“Fuck you money” means the amount of money you need to have to be able to say fuck you to your employer without worrying about what would happen if you get fired. The ability to say “fuck you, I quit”.
It can also mean the amount of money you need to have to be able to do whatever you want without needing any employment or assistance from anyone. This is a much stronger fuck you because here you need no one.
In other words, there are levels to the game.
Level 1: 1 Year of Expenses in the Bank
The most basic level where you have enough to sustain yourself for 1 year in case you lose your income.
This means enough for a year’s worth of rent, food, utilities, fuel, etc. in the bank.
This allows you to say fuck you to any unreasonable requests by an employer like asking you to move to a different city or forcing you to take experimental DNA injections (also known as Covid Vaccine) only to keep your job.
No thanks sir, you can keep your clotshot to yourself, and fuck you for trying to force me into it.
If you don’t have this, you’re basically cattle class and you need to do whatever your employer says because if you don’t, you don’t know where next month’s rent will come from.
Without this, you jump when your employer tells you to jump. You inject what your employer tells you to inject. If your employer says you must eat bugs to keep your job, you probably will have to.
Cattle class is not a good place to be so if you aren’t even at level 1 yet, save hard and get there. Get some online money rolling in if you can.
Level 2: 5 Years of Expenses in the Bank
Level 2 is much more comfortable than level 1. It gives you much more freedom.
At this level you can say fuck you to your job and take a 2 year sabbatical to look after your young children if you like.
You can say fuck you to your current industry, learn new skills, and transition to an entirely different line of work.
You say fuck you to employment altogether and start working on a business full time because you have enough time to get it off the ground.
At this point, you have options.
If you are currently working a job in a field you hate, you can take a few months off, learn an entirely new skill like web design or social media marketing, and build your own business.
You can also continue to work your job hoping for that 5% raise like a moron – the point is that you have the choice to do it instead of the compulsion to do it.
Level 3: Highly Valuable And Transferable Skills
This is a special level that is not about a dollar figure in the bank but more about how you earn that money.
If you have highly valuable and transferable skills, you are pretty much always in a position to say fuck you to your employer.
You can always find a different one because you possess skills that few have and many people will pay for.
Even from your employer’s perspective, you are basically unfireable because of your skills.
A great example of this is someone like Andrew Ng. A man with his skills cannot be fired.
He said fuck you, I quit and his employer’s market cap fell by $1.5 billion.
It doesn’t have to be so drastic.
Usually highly skilled professionals who are good at what they do fall in this category.
- Copywriters
- Lawyers
- Doctors
- Good tax consultants
- Hitmen (joke)
- Agents (ask anyone in the show business)
Basically skilled people who are hard to come by.
To qualify, you have to be great at what you do. There are plenty of mediocre lawyers but the great ones are highly valuable.
Level 4: Financial Independence
Level 4 of fuck you money is financial independence.
At this level, you don’t need to work anymore.
The rough way to calculate your financial independence number is the rule of 25.
Multiply the annual costs of your aspirational lifestyle by 25. That’s your number.
You can now live off 4% of your capital every year (it will earn an investment return too so the money will last the rest of your life).
At this point you can say fuck you to pretty much everything and live the kind of life you want.
The main thing I’ve noticed for all my clients at this level is that they become much calmer. Stress levels plummet (money is the #1 cause of stress).
At this level you do the work you want to do, work with who you want to work, don’t accept clients who are annoying, say what you think without worrying about what some bimbo in HR thinks, and laugh in the face of people who try to use money as leverage against you.
Most people who work hard and build an online business can make it to this level in 5-10 years. It’s the freedom level.
Level 5: Rich
At level 4 you are financially independent but not rich.
At level 5 you have so much money that you can unambiguously be called rich. Think 8 figures and beyond in most places.
Once you get here you can say fuck you to anyone and anything. Although most rich people are very nice.
Not always but this is the thumb rule.
Most never make it to this level of fuck you money. You need much more than a simple online business to get to the higher levels here (you can hit $10M but not $100M with most online businesses).
You need to disrupt industries, build entirely new businesses, create unique companies like Amazon or Facebook, or get hundreds of millions to build factories and produce some kind of physical good (largely locked to the existing rich).
And only a small minority of those who try make it.
Some final thoughts
All I can say is that for most of you, an extra $20k a month from the internet is life changing. That’s very achievable and has a much higher success rate than trying to start an electric car company.
And it’s much cheaper too (can get started with just a website and a social media account). This is really the best time to be alive for anyone who wants to be free.
Anyone can start a business today. Equal opportunity.
If you’re not even on level 1, focus on building any kind of internet based income stream. It could be anything, even just spamming affiliate links on Reddit.
Then get some paid guidance and learn high value skills so you can transition to level 3.
Once you’re there, it’s just about scaling your business, getting testimonials and referrals, and expanding till you’re in level 4.
Easily doable in 5-10 years for most people. You don’t need to be Elon Musk level intelligent to do this.
So there you have it. These are the 5 levels of fuck you money.
See you at the next level.
– Harsh Strongman
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