How To Think About Money

“It’s interesting how infrequently money comes up in Meditations. Here was a guy who had incredible wealth, whose predecessors obsessed over it and found it to be a source of both pleasure and conflict, and yet in his private meditations, it hardly comes up at all.”Ryan explains how a Stoic thinks about money. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  How to Think About Money. It's interesting how infrequently money comes up in meditations. Here was a guy who had incredible wealth, whose predecessors obsessed over it, found it to be the source of both pleasure and conflict, yet in his private meditations, it hardly comes up at all. In his actions, we see Marcus was conscious of money, though, but primarily as a means to an end, not as an end to itself. He was more interested in what it could do for other people. He declined gifts and inheritances. He gave liberally to the poor. He sold off palace furnishings at Rome's lowest point. But perhaps these attitudes are related. Because Marcus did not think particularly highly of money, he was comfortable in his ability to be generous.

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  At one point, he told the Senate that he did not regard himself in possession of any of his wealth. "It belongs to the people," he said. "Even the house I live in is not mine." There can be virtue in frugality. Klianthe seemed to be an incredibly hard worker, a manual laborer no less, who spent little of what he earned. But frugality and diligence with money can also be a vice. It makes finances loom too large in our lives, makes us throw good time after bad. After all, it's not just enough to earn money, but we have to manage it and make it grow. We can come to identify with the fruits of our labor and our success, which makes it hard to spend, even on necessary things. Hard to be generous, hard to share. Money isn't rare. There's nothing precious about precious stones. It's all incredibly common.

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  Most of the people who have it are not impressive. Most of the great fortunes are, in fact, the opposite of great. The way to think about money is as a tool. And what did the Stoics use their tools for? To do good, to get better, to make the world better. And we can all do the same.

• 2:13Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. So check it out at DailyStoic.com/email.