What’s your definition of FU Money? I suppose leading into this question I should at least somewhat define FU Money for anyone who’s never heard the term. FU Money is essentially an amount of money you can say FU to anyone and anything you don’t want to do or don’t want to be a part of.
While he didn’t coin the term, Dan Lok the Youtuber, Business Coach and High Ticket Mentor actually has a great book titled “F.U. Money Make as Much Money as You Damn Well Want and Live How You Damn Well Please!” The book on Amazon is about $13 in paperback, however if you don’t mind reading on the computer he also offers a free download on his website which you can find here.
The term FU Money probably means different things to different people, however the general idea being you have enough money to give you enough freedom to be able to say FU to anything you don’t desire to do, people you don’t desire to be around, etc.
What’s FU Money to You?
You know I often will see discussions on Reddit and other business forums with people discussing what their FU number is. To most people it seems to be a very large amount of money which would allow them to never have to work again and be able to say FU to just about anyone and anything and never do another thing in their life ever that they don’t want to do.
I’ll often see people throw out a number like 5 Million, 10 Million, 25 Million. While that’s all well and good, the percentage of people who are actually going to hit those numbers, let alone at a young age are very very small. Furthermore, even with “just” a mill or two, if invested properly and you’re willing to live more modestly you could probably yield about 50K a year to live off of which is about the median household income without you having to lift a finger.
In my mind FU money used to be an amount of money which would enable me to never have to work another day in my life and to be able to really tell anyone to fuckoff at anytime. To me money has always been much more about freedom and freedom of choices than it has been about material things.
My Definition Has Changed
It wasn’t that long ago that I was living check to check. Actually check to check would be an upgrade, I actually wasn’t even making enough money to cover my expenses and was often having to hit a Coinstar machine a day or two before payday, or scrounge through couch cushions to find some change for gas money to make it in to work. Back then if my boss pissed me off or overloaded me with work, my only choice was to really suck it up and take it. I needed the paycheck. And if for some reason I decided to quit and go get a new job, you have the down time of finding a new job, plus the 2-3 week gap before you get a paycheck from that new job, it would have been a tough thing to do.
I just got back in the states yesterday from Aruba and something hit me while on that trip. There was a group of about 13 of us who went down there, another 4 people had to back out after already having purchased their tickets because work wouldn’t let them go away. Another 2-3 people on the trip spend several mornings of our trip back at the hotel stressing out doing work, responding to e-mails, etc when the rest of us were at the beach or out having fun. It really hit me that I never ever wanted to take a job where even on my vacation I couldn’t truly get away and that’s kind of where my definition of FU Money changed.
While it would be absolutely wonderful to be able to say fuck everything and never have to work again or do anything again, the reality is that for most of us that’s not a reality. Not saying it’s not good to have goals, but at least in the short term it’s probably not a realistic thing that’s going to happen for most people.
My new definition of FU Money is essentially having enough money to buy you choices and to buy you time. There’s been some interesting studies which have found this “benchmark $75,000 number” which essentially has found that people are happiest when they are making $75,000 per year or more. Above that your level of happiness doesn’t really increase as you continue to earn more money. If you’re a happy person you’ll be happy, if you’re not a happy person you won’t be, but it seems $75,000 per year is the amount of money where money is no longer a stresser.
When I sold my company a few weeks back and entered this new phase of my life I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. I had initially set aside enough money to take the next year off of work and just be a Youtube, Content Creator, and just kind of hustle online and see what I could get going. Just a few weeks in I quickly found I was getting bored, and kind of wanted some structure and wanted to be around people and have been kind of casually looking for employment. I actually just had an interview the other day for an SEO writer position. “If” and that’s a big if, if I’m going to take a job it’s going to be something that I enjoy, something that’s going to help me develop skills to make myself more well rounded and more valuable, and something which is going to have a work/life balance and not have me working nights, weekends, and while on vacation.
I realized that the position I’m in right now, while I can’t say FU to the world and never work another day in my life, I definitely have the luxury of sitting on the sidelines for the next few months, even a year or more and wait for just the right opportunity that fits my values and the lifestyle I want to live and in a way that in and of itself is FU money.
FU Money Doesn’t Mean Not Being an Employee
I actually heard another great example of FU Money last night. A buddy of mine who I actually met through this Youtube Channel, he recognized me at the gym from my Youtube Channel and approached me, we wound up striking up a friendship. He recently moved back out East from Chicago, however we connected last night on the phone and I was pleasantly surprised to hear what he’s been up to.
Oddly enough he was an Entrepreneur and went back to being an employee and is actually much happier. He also had his FU money in a sense that allowed him to do this. Long story short he was running a local brick and mortar service based business but was very unhappy with what he was doing. It was his dream to be a copywriter.
It took him quite a while to get everything to fall into place but he managed to walk away from his business which wasn’t making him happy. He had landed some freelance copywriting gigs which allowed him to move back East knowing he could take a few months off without having to worry about money or finding work. He began landing some additional copywriting gigs, he managed to consistantly up his rate of pay and because they were happy with the quality of his work one of the companies he was freelancing for actually offered him a full-time position as a writer of e-mails and sales letters with a base pay as well as royalties, according to him essentially a “copywriters dream”.
Basically this buddy of mine managed to land his dream job and his dream life. He freelances remotely working from home, writing which is something he loves and making good money while doing it. It’s also allowed him to move back to the East coast which is where he wanted to be.
I was going to write a seperate post on this subject but I’ll touch on it here. I thought it was interesting how “Entrepreneurship” isn’t this dream fix all for life for everyone. Ultimately I think our goal should be to be happy and live the life we want. Whatever it takes to achieve that end goal is the right path whether that be through Entrepreneurship or freelancing or even working for someone else.
FU Money is Enough Money to Have Choices
Essentially at the end of the day, FU Money doesn’t mean having enough money to sit on a beach for the rest of your life and never work again. FU Money is simply having enough money to give you the financial freedom to have choices.
What’s your definition? Drop a comment below and tell me about it.