38 Weeks to Get Rich
Welcome to the “38 Weeks to Get Rich”, where each week we’ll break down a section from Naval’s iconic tweetstorm and interviews on the topics of wealth, freedom, money, status, and happiness.
The full PDF is available here.
What follows is my summary & key takeaways to help you digest the 127 page document.
Week 1: Seek Wealth, Not Money or Status
Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep.
Wealth is the factory, the robots, that’s cranking out things. Wealth is the computer program that’s running at night, that’s serving other customers. Wealth is even money in the bank that is being reinvested into other assets, and into other businesses.
Wealth buys your freedom.
The reason you want wealth is because it buys you your freedom. So, you don’t have to wear a tie like a collar around your neck. The purpose of wealth is freedom. It’s nothing more than that. It’s not to buy fur coats, or drive Ferraris, or sail yachts.
Money is how we transfer wealth.
Money is social credits; the ability to have credits and debits of other people’s time.
If I do my job, if I create value for society, society says, “Oh, thank you. We owe you something in the future for the work that you did in the past. Here’s a little IOU. Let’s call that money.”
We can transfer these IOUs around. So, money is how we transfer wealth.
There are two huge games in life that people play.
One is the money game. People want to collect as many IOU’s as they can so that they can buy their freedom. The other game is status. People will virtue signal and say, “Making money is evil. You shouldn’t do it.” They’re trying to be high-status in the eyes of other people.
Wealth is not a zero-sum game.
Everybody in the world can have a house. Because you have a house doesn’t take away from my ability to have a house. If anything, the more houses that are built, the easier it becomes to build houses, the more we know about building houses, and the more people that can have houses.
Wealth is a very positive sum game. We create things together. One person can get wealthier without another person having to lose wealth. Because I bought a car doesn’t mean someone lost a car; they just traded it for money.
Status, on the other hand, is a zero-sum game.
It’s hierarchical. Who’s number one? Who’s number two? Who’s number three? And for number three to move to number two, number two has to move out of that slot. So, status is a zero-sum game.
Politics and sports are both examples of status games. There can only be one winner; and everyone else is a loser. I don’t fundamentally love status games. I prefer win-win scenarios over win-lose scenarios.
The problem is that to win at a status game, you have to put somebody else down. That’s why you should avoid status games in your life because they make you into an angry combative person.
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