How to Become Poor

From Paul Graham’s essay.

• We study a lot about how to become rich, but we rarely understand how wealthy people end up becoming poor.
• Many wealthy people don’t become poor through lavish spending. They become poor through failed investments.
  • Many people have an inherent habit of being wary of extravagance.
  • It’s hard to burn through a billion won on consumption, but it’s easy to lose it through investment.
  • People tend not to think of investing as spending money, because they see it merely as their assets changing form.
• Similarly, it’s not easy to fritter away time just by playing around and doing nothing. Time disappears because of fake work.
  • It’s easy to waste a single day playing around, but doing it for an entire week makes you feel like something is wrong.
  • Fake work makes it easy to escape the guilt of having done nothing. Yet having nothing to show for it is no different from just playing around.
  • At least playing around is fun, whereas fake work isn’t even enjoyable.