How To Earn Fuck-You Money Before Age 30

💸 HOW TO EARN FUCK-YOU MONEY BEFORE AGE 30

Philosophical Finance For A Life Well Explored | How To Decouple Your Purpose From Your Income

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Published On Sep 18, 2023 (Updated On Apr 20, 2025) ¡ 1168 Views

🤑  Fuck-You Money - First Impressions

If you asked 20-year-old me what “fuck-you" money is, I would have said, “Having enough money that you could throw away (literally burn) an amount valuable to a middle-class American.”
My 20-year-old self was not financially secure. I had a growing pile of student debt, had never made a budget, would compare my finances to others, and ignored financial issues until an actual debt collector came to find me (I owed the US Air Force thousands of dollars - that’s a story for another time). My premature definition of “fuck-you money,” i.e., having much more money than the average person, would theoretically solve all these problems.
My early definition of “fuck-you money” is enticing because, whether we like it or not, money directly correlates to our life satisfaction. But we need to understand why and how money and happiness relate to each other.

🤔 Money = Happiness…

Kind of.
When your net worth is negative, every increase in cash will have a massive impact on your happiness and well-being. Remember how happy you were when you got your first allowance? If enough money to pay off my student debt would make me 10x happier, wouldn’t millions of dollars make me 100x happier?
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The actual relationship between money and happiness is very different. Money is necessary to meet our basic needs. Food, water, shelter, and healthy relationships have a minimum financial requirement. But once those needs are met, money is one of many tools to improve our lives.
For decades, the widespread consensus has been that money and life satisfaction (among other factors like perceived happiness, anxiety, etc.) have a logarithmic relationship. The average American needs an income of $50k-$70k to meet all their basic needs, with a little left over. After that, a higher income only leads to diminishing returns.
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Doubling your net worth from $5,000 to $10,000 while living paycheck-to-paycheck will exponentially increase your life satisfaction, but doubling your net worth from $150,000 to $300,000 will only gain you a few happiness points.
Understanding this relationship is how we can create a path to earn fuck-you money.
 
But…

⛓️ The Power of Choice

Before we discuss what fuck-you money actually is and how to get it, let’s talk about why anyone would want fuck-you money in the first place.
Why do people choose to fast? Why do successful executives keep working? Why do elite athletes wake up at 5 a.m. to train? Why is the grass always greener?
The ability to choose is one of the most potent mechanisms in our biology. Not having enough money to pay for dinner is horrendously stressful; skipping dinner to learn what ketosis feels like is empowering. The only difference between these two situations is the power of choice.
 
I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.
 
- William Blake
The power of choice empowers and challenges us to create systems to live by instead of being trapped by the systems others have laid upon us. Luckily, the power of financial choice is not that expensive.

🙊 What Actually is Fuck-You Money?

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Fuck-you money is enough liquid cash to support your expenses for a year.
 
This definition is much more meaningful and attainable than my original “become a millionaire” definition. As an example, my personal amount of fuck-you money, without changing any of my spending habits (traveling, seeing friends, cycling, playing golf, making music, and eating out), is $50,000. If I intentionally cut back on the more frivolous categories, this would drop to $30K.
 
Fuck-you money isn’t millions; it’s a few thousand dollars more than I had to pay in student debt.
 
Fuck-you money is your liquid cash, not your net worth. There are plenty of people who have a sizeable net worth but don’t have fuck-you money due to their high expenses or locked-up investments. Their lives may seem nice from the outside, but without the power of choice, they may feel trapped and overworked, unable to enjoy what they have spent their lives working for.
 

Aside

The intent of “fuck-you money” isn’t related to money at all. Remember that the goal is to avoid scenarios that diminish your life and open opportunities that add to your life. Depending on your circumstances, financial planning might not be the best strategy to achieve this goal. Maybe you are trapped in a toxic romantic relationship. Maybe you signed a complicated contract and are stuck with bad terms. Maybe you overestimated your output, overcommitted, and have no time left to yourself. All of these are examples of a momentary loss of control, and each will have a different strategy to free yourself. It might be “fuck-you honesty”, “fuck-you courage”, “fuck-you creativity”, or “fuck-you career capital”.
At this point, the “fuck-you” nomenclature breaks down, but you get the point.
For the sake of this essay, I’ll assume you made it this far because you have some interest in gaining your own financial power of choice.
We continue.
 
 
The formula for fuck-you money is highly personal and devilishly easy to game. If you want fuck-you money, you can either make more money or require less of it in the first place.

↕️ Make More or Require Less

When given the choice between making more money or requiring less, I would bet the majority of people would choose to make more. With more money, you can have the best of both worlds. You can buy the house you want, get that extra car for off-roading, stay in nicer places when you travel, and impress your friends with your 🔥 collection of designer clothing while continuing to save and invest.
But, like everything in life, the cost of ownership, even financial ownership, is much higher than we realize.
On average, the more you make, the more you will spend. The more you spend, the more money you need to make. This self-promoting negative cycle is called Lifestyle Inflation, which I’ve given the pet name King Midas.
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Lifestyle Inflation and increased earnings come with another silent killer: King Midas’s pet, the Black Swan.
Let’s pretend you start your career as a banker making $300,000 yearly, well above the average American salary. You work hard and reap the benefits of your spoils. You buy a new car, rent a nicer house, and increase your monthly spending on travel, social events, and restaurants. Your social network follows suit. A few years and a few promotions later, you are ready to buy your first home. You frequently spend time at your friends’ multi-million-dollar homes and want the same for yourself. You splurge on your mortgage and plan to refinance in the next 2-4 years.
With your new mortgage, your monthly expenses are up to $10K. But it’s fine because you bring home well over $300,000 a dollar a year, so you can easily cover your $120,000+ yearly expenses with plenty to spare. You’ve made at least $300,000 a year for your entire career, so how could you make less?
This is when you see your first Black Swan. The market crashes. Your bank lays off a sizeable percentage of its workforce, including you. You have enough saved to survive for a few months but must find a job quickly. The market doesn’t recover as expected, and no banks are hiring; you still haven’t found a job after six months. You have run through your reserves and are forced to sell your home. You lose hundreds of thousands of dollars from your decreased home value and still don’t have a job.
 
Black swans are more vicious than they are beautiful.
 
To ground this fictional story in reality, on average, 22 million Americans lose their job due to a layoff every year. 40% of the American workforce has been laid off at least once in their career. I quite literally got laid off before writing this post (circa June 2023).
 
Getting laid off is one of many events that can quickly dry up your income stream and net worth. On the other hand, with appropriate insurance, the likelihood that your spending requirements will increase 10x overnight is zero (unless we find ourselves moonlighting as Mel Gibson in Payback).
 
You have much more control over how much you spend than how much you make.
 
So, should we make more money or require less? The best strategy is, somewhat obviously, both. As you earn more, save and invest more of your income. But beware, this is much easier said than done; King Midas will be right behind you with a convincing argument to buy that Plaid Tesla as a weekend getaway vehicle. Let’s learn how to avoid his trap.

📈 How To Earn Fuck-You Money

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Disclaimer
The fact that I have the option to write about this is a privilege. I am lucky to be in a place to make meaningful changes to my finances and life situation, which is not true for everyone. Not everything is in our control, and life isn’t fair.
 
I hope this essay will be useful to many, but understand that it is not universally applicable.
 
So, how do we avoid the trap King Midas has laid out for us?
 
Live on less than you earn. Save and invest the difference, and let compound interest do its thing.
 
- Richard Meadows
I am not a financial advisor, nor do I have a novel approach to budgeting or living frugally, but a budget is required to avoid Midas and his temptations. I have left my financial routine in the footnotes for the tool and process-obsessed.
Once you have a budget and spending goals, I think you’ll find that what gets measured gets done. Although this is a decisive quote in business (google it), I believe it holds true for simple personal goals. If you set a budget of $300 for groceries for the month, it won’t feel good when that little horizontal bar turns devil-red 😈, and you see your net worth graph trend downwards 📉.
When evaluating your finances and budgeting goals, ask yourself: “Was this money spent worth losing the compounding interest gained by saving it?” Rewarding our future selves is difficult, but compounding interest is a useful persuasion tool.
Compounding interesting is an unnatural concept. Here is an example. If you take 30 linear steps, you will end up across the street. If you take 30 exponential steps (each step doubles in size), you will get to the moon. King Midas will try and convince you that he can help get across the street faster, but if you understand his tricks, you can soon leave him in the dust on your next space tourism trip.
 

😳 What To Do With Fuck-You Money?

As one of my midwestern co-workers used to say: “Now we’re gettin’ to the meat and potatoes.”
The hard truth is that there is no correct answer. Determining your life’s purpose when money isn’t a priority is one of the most complex and valuable questions we can attempt to answer.
Let’s take a look at the Income vs. Life Satisfaction curve again. The tail end of the graph plateaus and turns negative. Why?
 
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When the average person achieves the type of financial freedom that should fix all their problems, it forces them to confront the terrifying question: “What is the meaning in your life?”. This question is so hard to answer that most of us let others answer it for us.
 
There is no map.
 
Seth Godin
There is no easy answer to finding your purpose in your life. There is no map for you to feel balanced, energized, excited, and fulfilled. But, I guarantee that if you choose to attach your purpose to your income and let others determine how to live your life, you are doomed to a slow decay of anxiety, detachment, and loneliness.
While I can’t lead you to your destination, here are a few tools that I found helpful while attempting to create my map.
 
Invest in your Tribe
Five best friends and a biological and chosen family are worth more than any life savings. I hope my deathbed is surrounded by people I love, not my ceiling-high stacks of cash.
We are social creatures; we need a tribe to belong to. Oddly enough, when we invest in our tribe, we also invest in our future well-being. For example, every single job I’ve ever had has been opportunity opened up by a friend. My top twenty days in 2022 (yes, I have a system to score and recount every day) were spent with friends and family.
 
Read and Write More
Writing is learning. Journaling for five minutes, tweeting your thoughts, or starting a blog can help you better understand yourself. Don’t judge the contents of your writing too harshly, and experiment with different systems until you find something to make writing a regular practice. It took me years to find a writing routine I could stick with; now that I have, writing has become one of my favorite activities, despite my deep hatred for it during AP English.
Reading is the cheapest way to expand your life. It’s no coincidence that the most influential people in the world also read the most. It doesn’t matter what type of material you engage with as long as you regularly read and reflect on new perspectives.
I just finished reading True Biz, a fictional story about inequity and stigma in the deaf community. Even though it was a book I read for fun, and I don’t have a strong personal connection to the deaf community, the book taught me the importance of accessibility. As a software engineer, I can apply this lesson every day as I build user interfaces.
 
Create a Vacuum
Most of us are too busy and overwhelmed with information to see what happens when it all turns off. We let our jobs, friends, families, and circumstances fill the space in our lives. Good or bad, we often forget to leave room for ourselves.
In his book, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Gelb asked thousands of people, “Where are you when you get your best ideas?” The answers vary widely, from in the shower to jogging to lying in bed. But, all the participant’s answers had one thing in common:
 
Nobody gets their best ideas while working.
 
We need to leave space for our best ideas to emerge. By removing unnecessary mental burdens (taking a sabbatical, scheduling recurring reflection exercises, evacuating personal possessions, being alone for an uncomfortable amount of time), we can create space to unlock our best and most uniquely creative ideas.
This exercise isn’t easy, though; Elon will soon be knocking on your phone screen, trying to fill that space with the first Tesla made of 100% purebred doge fur.
 
Give Gifts Using Your Interests
I studied aerospace engineering in college, interned for SpaceX, and worked for Lockheed Martin SkunkWorks after college. After a few years in the industry, I wanted to move from Aerospace to Software Engineering to increase my job options and have more flexibility of time and location. At Lockheed, I worked in an underground bunker in the desert without an internet connection, which, obviously, wasn’t very flexible.
I had an intimidating amount to learn if I wanted to have a chance to land a job as a full-time software engineer. What better way to teach myself to code than to give a gift at the same time? One of the first websites I ever built was a compilation of custom messages written to my mom for Mother’s Day. She only received one message per day, so her Mother’s Day appreciation lasted three months instead of three minutes.
This project ended up being the beginning of an incredibly fulfilling side project called GoGyft and taught me the skills to land my first software engineering job. Even better, it was the best gift I’ve ever given.
 

🌅 In The End

Fuck-you money has nothing to do with increasing your net worth, list of possessions, or perceived success. The goal is to create high-quality options to meaningfully improve your quality of life.
 
Having high-quality options is the best proxy for the good life. Money is a useful servant but a terrible master.
 
- Richard Meadows
 

Thanks

Thanks to Patrick McKowen for his editorial feedback and visual edits.
Thanks to Annie Chin for proofreading.
Thanks to Richard Meadows for writing an incredible book that inspired this essay.
 

Footnotes

📐 Budgeting and Financial Tooling

A budget and net worth calculator are two necessary tools to achieve fuck-you money.
I use Copilot and strongly recommend it. It is the most user-friendly finance app I have tested, and it has saved me far more money than the somewhat high $30-a-month price tag. But any budgeting app or spreadsheet will work as long as it is simple and you like using it.
 
  1. Install Copilot.
  1. Link all of your financial accounts.
  1. Thoroughly review 2-3 months of transactions (be prepared; this will take a few hours). Categorize each transaction and mark it as reviewed.
  1. Fine-tune your spending categories to create buckets that make sense based on your spending.
      2. Here are all the categories I use
       
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  1. Review your budgeting system after 1, 2, and 3 months. Make adjustments to each category's budget.
  1. See the below section

🛟 Tune Your Savings Percentage

Once you have a budget and net worth tool, you’ll find that what gets measured gets done. Although this is a decisive quote in business (google it), I believe it holds true for simple personal goals. If you set a budget of $300 for groceries for the month, it won’t feel good when that little horizontal bar turns devil-red 😈, and you see your net worth graph trend downwards 📉.
After a few months, you should have a good idea of your income, required spending, flexible spending, and the percentage you can save. Once we know the amount we are saving and investing, all we have to do is divide our fuck-you money number by the amount we save every month, and we know how long it will take to get there.
If you want to get there faster, go back to your budget, and for each spending category, ask yourself: “Was this money spent worth losing the compounding interest gained by saving it?”. If not, experiment with lowering that area of your budget, and set a reminder to reflect on how your life has changed since updating that spending category. You can always increase your spending again if the money actually was worth it.
 
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