Can you really do all the things in life you want to do if you don't have the money to do them?

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If you define your problems such that they require money to solve, then you need money to solve the problems. One of my friends has as one of his life goals to start a restaurant. This is a “hard” goal that absolutely requires financial capital to achieve. But there are shortcuts so that he doesn’t actually have to make a million dollars. One possibility is finding an investor. Another would be to get a loan. Both have their tradeoffs that need to be understood.

It takes time and work to redefine problems that need money into problems that don’t need money. That time and work might be better spent earning the money to buy your way out of the conundrum. It is totally up to you to decide how much your time and effort are worth.

I am a software developer, so I am very very familiar with what’s called the buy-build tradeoff. Everybody wants to be more productive. Purchased tools make the promise to you that you will be more productive if you spend your money to buy the tool. Whether a purchased tool will make you more productive or not is very much dependent on a few factors, knowledge of these factors will make you a more savvy purchaser.

At the end of the day, you have to spend your time doing something. Experience tells me that it’s not in your best interest to load all your time onto either the income generation or the income spending parts. If you only ever spend money, then you’ll eventually run out. If you only ever earn money, then you’ll be missing out on interesting opportunities.

You need to make the determination of whether to spend your time earning or spending resources yourself. Trusting someone else to do it for you is tantamount to stating that efficient allocation of resources is unimportant to you. You can only make this determination rationally if you’re already absolutely filthy rich.