling with money, and making it my profession to transform my own life. You can learn more about me and the Money Monk focus in the “About” section. This lived experience is what informs how I define wealth and how to properly focus on it.

At the core of wealth is this simple but profound idea: Wealth gives you the space in your life to use your time in the way most valuable and purposeful to you. It gives you options and flexibility to choose the best path for yourself. It gives you ownership and control over not just what you possess in life—but ownership and agency over your LIFE. Finally, those three elements—time, options, and ownership—come together to support a vision for your life. Remember this wealth acronym: TOOL stands for Time Options Ownership and Life Vision. And remember that money CAN be a tool that empowers you, if you learn to use it correctly.

Here's essentially how money does that for you: if invested wisely, money grows by itself. It is like planting a seed in the ground and letting it grow into a giant oak tree. It takes a long time – just like growing a tree – to do this. Money, if invested, will double itself generally every 7 to 10 years. This is called compounding, or what you’ll typically hear called “compound interest”. It is compounding on itself. The longer money has – the more TIME – it has to do this, the faster it will grow. Think of a small snowball rolling down a snowy mountain. Over time, it picks up more and more snow until it turns into a giant ball—the same with money.

What is surprising to most people and rarely well understood is that this compounding is magical. The longer you invest and let time and compounding do their thing, even small amounts of money can grow far beyond what you might expect. In fact, even people who make small salaries, if they start young enough and are consistent, can earn more from their money, compounding far above what they can earn on their own with a job.

I will go deeper into the science of investing and compounding later – but here is the essential takeaway: anyone can save and invest. No amount of money is too little to start. No special skills are needed to get started, and investing is open to anyone. The sooner you start, the more successful you will be.

Now, here’s the next key ingredient. You should understand at a basic level how money can help supply you with time and options and support a higher vision for your life. Think of money as an essential tool – it is not the goal by itself. Money shouldn’t become something you worship or value over everything else. It is an important tool to help you achieve something, but if you make it THE goal, you will live a life focused on greed and never having enough of it.

Money as a tool supports your vision by doing the following (and again, I will get into the science of this later—it isn’t important that you understand this fully right now): money that is well-invested grows by itself, and you can take little bits of it every year and use them without ever running out of money. Think about a fruit tree that you harvest every year—it keeps growing food for you if you take care of it well. The “4% rule” that we will discuss later is the idea that your “portfolio,” which is all of your invested money, can give you 4% of itself every year without ever running out.*

What does this mean? Let’s say you saved and invested and reached a portfolio (all your invested money) of $1,000,000. Using the 4% rule, you could use $40,000 a year (4% of $1,000,000 = $40,000) forever.

Let me connect this tactical understanding of money – the interest from your portfolio – with the much more inspiring and important definition of wealth that we just talked about:

1.      When we say wealth supplies you with Time, imagine if you had $40,000 a year that you didn’t have to spend 40 hours or more a week working for. Envision beyond work – what if you could spend that free time on something you are passionate about or something important to you that you don’t need to worry about making money from?

2.      When we talk about Options, imagine not needing to live in one place to support your job, having the flexibility to leave a job, pursuing opportunities as they present themselves, or saying no to situations that compromise your values.

3.      When we talk about Ownership, owning assets – things that grow in value the longer you hold them or provide you an income stream, is the physical representation of wealth. But you also have ownership and control over your life – the freedom to do what you want.

Lastly, these three parts of the wealth definition support our overarching goal: to empower your finances to live your life’s vision. Between freedom of time, flexibility of options, ownership of assets, and control over money, you are given the ability to live an inspired life that is not run out of the necessity of a job but out of what you want in life.

Think about the points on a triangle, with your life's vision in the middle. With time, ownership, and options, you can achieve your vision. And that is what wealth builds for you.

If you don’t allow money to take over your entire focus and become THE goal, and instead focus on what ENOUGH would be to pursue this life’s vision – supported by the flexibility of options, available time, and ownership, money can become a powerful tool that helps you achieve a life that many people never get the opportunity to have. This is another way of thinking about wealth - being wealthy is simply having "enough". The more you can control your own greed and your own need for "more" - the faster you can get to a place where you have "enough". For people that cannot control their greed, a million dollars will never be "enough". Neither will ten million dollars.

There is a powerful quote from Mahatma Gandhi: "The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed."

It may seem counter-intuitive, but if you can control your greed, it also makes it easier to build wealth. Because you will spend less money on wasteful purchases, and can prioritize investing into assets that pay you instead.

Remember the TOOL acronym and know that the farther you walk down the wealth path, the more space and flexibility is given to you. While the end-goal might be to never work again, it doesn’t mean that it needs to be the only goal.

Along this path there are plenty of ways to experience this mindset. There are plenty of wonderful achievements along the way that give you breathing room, space, options, and time as you build wealth. If you are in debt, or living paycheck to paycheck, don't be discouraged if you can't see yourself getting to this end state, yet.

Instead, here are some powerful examples of achievements you will have along the way, which can empower your life:

The point is, when you build wealth you are given the space to have free time, options, own what is important to you, and can rise above a basic existence to pursue your vision – whatever that is for you. It’s the breathing room that most people never have the opportunity to experience – always worried about when the next bill is due.

This type of wealth and empowerment sounds great, so what is the catch? Everyone wants wealth – to be able to choose when they work, and to work on what interests them.

The catch is that to actually build the wealth we are talking about takes time, sacrifice, and a transformation of lifestyle. How so? Because to save money every month – we have to limit how much we spend. This is where the rubber meets the road. The most apt comparison is that wealth-building is like running an ultra-marathon - think about this as a really long race. You’ll need to save and invest not just for a month, but for years, before compound interest can do its magic.

Just like anything that is hard but worth doing, the magic is in finding enjoyment in the journey – even when it is uncomfortable. At the core of completing any challenge that takes a lot of time and effort, is growing the mindset that enables you to be sustainable and maintain performance over the long-term.

Money Monk helps you build the mindset to be successful AND the education needed to put the mindset into action. It can be your guide for not just HOW to run the “race”, but WHY you would want to run it, and WHAT you need to do in order to be successful.

So what is it that building wealth requires you to do? You need to save and invest money. The more you want to empower your life’s vision, the more you need to save and invest. The more you want to prioritize your time, options, and ownership – remember the TOOL acronym, the more you will need to prioritize building assets instead of spending all your money on expenses.

Depending on how quickly you want to arrive at your life’s vision – you will need to save and invest your money aggressively. What does “aggressively” mean? This means as much as you can in order to get to where you want to be at a specific time.

Money Monk will help you define and get specific about “where you want to be” and then build a savings plan to get you there in a time frame that works for you.

For some people, it could mean that you are saving as much as 50% (or more – if you are able) of every paycheck. For others, it could mean saving 10% of their paychecks. There are plenty of “rules of thumb” about how much to save, but the better approach in my opinion is to tailor your savings rate to what you want to accomplish. Because it gives you a PURPOSE and MISSION and a clear path, with goals along the way to hit.

This is where wealth builders start to look at their “savings rate” which is simply how much of their paycheck they are saving every month and year. The work is in increasing your savings rate while still being content in your current moment. This is typically called “living below your means,” where you are actively deciding to NOT spend money and prioritize building wealth instead. This is the workout that we do every single day: learning how to say no to spending money when we are tempted to spend it, and prioritizing the life’s vision we are pursuing for ourselves.

Just like any physical workout – we can have tougher workouts or easier workouts. Tougher workouts in this context means that you are trying to save more money. Easier workouts are still saving money, but maybe less than you want. What is key is finding BALANCE and SUSTAINABILITY. We are trying to not “burnout” and become overly restrictive in our mindset. We are trying to focus on the future while HONORING the present moment – enjoying the time we have.

At all points in your money journey, you will always be tempted in our society to spend more. And you also need to learn how to spend well and enjoy spending. You can “injure” yourself when you save too much and cause yourself too much mental anguish. Just like you can “injure” yourself by never saving money and being in debt. In both cases, we are fighting against greed and comparisons, a sense of lack, and learning to be in the moment and enjoy our life – regardless of how many material possessions we own or how much money we spend.

Trust me, as someone who started out heavily in debt - I used to spend over 100% of every paycheck. As I grew on my path, I was saving upwards of 70% of my paycheck. This "switch" is possible. Saving nearly 70% of a paycheck may seem hard to believe, but what I was able to do was learn how to spend a lot less money and still be happy. I learned how to subsidize my "essential" expenses - by having a paid off car, a cheap house, and shared living expenses. At the same time, I grew in my professional career and found ways to earn more money.

Growing your skills and professional value to earn more money is important. But, earning more money is NOT the root of wealth building. It is NECESSARY but NOT SUFFICIENT.

Why is this? Because if you never learn to save and invest, you will never build the money “muscles” that help you control your spending and prioritize wealth-building instead. There are countless rich people that make lots of money, but continue to spend nearly 100% of it. The only difference between these people and a middle class person that spends 100% of their money is they just spend it on fancier products.

Instead, the perfect combination is to hold your expenses flat or decrease – meaning they do not increase over time, while increasing your salary or how much money you make. This is a powerful combination because then any increase in income can be directed towards wealth-building activities. This is how I became wealthy and was able to retire in my mid-30s. I used to joke with people that my house and expenses were cheaper than when I was in college – and it was true – I had learned to spend less, while making much more.

The other problem with focusing on constantly making more money is that it can lead you down the path of becoming greedy. There is a saying that “love of money is a root of all evil”, which is what greed is. We want to see money as a tool, but we do not want to “love” it and prioritize it above everything else that is important in our lives. If you become greedy, you will lead a life that is focused on never having enough. You will always want more: more money to buy more stuff, and then more money to buy even more stuff. It is an endless cycle that causes you to sacrifice your values – and a true sense of peace and contentment.

This is why one of the Money Monk mottos is “Wealth NOT Greed”. It may sound counter-intuitive at first, but greed destroys true wealth.

This all comes back to mindset: if you can maintain contentment and find ways to be happy in your day to day life, without relying on money purchases as a crutch for satisfaction, you can build a wealth-building machine that allows you to live out your life’s vision.

The entirety of Money Monk – from the strategies and tactics we discuss – are aimed at helping you be successful on this mission. Whether it is learning how to budget, how to invest, how to save money, any of the mindsets you need to adopt to be successful over a long-period of time, or the daily activities and quarterly or annual check-ups you can do, to living debt-free and building a wealthy life – this platform will connect all of it for you.

I hope that you find this platform a helpful place to transform your money situation and that you will join me on the path of financial empowerment.