Financial freedom is often misunderstood as the ability to avoid the struggle and eliminate every challenge from our lives.
Here’s why money shouldn't buy your way out of friction.
There’s a common, unspoken assumption about wealth creation that many internalise early in life: we believe that the ultimate purpose of money is to reduce or eliminate our problems.
We view a well-funded balance sheet as the ultimate shock absorber. We assume that if we just have enough capital, we can insulate ourselves and the people we love from discomfort, failure and friction.
But this is a profound misunderstanding of both money and human nature.
Money is an exceptional tool for solving financial problems and building financial security. It can buy shelter, nutrition, medical care and security. But money can’t solve human problems. In fact, when we use our wealth to bypass every uncomfortable situation, we accidentally rob ourselves of the very mechanism that creates character: the struggle.
It’s like the movie ‘Click’, where the main character acquires a remote control that allows him to click fast-forward through tough conversations, challenging tasks and awkward moments. As the movie progresses from light and comical applications of this new ability, it becomes darker and more emotionally gripping as we realise how much of life is being missed. Relationships suffer and he reaches old age with more regrets than relief.
The author and risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularised the concept of ‘antifragility’. He noted that some things don’t just withstand shock – they actually require stress and disorder to grow stronger.
We’re fundamentally antifragile. Our muscles only grow when they’re subjected to resistance. Our immune systems only strengthen when exposed to pathogens. And our character, personal growth, resilience and capabilities only develop when we’re forced to navigate difficult, frustrating or challenging terrains.
A life with zero friction sounds appealing on a stressed Tuesday morning, but a frictionless life is a fragile one. If we never have to struggle, we lose the capacity to handle adversity when it inevitably arrives.
Nowhere is the temptation to avoid struggle stronger than in parenting.
When we achieve financial success and financial independence, our immediate instinct is to use our resources to make our children's lives easier than ours were. If they make a financial mistake, we bail them out. If they encounter a difficult obstacle, we use our capital or our network to smooth the path.
But, as we discussed in the Empty nest financial planning Insights piece, rescuing young adults from the consequences of their actions doesn’t help them – it actively harms them. It deprives them of the psychological reward of overcoming an obstacle on their own.
We have to find the courage to let them struggle. We must allow them to feel the mild discomfort of a tight budget or the sting of a failure, knowing that this friction is exactly what forges the resilience they’ll need in adulthood.
This principle doesn't end when we reach adulthood. We often see clients approaching retirement with the hope that this next chapter will be effort-free. They want to stop working, sit on a park bench and do absolutely nothing.
While a long holiday is a wonderful way to decompress, a permanent one quickly leads to a loss of purpose. We need challenges to stay sharp. We need mountains to climb, whether that’s literally struggling up a steep trail on a Saturday morning, learning a complex new skill or building a new business venture in our sixties.
True financial freedom isn't the absence of struggle. True financial wellbeing requires challenge, purpose and growth.
If you have no money, your struggles are dictated to you by necessity. You struggle to pay the rent, you struggle to keep the lights on and you struggle to survive.
The greatest privilege of building wealth isn’t that it removes the need for effort. The greatest privilege of wealth is that it gives you the autonomy to choose your struggle.
It allows you to shift from struggling for survival to pursuing purpose-driven living. It gives you the freedom to choose a challenging passion project, tackle a difficult philanthropic cause or master a craft that requires years of frustrating practice.
Don’t use your wealth to build a life completely free of friction. Use your wealth to buy the freedom to choose the struggles that make you feel truly alive.