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seems to think being rich is the end-all be-all goal for happiness I'm here to help you out let's figure out what it is about being rich that is so attractive and see if we can create a road map to getting you there you're not going to wake up Elon you're not gonna wake up Warren Buffett the next richest person in the world won't get there by making a social media platform you aren't Mark Zuckerberg the reason these men got to where they are today is because they took a path that no one else ventured down

they made really stupid decisions that led to better decisions that led to them being at the Pinnacle of society like creating a hotter knot for girls at their college or just dropping out of college I wish everyone in the world for financial physical and mental health but just know that only one of these can you be rich in while still feeling completely miserable I hope that everyone reaches their goals of being rich just so you can finally see that you missed all the important things along the way anyway here's how to get rich [Music] you're

so smart why aren't you happy why can't you make yourself happy is it the money like really how much would it take for you to be truly happy enough to pay rent enough to go on your vacations and live life on your own terms money won't make you completely happy but it'll take away many many things that can make you unhappy for many all right yeah this is probably going to help you out but for the rest it won't and you'll be even more confused than you were before you'll fall deeper into a hole that

is getting deeper faster than you can climb what happens when you solve all the problems that money caused and are still left over with unsolved issues then what the new hyper focus on these problems trying to find the roots of them and you still don't know where it's stemmed from all the money you've earned and all the riches you feel so entitled to aren't helping and you're lost what do you do then your therapist doesn't help you the pills don't help the money doesn't help then what for so many people people that I'm surrounded by

some very talented people who are some of the smartest people I've ever met they struggle with the very thing that embodies who they are that knows of its own existence their own brain you're absolutely nothing without two things physical well-being and mental well-being these will beat you down to your hands and knees until you have nothing left there's a lot that people want and it seems like these two were always the last on the list these two go hand in hand money is just a supplement to both I think that that struggle stems from a

lack of purpose and I'm not talking about everyone that's like find your purpose okay obviously if it was that easy this wouldn't be an issue it's not a long-term thing it's a day-to-day issue what's the purpose of getting out of bed what's my purpose today in and day out it's the same thing over and over and over again a mundane static life will slowly drive you into Insanity becoming rich has its downsides many of which you won't find until you venture down that path having to put the entire business company even the world on your

back can take a toll on you physically mentally and fiscally I don't know what you like I don't know what you're good at I don't know what you think the world needs or how you're going to improve it but the one thing that I can tell you for certain that you're going to need to make it big is mental clarity slipping into mediocrity and sort of blending in with the rest of the world is terrifying failure is scary and I've never wanted to avoid something so much in my entire life that's where money comes in

it's a status symbol you have money you have everything else right it shows you're doing something and you're not a complete failure so you have to be doing good right at least that's what it looks like from the outside and maybe that's what everyone's chasing you know maybe it really is the glamor the 61 jet skis I just bought these few bottles I just opened all right I get it it's fun it's cool but after that you still feel unsatisfied it'll change from day to day maybe you're unsatisfied with your relationships or friendships or business

partners or maybe you're unsatisfied with the fact that your interior decorator painted the Wall's cream instead of white okay it could be anything you're still gonna be unsatisfied you're gonna be unsatisfied with something the people who can make it far who will make the amount of money that will Elevate them to the rich status will almost always be unsatisfied with where they're at it's a very lonely feeling because no one else will truly get your exact situation except for you it's the most alone you'll ever feel it's also very comforting knowing that no one else

will understand how to get you out of the spot so it's all on you at least I find comfort in that there are certain character traits of successful people that are a double-edged sword not knowing when to quit persistence sociopathy manipulation you write a very thin line between an amazing person and an absolute freak and that's the risk you take your entire life is a risk everything you do someone is watching everything you say someone is listening you mess up you're the first person to be blamed the biggest gamble of all is attaching your name

to something or someone whether or not you come out on top depends on how far you're willing to go becoming rich and successful isn't just a mental battle it's a mental War how much can you stomach how far are you willing to go how much can you take before it's all too much can you put yourself in the right spot at the right time with the right people in the right scenario it's just a lot to handle you dive in not knowing whether or not you're going to come out on top and it's that fear

that drives you into Insanity trying to make everything work this is why you need to be mentally strong and that comes with so many underlying and linked conditions that are impossible to generalize for the public staying mentally tough is a single player game there's cheat codes and Buffs and Potions that'll help alleviate some of your issues but not all of them you have to hope that you can figure out if it's a game that you can actually win I think that's one of the bad things about me I turn everything into a game my life

is a game of chess I'm setting things up for weeks months years in advance taking gambles on everything and kind of just hoping it works out I've always loved the idea that you could figure things out succeed and come out on top in the end smart people are good at figuring out the truth but this can hurt you and will get you into problems curious people won't quit until they get an answer that satisfies them you have a point to prove and you'll do anything to prove it to yourself but you don't recognize how harmful

it can be until you get there until you look back and see how much it took for you to get to where you're at now anyone who is Rich or successful has at least once questioned their entire existence why they're doing what they're doing what's the point of it all and then they wake up the next day and keep doing what they're doing until something changes if it sounds like insanity it is you know many people in the one percent have been publicly ridiculed and shamed for just doing what they think is right now to

be fair most of the hate comes from ignorant and overall just ill-informed people who are just attacking others ad hominem but regardless it's still there it's always talking about getting rich rich rich what's the quickest way of how can I get there it takes a lot more than what it looks like on the outside it takes an entire lifetime to blow up overnight make sure you read that again sure there are some one-off instances where people just got dumb luck it happens but don't get jealous of that you don't want that to begin with you

kind of have to think backwards if you want to grow beyond measure start big by that I mean start working for a large company and work your way downwards you will have the experience of working with giants but now have the authority and potential to create something new something different something that you felt was missing try to find things that are mainly available to the rich and distributed downwards it works pretty well cars were seen as things for rich people until everyone had one wealth is what you want the money you make while you sleep

it gives you Freedom money is just how we transfer wealth money isn't going to solve all of your problems money is going to solve your money problems chasing money means you're chasing status and that's why there's a negative connotation to being rich prioritizing status means you're trying to climb a ladder climb the ranks to the top and yeah it seems appealing but the only way your status goes up is to put someone else's down and making enemies is ultimately going to make everything harder the only status you should care about is your own as an

individual you want to be seen in a good light but you shouldn't have to beg for it people want to respect you they will if they don't their opinions are irrelevant to you true status should be a positive sum game nothing else you constantly have to brag about your status you're a low status person I hate to break it to you everyone has a moral code you didn't read it in a book you didn't learn it in school you'd live it you experience it having true status or reputation makes everything else you do so much

simpler you don't have to worry about getting backstabbed you don't have to worry about looking for work people will come to you to work with you because you're you you see if you get good enough at one thing or a handful of things you're going to be one of the top people if not the only person that others will come to when they need help they won't have another choice you are the choice your genuine curiosity will form a better career than following whatever is going to make you six figures this year at the end

of the day though what even is a career is it for money is it for your happiness is it to give you purpose what you'll find is that the longer you spend alone the more time you have with your own thoughts and emotions will lead you to finding the things you really want to do less external influences more internal thinking but I'm not saying you need to completely isolate yourself I'd actually recommend against it observing others spending time with them finding out what they want and cross-referencing it with the things you want is one of

the best decisions you'll ever make the world is Shifting it follows trends use that to your advantage staying local to your environment to your industry but seeing the things that everyone else dismisses it's a mindset for some reason it's burned into almost everyone's mind that you need to figure out what you're doing by a certain age and this is just idiotic there's millions of jobs in the world yet we're apparently supposed to pick a career based on studying 10 to 15 subjects by the age of 21. trying to figure out specifically what you want right

away is setting you up for failure instead this might help find something you enjoy you don't have to be amazing at it but just find something that the thought of doesn't make you want to bash your head into a wall no matter what it is if you can put it in front of them someone else will have an interest in it you'll find that the niche or the idea the skill how much easier things will become if you can sell it you're golden now I'm not talking about Billy Mays I'm not talking ShamWow but sell

it by making it your own thing everyone else will follow it's a lot easier to hop on a trend than it is to create that Trend this is why you'll win you see they don't have the steel framework that you built from nothing sure they might make a building quicker than you but in the end you're the one with the skyscraper I'm not trying to be that guy that's like money isn't everything I get it Everyone likes to seem woke and pretend they don't care about money at all but really you know you do you

might not care about the money itself but you care about the things that it brings you wealthy people attract more wealth it's a compounding effect if there's one thing you take away from this video remember compound interest I'm not gonna sit here and preach it to you like your high school economics teacher did but hear me out not just money but relationships trust wealth your skills they all benefit from compound interest start early start now and long term you will do well I promise I swear success isn't as daunting as it seems it's an internal

battle the only problem is no one wants to start the war to begin with so please do something today and don't thank me until you're done if I asked you the question what is man's greatest intention what would your answer be there's a lot of options would it be fire because it gives us warmth protection and the ability to cook our meals or perhaps you would pick the wheel because it's the driving force behind the beginnings of trade Commerce and travel while both of these are excellent choices most of the time when we think about

the greatest inventions of mankind we tend to forget one of the most important ones of all money but unlike man's other great inventions money is immaterial maybe that's why we don't often think of it in the same breath as some of the other great inventions things like fire in the wheel are tangible but not money money is merely an idea an illusion whose value is non-existent only determined by the importance we place on it or at least money as we know it today However the fact that money is an illusion does not in any way

undermine its importance before we created money we were forced to trade goods and services directly in what we refer to as the barter system people exchanging goods and services for other goods and services in return because there was no arbitrary value placed on these items every single trade was determined by what each party was willing to give up for something that they wanted it was kind of like a game if I wanted some of your vegetables for dinner but I only reared cattle I would have to give you one of my animals in exchange for

a bag of vegetables if I wanted shoes to wear but I only made tents I would have had to give you an entire tent in exchange for a pair of shoes and immediately you can already see one of the major problems with the system of trade it's the asymmetry as a Tent Maker there's no way I wouldn't feel cheated having to exchange an entire living space for simple Footwear because there was no standardized medium of exchange it was very difficult to get two people who needed things from each other to come to an agreement having

to wait until a double coincidence of once where two people need the exact opposite thing at the same time was also very difficult and inefficient and that wasn't all you see our money is not only a medium of exchange it's also considered a store of value and before the invention of money some people could never store their wealth for no fault of their own think about the farmer who sells tomatoes and the man who makes tents the man who makes tense can create an entire Village of real estate and barter it out with anyone who

needs a place to rest their head all year long and he would probably cash out on that but the farmer who sells Tomatoes can only barter when tomatoes are in season and because tomatoes are perishable Goods you cannot keep them for a long period of time so although he would be putting in the same effort into his business as the Tent Maker there's absolutely no way for him to remain wealthy all year long there's also the problem of having something that only very few people want nowadays when starting a business you're often told to find

a niche a small group of people who are very interested in what you have to offer before money was the thing that advice would have you left with nothing worth bartering the people who had the most were those who own things that everyone wanted things like weapons animal skin and salt but then since everyone knew that everyone wanted these things they started buying them even if they didn't need them at the time just so they could trade with them later and so commodity money became a thing people would exchange goods and services for the most

common items like salt or weapons and just use that to trade for what they want from someone else from Salt and weapons to Tiny Collectibles like shells and bees Humanity had found a better way to trade and transact instead of exchanging goods and services for goods and services you may not need at the time you can exchange your goods and services for arbitrary objects to act as placeholders of value in IOU or IOU after that you can use these placeholders to get goods and services you actually want from someone else the idea was brilliant so

brilliant that the entire world slowly moved away from the barter system to the money trading system but there was still one problem with this medium of Exchange you see for money to be worth anything it needs to be scarce the more available something is the Lesser its implied value that's basic economics if everyone can get their hands on something it can't be worth that much right so things like sand or shells that you could easily pick up on any Beach weren't really a good measure of value as a result around the year 770 BC the

first metal coins were created in China as a sort of homage the Chinese made miniature versions of the tools that were once regarded as currency they made the coin circular so that it was easy to reach into your pocket and take them out without hurting your fingers then they cast the coins in bronze this was it money was finally worth something you couldn't just go to a beach somewhere and pick up bronze it was scarce it had value at this time money wasn't yet an illusion the value of a coin was determined by the value

of the medal the coin was made out of if you had a coin that was made from one gram of gold it was worth one gram of gold you could easily measure it and see for yourself that it is in fact one gram of gold however Kings and rulers quickly discovered the power of money they realized that the more of these tiny precious metals you had the more power you could control and so in 600 BC aliatis king of Lydia created the first official money mint he created the coins using a mix of silver and

gold and stamped an image on the coin to act as denominations now people could easily tell the value of the piece of metal they were holding simply by looking at the picture on its face but the kings of the world wanted more money and precious metals were too expensive to produce more money they started slimming down the coins then mixing the more expensive Metals with cheaper metals soon all the coins in circulation were worth less than what the image on their face said they were worth and so the illusion of money was born value of

the coin was no longer determined by the value of the metal the value of the coin was now simply what the rulers in the bank said it was so one British pound sterling represented one pound of sterling silver however when International Trade became a thing people realized that metal coins were too heavy to log around and so kings around the world started issuing IOU certificates for long distance Trading because these pieces of paper were stamped by the king people trusted its value and believed that they could use it to get back whenever it was worth

in coins and that was true for the time being as more of these IOU certificates flooded the market people needed coins less and less until finally the paper was worth what we believed it was worth even if we no longer exchanged it for physical pieces of gold and silver from ancient Kings to modern day governments and central banks money has remained an illusion a mere representation whose value is determined by the importance people place on it the most valuable banknote in circulation today is the 10 000 Singapore dollars note although not being produced anymore this

single piece of paper worth 7 345 US dollars at the moment is still regarded as a legal tender so you can still use it to buy things valuable things like houses cars and even metals like gold the banknote itself costs less than 20 cents to produce but the illusion of the fiat currency system means it's as valuable as 120 grams of gold Fiat is the fancy word we use to describe the modern day illusion it's a Latin word that translates to let it be done it's a decree by the government that in the case of

money determines what its value is and enforces it as legal tender the illusion of money is one that we never really think about but just like the kings of old the governments of today understand the power of money and as always want more of it they know that the more of these pieces of paper you have the more power you have so what do they do well they can simply create more pieces of paper out of thin air yes if for example the United States government wanted 340 million dollars for I don't know maybe another

F-22 jet they can simply print the money to do so but there's one problem with this inflation the thing about money is that primarily it needs to be a means of exchange to be considered valuable so the amount of money in circulation needs to reflect the output of the goods and services that are being produced when more money is printed than there are goods and services all other things being equal the prices of these goods and services increase and the value of the money itself drops this is why many economists and even everyday people like

you and me are worried about the current Global Reserve currency the United States dollar 2020 was a terrible year for the entire world in the wake of the pandemic most economies had to be shut down the goods and services available in the general output of the economy was reduced to Mere trickles and the world kind of came to a halt for a while because there wasn't as much money flowing around to keep the economy from going under and basically our world falling apart the US government started printing money at a rate faster than has ever

been printed before in its entire existence right now 40 of the US dollars in existence today were printed in the last 18 months alone that's outrageous and because the output of the country hasn't really increased by that much eventually the prices of the goods and services might start to Skyrocket you can see this taking place in the price of Commodities such as Lumber which had as much as tripled in price from just a year ago if you haven't noticed some of the prices of the things that your favorite restaurants are now slightly higher than they

were last year it's an ever so small increase maybe the guac at Chipotle is 20 cents higher but it's happening right there under your nose on the surface it seems like a good thing that governments decided to send out stimulus and unemployment checks to their citizens but the reality is it's a double-edged sword of course it helps those most in need and that's a good thing we're at the point where because of inflation in a slowed economy people really aren't able to get the right jobs at the right times sometimes it's not even because they

don't want them but because it's simply worse than the alternative for example in the United States at least if you're a waiter or a waitress you aren't required by law to be paid even minimum wage some are literally paid two to three dollars an hour with the rest of their income coming from tips but with a lot of restrictions and rules in place around the country and not as many people going out there's less customers less customers with less money means less tips if your employees aren't making enough money they're gonna quit simple as that

if your business doesn't have employees to help you run it you're going to go under it's a domino effect but what can you even do when you can earn more money from unemployment and stimulus checks than you would from being employed why even look for a job in the first place you see the Federal Reserve for the United States is a very sneaky way for the government to essentially create money out of thin air and pump it into the economy without people thinking too much about it before 2020 the United States was 29 trillion dollars

in debt it's an unbelievable and inconceivable amount of money to even begin with this debt is obtained in the form of bonds and treasury notes which are basically just pieces of paper that say the government will pay you so and so amount plus interest right now a 10-year U.S treasury bond will return you about 1.23 on your investment at expiry so if you put in a thousand dollars today you will have made twelve dollars and 30 cents by 2031. that sounds terrible already but to add icing onto the cake it doesn't even keep up with

inflation which is targeted to stay around two percent a year it's a lot higher than that but that's for another time by investing in government notes of your own country which issues the currency you use every single day you actually lose buying power over a decade it is weakened by the day but regardless Banks businesses and individuals around the world buy these bonds and treasury notes and the government uses all that money it gets back how it sees fit however when it's time for the government to pay its debt all the money they made has

already been spent so they buy back all the treasuries and bonds but only from the big financial institutions and then pay them back with new money created out of thin air since March 2020 the Federal Reserve has bought back over one trillion dollars in bonds and is planning to continue to do so for the foreseeable future with all the new money pumped into them by the government Banks can now give out more loans to people earn more interest and help grow the economy but this increases the total amount of money in circulation reducing the value

of each dollar with multi-trillion dollar stimulus payments and infrastructure packages it makes you wonder how long the stuff can go on for new money steals value from old money the amount and your bank account doesn't change but because of the new money the government has just printed out of thin air your money is no longer valuable as it once was basically every second you store your wealth in any fiat currency such as the US dollar it is being devalued you could stare at your bank balance and day by day you'll be able to buy less

and less things with whatever you have left the reality that money is nothing but an illusion is one that we must all embrace because only then will the path to Financial Freedom become clearer it's all a game a game that never truly ends understanding that money does not have any intrinsic value in itself but instead only inherits the value we give to it will prevent you from trying to store up your wealth in currency instead using that money to acquire assets that will appreciate faster than inflation is the only way to win the game and

it's not really winning it's avoiding total loss as more and more money is printed each and every day the value of each Dollar in your pocket will continue to decrease but the dollar value of the assets around the globe will continue to appreciate in value but it's all a mirage it's smoke and mirrors a stock market that is literally in up only mode may make it seem like it's all okay but it isn't it's all denominated in the same currency that is slowly dying each and every day for example if you were to denominate the

Dow Jones which is just a performance measurement of 30 large United States companies in terms of gold instead of USD you'll see that we're basically at the same place we were in 1997. smoke and mirrors what's the end goal of all of this with Fiat and an unlimited supply of money well the value of each currency just continued to decrease until the end of time will the gap between the rich and poor just continued to grow wider and wider or are we finally going to fix the problem as old as man itself and stop placing

our financial success in the hands of those who are destroying it day by day only time will tell but just know there is a way out money how does that word make you feel is it a rush of adrenaline dollar signs running through your head like a slot machine perhaps you feel motivated ready to send those work emails you've been putting off or spend an extra hour writing that movie script that you're certain will be a hit but maybe you don't feel so good when you hear that word maybe the mere mention of money causes

your hands to go clammy your heart rate to rise and your brain to start doing somersaults surround all the ways in which you don't have need more want more money whatever your response is we all have one because as they say money makes the world go round whether it's your five dollar coffee every morning to start your day or the three thousand dollar loan payment you just made not a day goes by for most of us that we don't consume spend study or merely think about money you could be The Driver of a sports car

wearing a diamond necklace or the homeless person who watches that car drive by on one level or another money matters to us all yet for as much as Money Matters it's surprising that there's so much we don't know about it and a lot of things that we think we do that are just plain wrong this is a crash course on how your world and the world of high finances intertwined and hopes that in the end we know that much more about this illusion that keeps the economic World spinning contrary to what you might think money

as we know it today at least in its physical form has remained largely unchanged for millennia the first sign of what we might think of as a banknote took the form of a piece of leather in China in 118 BCE and 900 years later paper currency came to fruition it would be another several hundred years before this kind of currency would make its way to Europe and then the rest of the world centuries have now passed yet the basic concepts invented by the Chinese aren't that distinguishable from what we have today in fact the only

real difference is what these notes and coins represent the first real global system of value and currency was the gold standard which began in England in the early 1800s it tied a currency's value directly to the established value of gold so in a country like the United States one dollar was pegged at exactly one fiftieth an ounce of gold this system was set up that in such a way ideally it would provide a stable monetary environment around the world and it did for a while but as with all natural resources the supply of gold was

not as fixed as we originally thought as a result countries begin dropping it as a means to measure the value of the money in 1971 U.S president Richard Nixon officially severed the convertibility between dollars and gold I have directed secretary Conley to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold or other Reserve assets by that time the US dollar was seen as the global standard currency so once the dollar was no longer dictated by the value of gold pretty much nothing else was if the value of the dollar is no longer determined by the

value of gold what exactly makes one dollar worth one dollar well instead of a commodity-backed system like the gold standard we now have something called fiat currency which has no intrinsic value and is instead backed by a government what gives today's dollar its value is the economic supply and demand in the United States and who controls that governmental Financial systems in the case of the United States it has the treasury in the U.S mint in charge of printing its money but as we can see in the growing number of digital businesses and iPads in places

of cash registers money printing is a dying business so if a government isn't literally printing money how exactly does cash come into circulation the vast majority of money exists only as numbers on a computer incredible amounts of money digitally credited to commercial banks by a country's Central Bank this Central Bank controls how much money it deposits into the commercial Banks based on the economic situation of the country during the earlier stages of the pandemic in the U.S some of that money was sent directly to bank accounts in the form of stimulus checks but that's an

extreme case and most of the time that's not how the money ends up with us here's how it usually works a central bank sends money to Banks and Credit Unions Nationwide and they in turn distribute that money into the economy by lending it to their customers which brings us to the topic of debt around 80 percent of Americans are in some kind of debt yet many people don't know what exactly debt is and how its moving Parts work what they do know and what is backed by several studies is that even the idea of paying

off debt can be a severe emotional strain no one wants to owe anyone anything but with the cost of living vastly outpacing the money we earn for a living loans are the necessity everyone hates yet most can't live without you get a loan to purchase your car start your small business go to college or buy a house very few people can afford a house with the money in their bank accounts yet all of us need a roof over our heads so some people choose to rent While others decide to take out a loan from the

bank in the form of a mortgage but Banks aren't charity organizations they're built to make a profit and the way they do that is through interest is the amount you the borrower pay to use the money a bank or financial institution has loaned you think of it like the rent you pay on your apartment every month you don't own the apartment but you get to use it for a fee in the same way you don't own the money you use to purchase your house but you get to use it for a fee in this by

now pay later model does not only exist for big purchases like a house and college it has permeated our entire Society so much that most things we purchase now exist on this model especially since the creation of the credit card don't have enough cash for that new couch put it on your credit card want to get that new iPhone pay a monthly fee to your internet service provider heck even consoles like the Xbox follow the same model we now use credit to pay for even small things like a sandwich a new pair of pants or

food for our dogs if we pay our balances on time for those purchases we can avoid the interest rates that credit card companies charge and we'll be fine but for a lot of us especially in hard times we tend to build interest on our cards which can quickly lead to a pretty bad spot financially credit cards can help provide a financial buffer in a bind if needed but they also come with an element of risk so are they worth it there's some mixed feelings about this some people think that using credit cards is a Surefire

way to send yourself straight into sinking debt but other C frequent credit card use as a way to build good credit which if you've ever released an apartment or bought a car is an important part of daily life these days whichever side of the fence you're on one thing we can all agree on is that you need to be careful when using credit cards so that you don't overspend and dig yourself into much deeper debt than is necessary by being wise with your credit savings and increasing your income you can have enough disposable income to

finally do with your money with every financially stable person suggests invest investing basically means committing your money into something to earn a financial return it's making your money work for you one Mantra in the investing world is the greater the risk the greater the reward Investments like bonds are safer but offer lower returns while investing in individual stocks can provide incredibly High returns but are also extremely risky and let's not even get started on cryptocurrency we'll need an entire video to go over investing properly but in the end if we get the opportunity to do

so our goal is to build our wealth to increase how much we're worth and that's the entire point of money to show how much something or someone is worth how much is a Carefree retirement to you that will inform how much money you put away in your retirement account what about a car we might splurge on a luxury vehicle because it's worth it to us to enjoy the extra comfort and social status the byproduct of this is that as a society we become obsessed with the idea of worth from Material goods and worldly possessions to

personal worth and even that of others Publications like Forbes and Bloomberg publish wealthy individuals net worths assigning a number to someone's success to create these lists dozens of reporters track down Millionaires and billionaires all across the world collect their personal information add up all of their presumed assets and subtract their liabilities so if Jeff Bezos owns approximately 10 of Amazon and we subtract his jet his yacht and any other Creature Comforts that he enjoys from that 10 percent we should be able to identify his net worth that simple addition and subtraction seems deceptively easy doesn't

it well that's because it is it's hard to get reliable data and it's hard to figure out exactly where wealthy people store their money many of the wealthiest people in the world are investment bankers but on a day-to-day basis there's no way to know the composition of their firm's portfolios which directly dictates the wealth of those who run it there's also discrepancies when it comes to celebrities wealth perhaps where most of our Obsession lies Kylie Jenner was said to be the youngest self-made billionaire at one point but her business isn't just valuable because of how

much money it makes it's valuable because she is involved with it the business's worth is reliant on her involvement her wealth is wrapped up in her business and vice versa so the equation becomes even more complicated I hate to break it to you but most celebrities net worths are basically guesses and not really an accurate portrayal of how much they control so why are we glued to these lists are we ultimately comparing ourselves to the world's richest people allowing ourselves to be fascinated by Financial wealth at our own expense the truth is while learning about

money and understanding how our economic system works will not guarantee you a spot on forged billionaire list it can give you peace of mind knowing a thing or two about money can help us see the world a little more clearly and not feel so overwhelmed by economic news because although having money isn't everything not having it is in October 2008 a paper titled Bitcoin a peer-to-peer electronic cash system was published announcing the creation of one of the world's first cryptocurrencies this paper was written by Satoshi Nakamoto the inventor of Bitcoin Nakamoto then created a message

board called Bitcoin talk and wrote I've developed a new open source P2P ecash system called Bitcoin it's completely decentralized with no Central server or trusted parties because everything is based on cryptographic proof instead of trust give it a try obviously people did but who is Satoshi Nakamoto the short answer is no one knows there's at least one real person behind this Alias because someone wrote the code for Bitcoin published a paper about it sent emails and made Forum posts about the new digital currency but beyond that nakamoto's identity remains a mystery some think it's Elon

Musk though he's denied the rumor an Australian computer scientist named Craig Wright claimed to be Nakamoto and was awarded copyrights on the original paper published on Bitcoin in its early code although the validity of his claim has been called into question by many journalists and lawyers who have followed him through multiple court cases there was even a Japanese American physicist named Dorian Nakamoto who many thought might be the elusive crypto God but alas he insists it wasn't him perhaps one of the reasons that Satoshi Nakamoto will never come forward is because they own about 25

billion in Bitcoin Bitcoin that has never moved and sometimes anonymity is the only way to feel safe it makes sense that one of the largest contributors to the cryptocurrency world would want to remain completely hidden from the public after all anonymity is one of the biggest selling points of the entire invention cryptocurrency are digital currencies that verify and record transactions to a decentralized blockchain a blockchain is essentially an immutable public Ledger once transactions are completed it is final and irreversible and every person on Earth can view it for themselves despite not having an identity tied

to it it offers a way to move money outside of central banks and financial institutions giving people a perceived sense of freedom and safety in their financial lives but the reality is that although anonymity can give a sense of safety to some people it can also be extremely dangerous the anonymity promised by cryptocurrency isn't only appealing to those who are skeptical of traditional financial institutions it's also a useful tool for criminals dangerous people who want to bypass banking systems and move money anonymously dealers and users buying and selling drugs and even darker illegal Goods on

the internet while avoiding the watchful eye of law enforcement this works because although all transactions are tracked and recorded there's no personal information tying an individual to their crypto Keys it's just a random hash of numbers and letters hardly representing any information at all this has led to terrorists people involved in human trafficking and drug dealers to seize upon the technology for nefarious games the Silk Road one of the most famous online drug markets on the dark web used crypto for its transactions the US justice department has also dismantled at least three Terror Finance campaigns

that were soliciting cryptocurrency funds the rise of cryptocurrency has fueled growth in global ransomware attacks which have seen a 485 percent increase in recent years in 2021 dfbi sees 2.3 million dollars worth of crypto from the our evil ransomware group who hacked U.S security in it management software provider casaya not only do these cyber hackers demand crypto as payment but crypto makes their whole business possible and it isn't just large companies that have to watch their back online crypto scams coercing people to invest in fraudulent crypto funds or fake cryptocurrencies are rampant last February Satish

kambani of India the founder of bitconnect was indicted by the US justice department for creating and running a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platform the monetary authority of Singapore suspended a crypto coin illegally named after the world famous South Korean boy band BTS and after the success of Netflix's Korean hit squid game scammers used the series popularity to create fake crypto coins the value of the coin skyrocketed 310 000 in just 11 days which does sound appealing the catch though is that this coin is what was known as a Honeypot essentially you were able to purchase it

but you weren't able to sell it because of this you traded your dollars for this squid game coin and the scammers escaped with millions in cash from unwitting investors leaving them with a token that couldn't be sold and is literally worthless now you might say well scams happen at all financial institutions and you'd be right but at least with many third-party backed institutions you get protections that crypto just doesn't offer if your regular credit card gets hacked you'll usually get your money back since your bank or financial institution has consumer protections was crypto those protections

don't exist so when hackers get access to your private keys or you get scammed into buying a fake coin or you invest in a fraudulent exchange once you give them your crypto it's gone forever in 2021 there was a reported 3.2 billion in crypto stolen a 516 increase compared to the year before and as new technologies involving crypto and blockchain Technology become more popular a new wave of crypto and nft scams will inevitably rise one of the most popular beliefs of crypto and nfts is that you can make a lot of money trading them but

every experienced financial advisor and Trader will tell you that trading isn't a great way to earn a regular income if you want to start a high paying career in the technology industry one that offers a more stable income but don't have previous experience or a degree course careers is here to help all you do is go through an affordable online course where you learn everything required to actually do the job once you're done you have the incredible opportunity to work with one of the hosts of the companies they're partnered with these companies drop their degree

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or simply click the link in the description down below and sign up for their free introduction course where you'll learn exactly how you can start a high paying technology career without a degree or previous experience when you're ready to get to the full course use code aperture 50 to get 50 off back to our story nfts or non-fungible tokens are blockchain based tokens that represent a unique asset like a piece of art music or other digital content that can be purchased with cryptocurrency they're meant to give artists more control and freedom over their work but

we don't live in an ideal world do we although nfts were in a sense invented in 2014 with the creation of ethereum the real nft Revolution began to Boom in 2021 with the help of artist Mike winkelman also known as people his digital artwork every days the first 5 000 days sold for 69 million dollars and helped put nfts on the map since then artists and collectors at every scale have benefited from the creation of nfts but they've also experienced the same rampant scamming in all areas of the crypto world a crypto investor who goes

by metakovan bought people's nft for 69 million in 2021 and also happens to be the owner of the world's now largest nft fund which studies data to provide analysis on various nfts is 69 million a lot to pay for a digital piece of art yes but what if it brings in far more than 69 million to your business some say that medicovan's purchase of people's nft allowed him to drive up prices in his own nft business nfts have in a sense become a game of who could tell the most believable lie it was once reported

that an nft called crypto Punk 9998 of a white-haired green-eyed pixelated character sold for 532 million it was said to be the most expensive nft of all time until it turned out that the buyer and the seller were the same person creating a fake valuation for their own benefit in the crypto worlds inspires and sellers remain fully Anonymous on the blockchain the wallets involved in the transaction are known but who their owned by is not however due to the open nature of cryptocurrency anyone could check the change and see for themselves that these two wallets

had interacted in the past if overestimating the value of digital art was the only problem then maybe nfts wouldn't have such a terrible rep I mean who even determines the worth of physical art anyway sadly with nfts overestimation of value is just the beginning nfts are embroiled in more scams than you could possibly imagine in February of 2022 a small but reputable nft Marketplace scent had to suspend sales after rampant fraud was discovered on the platform its users were minting counterfeit digital assets despite the marketplace's best efforts to ban them this is just one example

of issues around the authenticity of crypto art and reinforces one of the most popular sayings in crypto don't trust verify with an entirely public blockchain you are entirely capable of checking every single transaction you make to ensure that what you're purchasing is coming from the original creator unfortunately many seem to forget this crucial part of what makes cryptocurrency important in another example someone sold a fake Banksy nft for over three hundred thousand dollars one of the specifically dark sides of nfts is that people who get into digital art for Creative purposes are easily exploded enthusiasts

communicate on apps like Discord Twitter and Instagram but these same apps allow hackers to learn ignorant nft aficionados into scams by using fake links that look like an opportunity to admit nfts for cheap get free air drops and much more the targets are asked to invest their crypto into nfts that won't ever be created and then all of that money just disappears from their wallets never to be seen again even people's fans haven't escaped unscathed in May 2022 scammers hacked people's Twitter account and stole 438 thousand dollars worth of crypto and nfts from his followers

they impersonated the artist claiming to have launched a new line of digital art with Louis Vuitton and posted a raffle for the fake collection in his Twitter bio the hackers used a phishing scam deceiving people into revealing sensitive information or unknowingly installing malware once they clicked the link in his bio all the crypto and nfts in their wallets were completely wiped out the fragility of the crypto Universe was clearly evident in the recent collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX FTX was the brainchild of Sam bankman freed he was the founder of the quantitative trading firm

elevator research in 2017 and then FTX two years later as the majority owner of both firms there was initial concern over his conflict of interest but he assured people that they were separate entities fortunately that turned out to be a lie contrary to what bankman freed said FTX used his customers money to fund risky bets made at Alameda they would take customers deposits sell them on FDX to regular Traders and then use the cash to invest in other companies to take it even further these companies they invested in would often be forced to store their

treasuries and accounts on FTX where the funds could then be used Again by Alameda and the snowball continued to roll on November 6 2022 the world's largest crypto exchange binance which was also a leading angel investor in FTX said it would unload hundreds and millions of FTX tokens this was also around the time a leaked balance sheet came out showing that the majority of ftx's collateral was in their own FTX token as you can imagine if Finance were to sell hundreds of millions of this token it would drive down the price and in turn drive

down the value of the collateral that FTX held collateral That was supposed to be customers assets in OTC or over-the-counter deal was offered by Alameda to purchase them at 22 a token but this wasn't taken the market called their Bluff and within 48 Hours ftx's token was down 93 percent days later the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission and the justice department began investigating FTX and on November 11th bankmanfried resigned from both companies and FTX filed for bankruptcy in many ways the FTX collapse seems like a traditional Financial catastrophe the kind we saw during the 2008

financial crisis split crypto with its promise of anonymity and its Assurance of no go-betweens makes the FTX disaster very different millions of dollars in FTX funds were stolen during the bankruptcy process No One Knows by whom the collapse of FTX has led other crypto exchanges to tell their cash reserves and call for greater transparency because even if you're not out there buying and trading crypto you know it's had its fair share of pretty bad PR moments and just a couple weeks ago one of the largest banks back in crypto clients silvergate Capital collapsed during the

disastrous Silicon Valley Bank Run silvergate got into the game very early and was willing to work with many Tech and crypto companies which led to a six billion dollar valuation in 2021 but as they say oh how the mighty have fallen and the loss in value isn't the only narrative that needs damage control as crypto has grown in popularity especially amongst young people environmental concerns around what it takes to sustain the industry have become widely discussed in 2021 Cambridge University researchers calculated that Bitcoin mining was using more electricity than the entire country of Argentina this

huge carbon footprint of blockchain technology has alerted people especially those who care about sustainability to crypto sizable contribution to climate change however the Cambridge Center for alternative Finance estimates that Bitcoin uses just over 100 terawatt hours of energy per year to facilitate transactions and keep the network running in reality this is actually less energy than what is used for gold mining in a year in fact the Iron and steel industry uses over 10 times this amount of energy on an annualized basis if Bitcoin was a country in terms of energy usage it would rank 32nd

out of 59 tracked by the Cambridge Center so yes while Bitcoin mining does use quite a bit of energy it is far from the biggest problem on this front what effect this will have on the future of cryptocurrency depends on people's continued desire for the anonymity that crypto provides the anonymity that allows you to transact back and forth anonymously with anyone is the same anonymity that allows criminals to run rampant and scammers to run off with Millions it's a double-edged sword however it's getting easier for investigators to track crypto exchanges by deciphering patterns in the

blockchain there's a small group of detectives who have become tracing cryptocurrency crimes for law enforcement agencies in a crypto tracing firm chain analysis has emerged to find these patterns they find groups of blockchain addresses that come from a single person or service followed the money from those clusters watch it move and eventually figure out which exchange the money came from in the U.S crypto exchanges are legally required to retain identifying information about users under kyc rules standing for know your customer so the promise of anonymity the one that the entire argument of crypto hinges on

in the first place isn't always so certain there are currencies on the market that appear to be more untraceable than their competitors Monero which has been adopted by dark web markets claims to be untraceable zcash is another that gives even the best Tracer trouble leading many to fear it will provide Safe Harbor to criminals and people evading taxes the question is will law enforcement and other agencies be able to catch up as new blockchain tech is created so far they're not doing too badly in 2021 criminal investigations by the IRS seized over three and a

half billion dollars in cryptocurrency there was a 56 million dollar seizure by the justice department and 2.3 million was seized from the ransomware group behind the colonial pipeline Cyber attack which alerted the American public to the real potential danger of these cyber criminals then in 2022 a new york-based couple was arrested for laundering money they'd stolen by allegedly hacking a large crypto Exchange bitfinex they had turned some of the money into the Apparently untraceable Monero but law enforcement apparently could trace it and found Exchange accounts in their name they found the private keys of a

wallet holding over 100 000 Bitcoin and seized it being worth about 3.6 billion dollars at the time so this day it's not known if or how these addresses were tracked however one thing is certain and is that this was the largest cryptocurrency seizure in history so while crypto has its positive aspects for those seeking complete control over their finances it's trustless and Anonymous nature requires Extreme Caution because the negatives can cut quite deep if you aren't careful if you are going to get involved be wary of scams hold your own keys and remember don't trust

verify governments across the globe continue to look at how to regulate cryptocurrency before it gets too out of control by their measures unfortunately for them bureaucracy tends to move very slowly while technology especially crypto moves that Breakneck speed money Our Lives revolve around it we all want it we know we all want it most of it doesn't even exist Beyond The Heavy Duty servers of some bank and yet the pursuit continues for this elusive thing despite its presence in everyday life despite the fact that we spend most of our waking hours working towards money it's

still somehow taboo to talk about we like to pretend that money is not important to us and sure money is not the end goal in fact one of the most common regrets of people on their deathbeds tends to be that they worked too hard chasing after money of course for all its value however money still can't buy you a meaningful relationship or an experience but while money can't buy any of those things it can make them more accessible is happiness not easier to achieve once you know the bills are all taken care of is happiness

not easier to achieve when you are able to give a loved one something you know they deserve at the very least more money often equates to more choices in terms of how you want to spend your time whether that is with your loved ones or in chasing a passion you had as a kid and even if you disagree with everything I just said in order to change the world you will still need the backing of financial capital now with that said and hopefully having navigated through the awkwardness of introducing such a topic let's cut right

to the chase how much money should you be making how much is enough and mind you there is a very good reason to ask such a question this is not just for curiosity's sake studies show that when you have actually put a metric to a goal and maybe even written it down you are more likely to achieve it people who vividly picture a goal are 40 more likely to successfully achieve it so how much what does the literature say well the relationship of money and happiness is a complicated one first of all emotions are generally

hard to track and second of all this question has not been researched all that much however anyone talking about this topic has to bring up a piece of literature from 2010 authored by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Dean their paper looks into the relationship between income and happiness but it goes a bit beyond that the authors decided that simply looking into one metric as a measure of subjective well-being would fail to capture the complete picture and confound the findings so they looked at two things emotional well-being which is defined as the day-to-day satisfaction and life evaluation

defined as the thoughts that come to mind when one thinks of Life as a whole you could also think of emotional well-being as the sort of short-term happiness and life evaluation as the long-term happiness now what did the research find it turns out life evaluation Rises steadily with income the more people earn the more positively they tend to think of life in general emotional well-being on the other hand seems to Plateau after an annual income of around 75 000 meaning till that figure for the majority of people each bit of raise and income will feel

great but after it your day-to-day happiness won't go up by that much so there it is right at that's the magical number well not quite for one this is a study from 2010 because of inflation today that amount is closer to around 93 000. and I should also mention that this study was conducted with U.S residents as participants what is considered a good life will definitely vary drastically in other parts of the world let's get that right just recently in the first few weeks of 2021 researcher Matt Killingsworth published the latest findings on the very

same question how much money should you be making to be happy his findings experienced well-being continues to rise even Beyond The Covenant 75 000 mark not just that it continues to rise just as deeply as before meaning the return on investment isn't any worse off the more money you make [Music] why does this research disagree with the previous findings well for a paper by Kahneman and Deaton the data that was collected for emotional well-being were answers to questions about the previous day that has the potential to fail to capture what a person was actually feeling

in that moment of happiness or sadness because our minds tend to play tricks with us Killingsworth research meanwhile is collected via an app which pings users at various times of the day it is more convenient than the traditional forms of surveying and as such he had a significantly larger pool of responses to basis findings on this also allowed him to more truly capture what participants were feeling so if we are to accept killing's worst findings then most people's day-to-day happiness as well as their General outlook on life tend to improve with higher income so does

that mean we should all just aim for an astronomically High salary in search of happiness and hope that we get there someday is that a realistic Target there's a thought experiment to try and answer that question for us as individuals author Brad staller who came up with the idea for the experiment it goes like this how much money would you have to be paid right here right now to never receive another dollar of income from anyone else now you might think that's a straightforward experiment you just aim for a really really high number somewhere in

the hundreds of millions or billions for most people I guess the catch is that this experiment will be run in groups of five people and whoever has the lowest figure in mind will actually walk away with the money the rest of the players get nothing the game theory I play here is actually quite cool the interesting thing about this experiment is that it pits two of your impulses against each other and in doing so forces you to be reasonable because of course you want to aim for a high number but you also want to win

and have the money so you can't just aim for a stupidly large number of course this experiment is talking about money paid as a lump sum While most of the research looks at salaries the perceptions of well-being might as well be different for the two of them but it's hard to see what the thought experiment won't work with salaries too go ahead and ask yourself that question and see what you come up with the answer might help you more vividly visualize a Target that you can actually work towards of course we all want to achieve

happiness but more income is easier said than done when should we really stop trying and what if the circumstances are simply not there for a raise or a commotion well that's where the other part of the puzzle comes in our adaptation don't get me wrong it's a wonderful thing being able to adapt is what allowed our species to come so far but at the same time it also means that whenever presented with an improved quality of life we rapidly adapt to it and begin taking it for granted it would explain why most people live their

lives from nine to five chasing after that next raise because staying where you are regardless if you make five figures a year or seven brings with a heavy feeling of obsolescence then there's obviously an element of comparison we've known this for a while that comparison is the thief of joy you might have a seven figure salary but you won't be anything close to happy if you compare yourself with Jeff Bezos who has more money than brain cells literally studies also show that for the same salary people living in a rich neighborhood feel worse than people

in a poor neighborhood while both participants likely take joy from their salaries they also compare them with that of the Joneses if the Joneses make less than you you're happy if they make more you're not research also says easily accessible money improves well-being more than money that is stowed deep inside someone's pension the closeness of a number that you can glance out of your pocket can be a reassuring breath of air having only five hundred dollars worth of disposable money in a bank account can improve life Satisfaction by up to 15 percent then of course

there's a question of what you do with the money that eventually leads to happiness if you simply make more money for making money's sake you might still get some joy out of it assuming you're successful it's much like a game but the Elation will pair in comparison to that of a person who spends his hard-earned Cash In A Better Way buying time is often seen as one of the best ways to spend your money and that it allows you to focus on the most joyous aspects while offloading the more laborious aspects to someone who will

happily do them the gig economy has made this more accessible than ever before allowing people to spend more of their time for the things that truly matter even if it means having a little less in the bank account this might mean paying someone to do the dishes so you can read a book to your child in bed or it could mean purchasing a more expensive ticket to be able to spend some time with family material possessions also draw a lot of attention when it comes to the relation between wealth and happiness the research is clear

on this too spend on experiences not things the reason is that experiences are exclusive nobody can feel what you felt on that trip with your best friend nobody can buy that exclusivity despite the fleeting nature of an experience it can last a lifetime and unlike the value of objects which tend to depreciate over time experiences only seem more enjoyable in hindsight our minds tend to overlook the small bumps in an experience the delayed flight or the poor Wi-Fi and remember Only the Good parts so instead of aiming for a certain salary figure it might make

more sense to aim for experiences and pursue the ability to afford those experiences of course this is not to say that material possessions cannot be an experience a song might be an experience a cup of coffee might be an experience an expensive car might be an experience that's really up to the individual to decide but people generally overestimate how happy they'll be and once they have that one new thing however once we have it feeling of satisfaction slowly erodes and we are back where we started on some level it might be a bit troubling to

accept that money does indeed buy happiness or at the very least buys ways towards happiness but really haven't we known this all along more importantly though this realization has to be qualified with the ideas of what's really important people experiences in time not only can It inform our career choices and how much we want to invest chasing after this thing but it also tells us why generosity is important why a more Equitable future is one to strive for because remember the only reason any of us want money is to inevitably get rid of it in

the end [Music] what would you do if you won the lottery personally I'd pay off my debt quit my job in move to Japan it's a fun scenario to think about even if it's never going to happen statistically you're more likely to give birth to quadruplets or be crushed by a meteor then win the lotto that is unless of course your Evelyn Adams in 1985's Adam won a 3.9 million dollar jackpot from the New Jersey State Lottery just four months later she won again bringing her total payout to 5.4 million nearly 15 million in today's

money Adams was basically the first person in American history to ever win multiple million dollar prizes basically overnight she went from working in a convenience store to being worth more than some CEOs with her Newfound wealth Adams paid off bills set up a college fund for her daughter bought a car and lavish friends and family with gifts you'd think a story like this would come with a happily ever after finale which should be very wrong soon after winning Adams noticed her privacy rapidly disappearing she felt that she couldn't go anywhere without being recognized and while

some people celebrated her good luck others resented her for it still warp came to her asking for money she put a stop to her plans to go to school and study music made several Bad Business deals and ended up giving away a substantial portion of her wealth by 2012 she had lost her entire Fortune after gambling away the last of it at the casinos in Atlantic City today she lives in a trailer park Adams would later say about her experience I won the American dream but I lost it too it was a very hard fall

it's called Rock Bottom the story of Evelyn Adams isn't unusual multiple lottery winners have found their supposed good luck quickly turned sour as the sudden influx of cash ruined their lives I guess the saying is true money can't buy happiness except it isn't scientific research has demonstrated a positive correlation between wealth and individual happiness the key it turns out is knowing how to use that money to buy happiness and not just having it but to understand this we need to answer the question what is happiness you'd think it would be fairly simple to Define but

from a psychological perspective happiness is actually quite complicated there are hundreds of different neurotransmitters that contribute to our unique understanding of what feels good each one plays a specific role and is responsible for a range of different emotional experiences but by far the most important of these are dopamine serotonin and oxytocin dopamine is strongly tied to our Reward Center serotonin helps us relax oxytocin helps us Bond and form relationships taking together these three molecules could be called the happiness Trifecta a potent chemical cocktail responsible for feelings of excitement Bliss contentment and every other positive emotion

neurochemistry aside our subjective interpretations of Happiness can roughly be divided into two categories pleasure and purpose pleasure is the short-term day-to-day happiness that we get from a good meal spending time with friends or going for a jog we might refer to this more simply as mood purpose is the harder to Define sense of fulfillment we gain when we feel that our life has meaning this delineation goes all the way back to Aristotle and scientists today still use it as a way of evaluating an individual's overall happiness there is a significant difference between pleasure and purpose

and just because a person has one doesn't guarantee the other take a new college student for instance they may experience frequent daily pleasure in the form of spending time with friends attending social events and enjoying a much greater level of personal freedom and Independence yet the same person may struggle to figure out what exactly they want to do with their life this causes them stress and contributes to low levels of Life satisfaction conversely a successful CEO or entrepreneur can feel that sense of purpose in their work while having low amounts of daily pleasure the burden

of running a massive company Weighing on them and sucking the joy out of even their favorite hobbies happiness then is when we experience both pleasure and purpose simultaneously a truly happy person is someone who is able to find enjoyment in their daily experiences while also working towards larger goals to give their life meaning if we're going to use money to increase our happiness we should then consider using it to enhance both our pleasure and purpose you may think the simple solution is to just make more money I mean if I have more money I can

spend it on things that give me pleasure while using those same resources to pursue my purpose well kind of you see there's actually some evidence that supports this unfortunately once you really start digging into the data the picture gets a bit messy a now famous 2010 Princeton University study has often been cited as finding that there's a limit to the amount of Happiness money can bring us specifically that seventy five thousand dollars appears to be the ceiling and that beyond that the benefits plateau except this isn't what a study found at all what it actually

demonstrated is that while daily pleasure caps at 75k overall life purpose continues to grow alongside income it's a classic case of the media focusing on The Sensational while ignoring the larger context and here especially the larger context is key another study conducted in 2018 reinforced the original 75 000 figure for pleasure but also reported that a second ceiling of 95 000 for purpose it's important to note that the 2010 study only evaluated around 450 000 people in the United States the 2018 survey meanwhile included 1.7 million individuals from around the world and found a substantial

variation between cultures in wealthier countries for example caps appeared higher and in certain regions incomes Beyond this limit were actually associated with decreased happiness as if all of this wasn't confusing enough a more recent 2021 study from the University of Pennsylvania reportedly found No Ceilings whatsoever however the survey Drew from a relatively small sample size of just 33 000 Americans and it also placed a greater focus on pleasure than the previous studies what all of this data supports though is that the more money you currently have the less that the future increases in wealth will

contribute to your sense of pleasure and purpose essentially every dollar you earn buys us a little less happiness think of it this way if a person earning twenty thousand dollars a year and a person making two hundred thousand dollars a year both get a 10 raise each will experience a similar boost to their happiness for the first person a two thousand dollar raise represents an increase in their standard of living and potentially their level of comfort but for the second person twenty thousand dollars is a proverbial drop in the bucket with a much less dramatic

effect on their daily life what this means is that while there is a positive correlation between money and happiness it's one with diminishing returns once you've passed a certain threshold it takes increasingly larger amounts of money to trigger the same neurological release of feel-good chemicals as when you had less so if chasing money for money's sake isn't an effective strategy for buying happiness then what is well in a few words spending which you already have wisely positive psychology is an entire School of study devoted to quantifiably figuring out what makes life worth living its goal

is to analyze positive experiences traits and institutions with the aim of improving quality of life not incidentally it is extremely concerned with happiness in terms of the best way to spend money the school of study divides potential purchases into two categories pleasures and comforts in some ways this reflects the aristolian distinction between pleasure and purpose Pleasures by their nature are transient and short-lived like biting into a chocolate bar Comforts on the other hand are more permanent but are largely taken for granted like running water and electricity we tend to not notice them until they're gone

in general investing in Comforts tends to be a sure method of raising our Baseline level of Happiness they help to prevent and alleviate suffering ensuring you're able to focus your attention on other Pursuits rather than spending all your time simply trying to survive things like a reliable vehicle a house in a safe neighborhood and for Nations without socialized medicine Quality Health Insurance are all Comforts essential for improving an individual's quality of life perhaps the most important Comfort a person can invest in is Leisure Time is after all the only resource we can't get more of

as such it has a much higher value than any currency having Leisure Time means we're free to pursue the kinds of experiences that give our life both pleasure and purpose Studies have found that these kinds of activities are a more reliable source of happiness than any material purchase no matter how excited you were when you bought that new smartphone eventually it'll age the screen will crack and the battery will die and a new model will come along and become the new object of your desire just watch my entire video on planned obsolescence and you'll kind

of understand what I mean on the other hand a once in a lifetime trip to a foreign country will be remembered for years afterwards what starts out as a trip will become a story you share again and again providing you with A continuous source of joy of course you don't have to spend a fortune on an overseas vacation just to find a little happiness going to a concert taking a hiking trip or simply getting dinner with friends offers the same benefits perhaps the best experience is to invest in are those that allow us to improve

ourselves at the same time learning a new skill or taking classes at a local University creates feelings of personal growth and progress in fact skill Mastery is an important tool used in cognitive behavior therapy to help combat a variety of mood disorders from borderline personality disorder to depression this strategy can be adopted by anyone in order to boost our self-confidence and sense of purpose if you can participate in these kinds of experiences alongside loved ones which is far in a way what makes humans the happiest is their connection with one another we are innately social

creatures we want to feel like we belong that we're loved and accepted the best way then to spend our money is by using it to nurture our relationships a great way to do this is through experiences where we can spend time with those that we love engaging in hobbies and other fun activities but what's even more powerful is giving you don't have to give all your money away to reap their rewards so be smart with what you give and make sure that it's well within your means psychologically speaking the benefits of giving can be observed

in children prior to the age of two before many of us are even able to walk or talk we already understand the joy of sharing this isn't just some hokey feel good sentiment rather it's directly related to our neurochemistry when we give someone a gift we're rewarded with a surge of oxytocin this improves our mood decreases stress and gives us feeling of security as we strengthen our social connections oxytocin also has the added benefit of boosting serotonin and dopamine further contributing to an overall positive emotional experience this process is an evolutionary adaptation meant to promote

the kinds of pro-social behaviors that contribute to the overall well-being and survival of the tribe this in turn helps ensure our own personal survival as we're seen as a valuable member of the group giving then is kind of a life hack for happiness buying a gift for a friend or donating to a charity produces a Dependable source of both pleasure and purpose these don't have to take the form of grand dramatic gestures everyday acts of kindness can allow us to reliably tap into this natural biological process considering this maybe the adage should be money can

buy happiness so long as it is spent on someone else keep this in mind if you ever win the lottery but even if you don't even if you've never found a day Fortune 500 company or come up with some revolutionary new invention the money you do have can still make you happy by investing more in Comforts than Pleasures spending more on experiences and nurturing the relationships around us we might just discover that we're richer than we could have ever imagined picture all the gold you could possibly imagine now double it that's how much both the

richest men who ever lived controlled yet most people will grow their entire lives without ever learning his name when asked who the richest man who ever lived is given the rise of wealth and equality and the creation of money out of thin air in the form of cryptocurrency it might be tempting to mention some Modern billionaires people like Elon Musk Jeff Bezos or maybe the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto but all of these answers would be wrong to find out who the richest person who ever lived was you'd have to go back to West Africa in the

1300s during the Mali Empire if you're not familiar with the greatness of the Mali Empire during that time period don't feel bad it's not your fault Western history tends to ignore the achievements of African nations prior to colonialism history books often focus on the progress made by great thinkers in the west even when there's plenty of evidence to suggest that a lot of those discoveries had already been found somewhere else in the world this is especially true in terms of mathematics and astronomy but that's a subject better suited for its own video the Mali Empire

was an exceedingly wealthy one with three large gold mines that accounted for half the world's gold reserves at the time the region was thriving add to this the fact that they were also blessed with salt and copper and you start to see just how wealthy this African nation was in 1312 CE Muhammad ibinku the reigning emperor of Mali set sail across the Atlantic to look for new land sadly he was never heard from again in his absence once a Musa took over his Emperor and would go on to make Molly one of the wealthiest empires

in the history of humanity and make himself the wealthiest man who ever lived when he took over as Emperor Musa quickly discovered that simply processing half the world's gold isn't enough to put you on the map so we looked to expand the trading network of his Empire in a bid to bring more business to the nation at the time Molly wasn't well known to Europe or the Middle East where most of the large trading cities and city-states work Mansa Musa was a developed Muslim who knew how to speak and write Arabic this allowed him to

expand his trading Network to the Middle East you see at least once in their lives every Muslim is supposed to make a hush or pilgrimage to the sacred sites in Mecca a city in today's Saudi Arabia Mecca is the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and massage is believed to be the most intense of spiritual experiences for Muslims in 1324 CE Mansa Musa set forth on a 4 000 mile Hajj to Mecca a journey that would literally put him in Mali on the kettle and Atlas a medieval world map on his Hajj matsumusa traveled with his

entire Royal Court his officials soldiers grios Merchant camel drivers and 12 000 enslaved people all of whom were dressed in gold brocade and the finest Persian silks everyone on the pilgrimage carried large amounts of gold through the Saharan Desert with their camels taking the majority of the burden along the way matsumusa and his Entourage stopped at different cities including Cairo in Egypt they give away gold to the poor funded the construction of mosques and contributed to a variety of public projects like public housing by doing these things he hoped to make the Hajj easier and

less hectic for other Muslims they show up empathy that was rare for leaders of his day Mansa Musa gave away so much gold that he decreased its value creating an economic crisis in the Middle East in total his generosity caused roughly 1.5 billion dollars in economic losses once he realized what he had done he tried to buy back as much gold as he could to fix the crisis as he hadn't intended to cause financial distress to the cities he had visited his generosity was spoken highly of wherever he went he gave away so much strangers

that his grios who were singing historical storytellers did not like to praise him with their songs they believed that he was wasting resources outside of the Kingdom but in reality the emperor had so much wealth that he could give the entire world and still have more than enough to advance this Empire and so did he upon his return from Mecca he annexed the region of GAO the trading city of Timbuktu and many other cities in total he annexed 24 cities he then transformed Timbuk2 into an enormous commercial hub it had so much gold that it

was considered a real-life El Dorado the lost city of gold Emperor Musa continued to grow his wealth by expanding his business outside of his Empire he helped establish this trans-saharan trade route which connected the Mali Empire to the Mediterranean in most of the world he contracted great Architects to build enormous mosques and universities that still stand today he had this on Corey madrasa mosque converted into a university that hosted 25 000 students one-fifth of the population of tempo 2 at the time at its peak sankhori University hosted the largest collection of books and Scrolls in

the world roughly 1 million in total thanks to the university the average citizen of Timbuktu learned how to read and write in Arabic which was an astonishing literacy rate at the time Mansa Musa invited Scholars from all over the world to teach at the University you know subjects like astronomy mathematics chronic studies and legal affairs over time the university produced its own leading Scholars to astounded even the most knowledgeable men of Islam many would go on to become professors at universities in Morocco in Egypt it was a citadel of knowledge although the school hasn't been

an active University for hundreds of years the structures stand as a testament to the rich intellectualism of Western Africa before the age of colonialism matsumusa's projects had a tremendous impact on the socioeconomic well-being of the people of the Mali Empire they helped shape and transform the values and quality of life of the Mali people in a way that astonished visitors during his visit in 1354 CE the great world traveler IBN battuta observed that the people of Mali were very timely in all their Endeavors including their daily prayers and business dealings they also competed with each

other to give generously to charity poetry and culture flourished and the people followed strong rules of cleanliness the women of Mali enjoyed freedoms not seen in most other places in the medieval world so matsumusu was able to provide a decent life for his subjects but how much wealth did he really control all historical accounts resist putting a figure on it they want you to imagine the most amount of gold you can possibly think of and double it one of the only estimates of matsumuso's wealth is from the website celebrity net worth which wasn't even around

in the 1300s they estimate his wealth was around 400 billion in today's dollars that would make him richer than any existing billionaire but we can assume his net worth would have been far greater than that it's also possible that Mansa Musa wasn't really the wealthiest man who ever lived his successors technically had the same resources he did and the gold mine and Empire existed before he became the ruler of Mali but what separates his wealth from the rest is how he used it he gave away so much of it and what he kept he invested

in his homeland and his people Mansa musa's notoriety came from spending and giving away his wealth not hoarding it because at the end of the day what good is a person's wealth if it doesn't touch people's lives many of us admire the billionaires of today but for the most part their wealth just sits idle or is used for vanity projects like buying a social media platform or the world's largest yacht yes it's their money and only they get to decide how they use it the reality is if we didn't have media sources constantly reporting on

their personal wealth it would largely be meaningless to us yes some billionaires do have large philanthropic Ambitions like Bill Gates efforts to eradicate smallpox in his fight against malaria then there's Jeff bezos's plan to give away the majority of his wealth before he dies but on the whole most billionaires aren't exactly handing out gold bars to the poor are they or in modern terms sending Bitcoin to their crypto wallets though it's fun to imagine Elon Musk driving around in his Tesla transferring Bitcoin or Dogecoin to people on the street the reality is that Mansa Musa

isn't some Progressive Hero by today's standards he ran a slave owner State albeit with a notable emphasis on standardizing the quality for the enslaved people he was also an accomplished military leader in his lifetime he managed to Annex 24 cities growing his Empire even more and that's another quality that isn't exactly beloved by modern People Details of how he annexed these cities are also not well recorded all I'm trying to say is he wasn't a saint he was still an emperor in the 14th century but it is possible to admire the way he used his

Good Fortune he spent his wealth changing people's lives he embraced the values of Islam in a way that lifted the average Mali person religious fundamentalist leaders today typically use the religion to control and harm the welfare of their people Mansa Musa is a great example if you're ever searching for one of a religious leader who used his values earnestly to help his people instead of harming them after he died his sons took over the Empire letting it dissolve over time it was strange they had similar resources but seemed to lack something their father had Musa

had a good strategy and a desire to better his Empire for his people that combined with his wealth is what put him on the world map otherwise I doubt we'd remember him as the wealthiest person who ever lived it'd just be another forgotten King down for The Faded records of History what would you do if you were the richest person on earth watch this video next to find out according to science exactly how to spend your money if your ultimate goal is to be happy since everyone seems to think being rich is the end-all be-all

goal for happiness I'm here to help you out let's figure out what it is about being rich that is so attractive and see if we can create a road map to getting you there you're not going to wake up Elon you're not gonna wake up Warren Buffett the next richest person in the