Making six figures a year used to be a benchmark of financial security in america. Dont get me wrong $100k is still a lot of money, but the reality is, depending where you live, $100k is not what it used to be.
Today an $100k salary, can feel like you are walking on a treadmill at maximun incline just to keep zero in your pocket by the end of the month.
The american consumer is probably one of the wealthiest in the history of mankind, but all this wealth comes with an invisible partner that is feeding on your money in every step of the way. The American government. This is part of the reason why middle class americans feel a lot of financial anxiety. There is asqueeze on your money even before it reaches your pocket. and after it reaches your pocket there is a money grab in every part of the chain. Lets examine how this happens:

Phase 1: Before your paycheck reaches your pocket, the government is already taking its cut.
For a single W2 employee, your empolyer has a 7.65% FICA match, thats money your employer budgeted just to be able to employ you, and you never even seen a cent of it. it goes directly to the government.

Phase 2: After you receive your money, and for simplification here lets assum you are getting paid only once a year.

Phase 3 The Backdoor taxes - the embeded tax casacade.

So for the standard analysis, your income is $74k and this should be your purchasing power. but in reality, every product that you buy and every service that you use also contains anothere embeded tax in it, and that takes a toll on your real purchase power.

1. Housing

Homeowners pay property taxes directly. Nationally, the typical bill is several thousand dollars a year, but in high-tax areas it can easily exceed $10,000.

Renters don’t receive a property-tax bill, but they don’t necessarily escape the economic burden. Property taxes are a cost of owning rental housing, and some of that cost can show up in rents.

A 2025 Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia study of Berkeley, California, found that landlords passed 50 to 89 cents of each additional dollar of property tax on to new tenants.

So property tax can affect you whether you own your home or rent it.

2. Utilities & Energy

Electricity and natural-gas bills can include taxes, public-benefit charges and other government-mandated assessments. The amount varies substantially by state and utility, so there is no credible national percentage.

Gasoline is easier to measure. As of January 2026, the federal gasoline tax and fee totaled 18.4 cents per gallon, while state gasoline taxes and fees averaged another 33.3 cents—about 52 cents per gallon combined, before any local taxes.

So when we pay $3.20 for a gallon of gasoline, part of that price is tax being paid with income that has already been taxed.

3. Phones, Internet & Digital Services

Mobile-phone bills can include federal, state and local taxes and government fees, including 911 and Universal Service charges.

Internet access is different: federal law generally prohibits state and local governments from taxing internet access itself.

Streaming, software and other digital subscriptions may still be subject to state and local sales taxes, depending on the service and where you live.

4. Groceries & Restaurants

Many states exempt groceries from sales tax or tax them at reduced rates. But food prices can still reflect taxes imposed elsewhere in the supply chain—fuel taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes and tariffs on certain imports.

We shouldn’t assume all those costs are passed to consumers; the burden can be shared among businesses, workers and customers.

Restaurants are simpler: meals are generally subject to applicable state and local sales taxes, and some jurisdictions impose additional meals or hospitality taxes.

So the same dollar that was taxed when you earned it can be taxed again when you go out for dinner.

5. Clothing, Shoes & Tariffs

Imported clothing and footwear can carry another largely invisible tax: tariffs.

The U.S. importer pays the tariff rather than the consumer directly, but tariffs increase the cost of importing the product and some of that cost can ultimately appear in retail prices.

Footwear is a good example. U.S. footwear tariffs have historically averaged around 12%, while some categories carry much higher rates.

Depending on the state, the consumer may then pay sales tax on the final retail price.

New Jersey is an important exception: most ordinary clothing and footwear are exempt from state sales tax.

5. Transportation

Owning and using a car creates another layer of taxation.

Buying a car: Most states impose sales tax on vehicle purchases. In New Jersey, that’s generally 6.625%—about $2,650 on a $40,000 car.

Gasoline: Drivers pay federal and state fuel taxes every time they fill up. In New Jersey in 2026, that’s approximately 67.5 cents per gallon combined.

Registration and licensing: Drivers also pay state registration, title and licensing fees.

Tolls: These aren’t technically taxes, but they are government or public-authority charges for using roads, bridges and tunnels and can become a significant transportation expense in places like New Jersey and New York.

And cars contain another less-visible layer: imported vehicles and auto parts can be subject to tariffs, some of which may ultimately be reflected in the purchase price.

So transportation provides another example of the same pattern: you earn taxed income, use it to buy a taxed vehicle, and continue paying taxes and government charges to fuel and operate it.

Visible vs. Hidden Taxes

Some taxes are obvious:

Income tax. Social Security. Medicare. Sales tax. Property tax.

Others are much less visible:

Gasoline taxes. Tariffs. Property taxes reflected in rents. Taxes and government charges embedded elsewhere in the supply chain.

We shouldn’t simply add all these percentages together. Some business taxes are absorbed by owners or workers rather than passed entirely to consumers.

But the larger point remains:

Americans encounter taxation several times during the life of the same dollar. We tax income when it is earned. We tax some of that money again when it is spent. And some of the prices we pay already reflect taxes imposed earlier in the production and distribution chain.

That means the number on your W-2 tells you much less about your real purchasing power than most of us realize.

Also, when you think about how much money you are paying in taxes it makes you stricter to what types of use that government is putting on your money.
Clear examples of waste and partisan distributions of money that dont contribute to the general public good should be lookd into with scrutiny.


“There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers’ money.” — Margaret Thatcher

Last but not least the dragon of inflation:

When we are looking at the general cost of living and specially the changes over time, we have to take a look at inflation:

Over the past ten years, the cost of a typical basket of goods and services in the New York–New Jersey area has risen about 37%. That’s equivalent to average inflation of roughly 3.2% per year. In other words, $100 of purchasing power in 2016 requires about $137 today.

To have the same purchasing power as a $100,000 salary in 2016, you’d need roughly $137,000 today—before considering whether the individual’s particular housing, healthcare, education or other expenses increased faster than the average CPI basket.

“The problem with making $100,000 today is that sometimes your salary ends before the month does. The money is gone, but somehow there are still days left on the calendar.”

Recently, I have been looking at buying a house, and the process made me think more seriously about the real estate market in America.

Especially around New York and New Jersey, the prices are crazy.

Of course, I understand why. A lot of people want to live here. Land is limited. People want good schools, safe neighborhoods, restaurants, a backyard, and a short commute to Manhattan.

All of those things have value.

But still, I kept asking myself:

Why is it so difficult to build more housing where people actually want to live?

And that question led me back to something I studied many years ago in economics: incentives.

Sometimes we create a regulation to solve one problem and end up creating another one.

Housing seems to be a perfect example.

Start With Zoning

Imagine a nice town close to New York.

People want to move there. Demand increases.

Normally, when demand for something increases, the market tries to produce more of it.

But housing doesn’t always work that way.

The town may say you can only build single-family homes. Or you need a large minimum lot. Or you can’t build a duplex. Or an apartment building is too tall. Or you need a certain number of parking spaces.

Then come the hearings, approvals, lawyers, environmental studies, neighborhood opposition, and sometimes years before anything gets built.

Meanwhile, people still want to move there.

So what happens?

Prices go up.

And here is where it gets interesting.

If I already own a house in that town, this is actually pretty good for me.

The less new housing that gets built, the scarcer my house becomes.

My $800,000 house becomes a $1 million house, then maybe a $1.2 million house.

So I may say I want affordable housing, but at the same time I have a financial interest in keeping housing scarce.

I think this contradiction is at the center of the American housing problem.

Everyone wants affordable housing. Just not necessarily next to their house.

Then We Try to Fix the Price

Once rents get too expensive, government feels pressure to do something.

Rent control sounds like an obvious solution.

If an apartment rents for $2,000 and the landlord wants to increase it to $2,500, government can simply say no.

For the person living in that apartment, that’s great.

But what happens after that?

If I’m a developer, am I more or less interested in building rental apartments if I don’t know what I’ll eventually be allowed to charge?

If I’m a landlord, am I going to invest $100,000 renovating an apartment if I can’t get an adequate return?

And if I’m lucky enough to have a great apartment at a rent far below the market, why would I ever leave?

San Francisco actually gave economists an opportunity to study this.

The interesting result was that rent control did what it was supposed to do for many existing tenants: it helped them stay in their homes.

But landlords responded too. The research found that affected landlords eventually reduced the supply of rental housing by around 15%.

That’s exactly what makes economics interesting.

Both things can be true.

A policy can help the person standing in front of you today while making the problem worse for the person who arrives tomorrow.

Look at New York

New York City’s rental vacancy rate was around 1.4% in the 2023 housing survey.

That is incredibly low.

So before discussing whether landlords are greedy or rents should be controlled, I think we have to acknowledge the most basic problem:

There aren’t enough available apartments for all the people who want them.

If 100 people want 50 apartments, we can change the rules about how those apartments are allocated.

But we still have 50 apartments.

At some point, we need more apartments.

And Then There Are HOAs

HOAs are different because they aren’t usually government. They’re private associations, and when you buy the property you agree to their rules.

I understand their purpose.

I don’t necessarily want my neighbor turning his house into a nightclub or painting it fluorescent green.

But there is something strange about spending $1 million or $2 million on a property and discovering how many things you still aren’t allowed to do with it.

Can I rent it?

Can I renovate it?

Can I change the exterior?

What can I park outside?

The HOA raises another interesting question:

What does it really mean to own something?

There is a balance between protecting the community and protecting the rights of the person who actually owns the property.

I think sometimes we have moved that balance too far toward restrictions.

The “Free Money” Problem

There is another policy that sounds great but can have exactly the opposite result.

Suppose houses cost $500,000 and the government decides people need help buying them.

So let’s give buyers $50,000.

Great.

But imagine there are 100 houses and 150 buyers.

And because of zoning, we can’t build more houses.

Now those same 150 buyers have more money.

What happens?

They start bidding against each other.

The government wanted to make houses more affordable, but some of that subsidy can simply end up in a higher price for the house.

Again, the intention was good.

But incentives matter.

So What Would I Do?

I wouldn’t eliminate zoning. That’s unrealistic and probably not desirable.

Nobody wants a factory built next to their house.

But I would make it much easier to build housing where people actually want to live.

Allow more duplexes and triplexes.

Allow accessory apartments.

Build more around train stations.

Reduce unnecessary parking requirements in places with good public transportation.

And, above all, make the process faster.

If the rules say I can build something, I shouldn’t need three years, five lawyers, multiple hearings, and a political campaign to actually build it.

On rent control, I would rather help the people who genuinely need help than control the entire market.

If an elderly person or a low-income family needs assistance to stay in their home, help them.

Help the person instead of trying to control the price.

The Uncomfortable Part

There is one contradiction that I think we need to talk about more.

We constantly hear two things:

“Housing needs to become more affordable.”

And:

“My house is my biggest investment, and I want it to appreciate.”

We can’t maximize both forever.

If houses keep increasing 8% or 10% every year while people’s incomes increase 3% or 4%, homeowners get richer.

But their children eventually can’t afford to buy houses.

And this may explain why changing housing policy is so difficult.

The people who already own houses vote.

They show up at town meetings.

They complain about new developments.

They want to protect their neighborhood—and, consciously or not, the value of their property.

But the person who would have lived in the apartment that never got built isn’t at the zoning meeting.

He doesn’t live there yet.

I think that explains a lot.

And it brings me back to what I want this Substack to be about.

I’m not trying to argue that government is always bad or that markets always get everything right.

They don’t.

But I am increasingly interested in something much simpler:

What actually works?

Don’t tell me that a policy is compassionate.

Don’t tell me that it protects the middle class.

Don’t tell me that it helps working families.

Those are intentions.

Show me the results.

Did we build more houses?

Did rents become more affordable?

Did more families become homeowners?

Did the policy solve the problem?

Or did we create another distortion that now requires another government program to fix it?

Good intentions matter. But outcomes matter more.

I was born in Brazil to immigrant parents.

My mother came from Israel. My father came from Ukraine. Our family’s history in Brazil was relatively short, and perhaps because of that, I grew up thinking about countries differently. I never assumed that the place where you were born necessarily had to be the place where you spent the rest of your life.

I eventually decided to study economics because I was curious about a very simple question:

Why do some countries prosper while others don’t?

That question fascinated me.

At school, I was exposed to different economic theories and different ways of looking at society. I learned the arguments of the left and the right, and I came to understand that both sides were often trying to solve legitimate problems—they simply approached them from very different starting points.

The left emphasized equality, social justice, workers’ rights, a strong social safety net, and government’s responsibility to correct inequalities that markets could not solve on their own.

The right emphasized individual liberty, personal responsibility, limited government, free enterprise, property rights, equality before the law, law and order, and the importance of family and traditional institutions.

As I got older, I found myself increasingly attracted to the second set of ideas.

But more importantly, I became attracted to something broader.

I became attracted to America.

What America Represented to Me

America was never attractive to me simply because it was richer than Brazil.

It represented a particular idea of what a person could become.

The first was freedom.

The freedom to think, speak, worship, work, build a business, take risks and live your life as you choose, as long as you respect the rights of others.

Then came individual responsibility.

America seemed to tell people something both liberating and frightening:

Your life is your responsibility.

Your parents matter. Your circumstances matter. Luck matters. But ultimately, you have enormous responsibility for what you make of the opportunities in front of you.

I liked that.

Then there was equality before the law.

Not equality of outcomes. Not a promise that everyone would finish in the same place.

The promise was that the rules should apply equally to everyone and that your origins should not determine your destination.

And perhaps the American value that attracted me most was opportunity.

The American promise, at least as I understood it, wasn’t:

“Everyone will succeed.”

It was:

“You will have the opportunity to try.”

You can work. You can study. You can create something. You can take risks. You can fail.

And then you can try again.

That last part matters enormously.

The Right to Reinvent Yourself

I think reinvention is one of the most beautiful American ideas.

You are not supposed to be permanently defined by where you were born, what your parents did, your social class, or even your own previous failures.

You can arrive from another country.

You can speak with an accent.

You can start over.

You can change careers.

You can create a company.

You can lose everything and build again.

You can become something your parents never imagined.

There is something profoundly optimistic about that idea.

It is also closely connected to another American characteristic I admire: risk-taking.

America has historically had an unusual respect for the entrepreneur—the person willing to leave a comfortable job, invest his savings, build something, hire people and accept the possibility of failure.

Failure isn’t necessarily the end of the story.

Sometimes it is simply tuition.

What Bothered Me About Brazil

Growing up in Brazil, I often felt I was watching a very different political philosophy at work.

Brazil has a long tradition of populism and a powerful state, across governments of different ideological orientations.

I became increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that government should be at the center of economic life.

And I became particularly skeptical of political movements that promised benefits without adequately explaining who would eventually pay for them.

There was an old political story I remember from Brazil.

A politician goes into a poor community and promises a man a pair of shoes in exchange for his vote.

But before the election, he gives him only one shoe.

The other shoe comes after the election—assuming the politician wins.

Whether every version of that story actually happened isn’t the point.

The story captured something about Brazilian politics that bothered me deeply.

It wasn’t empowerment.

It was dependency.

Instead of asking:

“How can we give this person the tools to improve his life?”

politics too often seemed to ask:

“What can we give this person so that he continues to need us?”

Those are profoundly different philosophies.

My Problem With Populism

Over the years, I watched Brazilian governments struggle repeatedly with excessive public spending, inflation, political patronage, inefficient state enterprises, protectionism and a government that frequently occupied economic space that I believed should belong to private enterprise.

This was not exclusively a problem of the Brazilian left. Brazil’s history of state intervention and populism crosses ideological and party lines.

But I became particularly skeptical of the left-wing version of populism because it was often presented to me not simply as an economic argument, but as a moral argument.

If you wanted greater government intervention, you cared about poor people.

If you wanted smaller government and more capitalism, you cared about rich people.

I never accepted that premise.

I believed—and still believe—that it is entirely possible to care deeply about poverty while believing that capitalism, entrepreneurship, education and economic opportunity are ultimately more powerful tools for eliminating poverty than permanent dependency on government.

That doesn’t mean government has no role.

Of course it does.

A civilized society needs a safety net. Children need education. People need infrastructure and public safety. Markets require laws, functioning institutions and enforcement of contracts. And there will always be people who genuinely need help.

The question is not whether government should exist.

The question is:

What should government ultimately be trying to create—dependence or independence?

That distinction became increasingly important to me.

Teach a Person to Fish

There is an old saying:

Give someone a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach them how to fish and you feed them for a lifetime.

It is simplistic, of course. Someone who is starving today may need the fish and the fishing lesson.

But the philosophy behind it has always appealed to me.

Help people when they need help.

But whenever possible, help them reach the point where they no longer need you.

Give people education.

Give them security.

Give them equal treatment under the law.

Remove unnecessary barriers.

Then give them the freedom to build.

Some will become extraordinarily successful. Others won’t. Outcomes will never be equal because people aren’t identical in their ambitions, abilities, circumstances, choices or luck.

But opportunity should be as broad as we can reasonably make it.

The America I Wanted to Join

Eventually I realized that the values I was describing had a home.

Freedom.

Individual responsibility.

Equality before the law.

Opportunity.

Hard work.

Entrepreneurship.

Risk-taking.

Pluralism.

Democracy.

The ability to reinvent yourself.

Those were the American values that attracted me.

The aspiration itself matters.

And there is another American idea that became especially important to someone with my background.

You Can Choose to Become American

My mother was born elsewhere.

My father was born elsewhere.

I was born elsewhere.

And yet America offered an extraordinary proposition:

You can become one of us.

American identity, at its best, isn’t based entirely on blood.

It is based on citizenship and an allegiance to a set of ideas.

You can come from Brazil, Israel, Ukraine, Japan, Mexico, India, Nigeria or virtually anywhere else and eventually say:

“I am an American.”

And your children don’t need an asterisk next to their identity.

That idea resonated enormously with me.

Perhaps because immigration was already part of my family’s story, I understood that nationality could be something more than an accident of birth.

It could also be a choice.

Why I Moved

So why did I move to the United States?

There were professional reasons, of course. There were economic opportunities. There were practical considerations.

But underneath all of those things was something more fundamental.

I wanted to live in a country whose ideals were closer to my own.

I wanted a society that told me:

Work hard.

Take responsibility.

Take risks.

Build something.

Respect the law.

Respect other people’s freedom.

Help people who genuinely need help.

Don’t expect government to solve every problem.

Don’t resent someone simply because he succeeded.

Don’t allow failure to define you.

And if you don’t like where your life is going, change it.

Start again.

That is the America that attracted me.

It isn’t exclusively a Republican America or a Democratic America.

Many of these principles have been defended by Americans on both sides of the political spectrum.

America has never perfectly lived up to them. But they represent the country I admired from Brazil, the country I eventually moved to, and the country whose citizenship I wanted.

I wasn’t simply looking for a better place to make a living.

I was looking for a place whose values made me want to belong.

But How About America in 2026?

This brings me to the reason I wanted to write this essay in the first place.

I worry that some of the values that attracted me to America are changing.

And perhaps because I grew up in Brazil, some of what I see happening today feels familiar.

Ideas that Americans would have comfortably described as socialist not very long ago are increasingly part of mainstream political debate.

That doesn’t mean America is becoming a socialist country. It doesn’t mean everyone advocating a larger safety net is a socialist. And it certainly doesn’t mean every government program is socialist.

But the direction deserves a serious discussion.

My concern is ultimately less about a particular program than about a political philosophy:

What happens when government increasingly sees its role as giving people what they want rather than creating the conditions that allow people to provide for themselves?

There is an obvious temptation in every democracy.

Ask people whether they would like the government to provide them with more benefits, and unsurprisingly, many will say yes.

Free healthcare.

Free college.

Subsidized housing.

Debt forgiveness.

Tax credits.

Price controls.

More government assistance.

The word “free”, however, is one of the most misleading words in economics.

Nothing provided by government is actually free.

Someone pays.

Sometimes we pay through taxes.

Sometimes through borrowing.

Sometimes through reduced economic growth.

And sometimes, when fiscal and monetary conditions allow it to happen, society ultimately pays through inflation and the erosion of purchasing power.

That lesson is particularly powerful for someone who grew up in Brazil.

I have seen what happens when politicians discover that promising benefits today can be politically easier than explaining their costs tomorrow.

Leadership Is Not the Same as Following

I don’t believe the role of government is simply to follow the political winds.

Leadership sometimes means telling voters something they don’t want to hear.

We cannot afford this.

This program needs reform.

This benefit is unsustainable.

This industry cannot remain permanently protected.

This deficit eventually matters.

Government should absolutely listen to the population. That is democracy.

But representative democracy also requires leaders willing to explain trade-offs rather than pretending trade-offs don’t exist.

A politician whose overriding objective is reelection faces an enormous temptation:

Give voters the benefit today and allow someone else to deal with the bill tomorrow.

That is the essence of the populism that worried me in Brazil.

And increasingly, I worry about it in America.

My Concern Isn’t Only With the Left

The growth of democratic-socialist ideas within parts of the American left concerns me.

The Democratic Socialists of America openly advocate a much larger role for public ownership and government in economic life, and democratic-socialist politicians have become increasingly visible within Democratic electoral politics.

But it would be intellectually dishonest for me to stop there.

I also see a Republican Party increasingly comfortable with its own version of economic populism.

It may use different language.

It may emphasize nationalism, American workers, tariffs, immigration and traditional values rather than inequality and social justice.

But economically, some of the instincts can look surprisingly similar:

Government intervention.

Protectionism.

Industrial policy.

Tariffs.

Political pressure on businesses.

Government deciding which industries deserve protection.

A willingness to intervene in markets when the political benefits are attractive.

That isn’t the limited-government, free-market conservatism that originally attracted me to the American right.

The rhetoric is different.

The underlying temptation is sometimes the same.

Use government power to give your political constituency what it wants.

One side can call it social justice.

The other can call it America First.

But I want to ask the same question of both:

Does it work?

Maybe the Real Divide Isn’t Left Versus Right

Perhaps the political divide that interests me most today isn’t simply left versus right.

It is:

Populism versus responsibility.

Dependency versus opportunity.

Government allocation versus markets.

Short-term political gratification versus long-term economic consequences.

And, most importantly:

Ideology versus evidence.

I don’t want this Substack to become another place where Republicans explain why Democrats are stupid or Democrats explain why Republicans are evil.

There are already plenty of places to find that.

I want to do something different.

I want to examine ideas from both sides and ask:

What actually works?

What produces prosperity?

What creates opportunity?

What allows someone born poor to become wealthy?

What protects people who genuinely need help without creating permanent dependency?

What role should government play?

Where do markets fail?

Where does government fail?

When should we prioritize equality?

When should we prioritize freedom?

And what happens when those values conflict?

Most importantly, I want to return repeatedly to the question that originally attracted me to this country:

What are the ideals that make us American?

I already know that I won’t always have the answers.

I also know that people reading this will disagree with me.

Good.

That is another American value worth protecting.

So this first essay isn’t meant to be a conclusion.

It’s a starting point.

There will be more to follow.

I am almost 52 years old.

That reality still shocks me every time I stop and think about it.

I am Brazilian. I am the father of two adult men. One is an engineer at Boeing. The other is taking his first steps into a career in financial markets—the same world I entered many years ago.

I watch all of this with some amusement. It seems like yesterday that I was a trainee in my first week of work, struggling to learn everything I could.

And now here we are.

By most reasonable measures, I consider myself successful.

I am not rich compared with some of the numbers we see today in technology and finance in the United States and around the world. I don’t own a private jet. I haven’t sold a company for hundreds of millions of dollars.

But I have a comfortable life.

More importantly, I have reached a point where, financially, I could stop working today and probably never need to work again.

But I don’t want to.

And that is where things get interesting.

The Problem With Enough

I still wake up around 5:00 in the morning. It’s a struggle. It’s not easy. But I still do it.

I still want to work.

I still enjoy walking into the office and trying to understand what the market is telling me. I like solving puzzles. I like taking risk. I like being right. I hate being wrong, although the market has spent decades showing me how wrong I was.

And even though sometimes I feel like I have enough, I still want to make more money.

I want to build things.

I want to challenge myself.

And, strangely enough, I am at peace with all of that.

Well, most of the time.

I don’t think ambition is something we necessarily need to cure.

But occasionally another question enters my mind:

What is the purpose of all of this?

If I already have enough, what exactly am I chasing?

And how do I know when I have enough if I keep moving the number?

That may be one of the most difficult calculations I’ve encountered in my career.

I’ve spent most of my professional life around numbers.

Prices. Interest rates. Volatility. Probabilities. P&L. Risk. Returns.

Numbers are comforting because they give us the illusion of precision.

But enough is a strange number.

It doesn’t appear on a Bloomberg screen.

There is no formula for it.

And the moment you think you’ve calculated it, something changes.

Your income increases.

Your lifestyle improves.

Your neighbor buys a bigger house.

Someone you know sells a company for $50 million.

You read about a 35-year-old billionaire.

Suddenly the number that represented freedom five years ago doesn’t feel quite as impressive.

The goalpost moves.

The Trader’s Problem

I spent most of my career as a trader for financial institutions, and for the past three years I’ve worked as a broker at a major Brazilian financial institution.

Markets train you to think in a particular way.

There is always another trade.

Another opportunity.

Another year.

Another target.

Another number.

You make $1 million and wonder how to make $2 million.

You make $2 million and meet someone making $10 million.

The comparison never ends because the distribution has no practical ceiling.

But life does.

That’s the uncomfortable part.

At almost 52, I understand something at a much deeper level than I did at 32:

Money may compound, but time does not.

I can potentially double my money again.

I cannot double the number of Saturdays I have left.

And that realization has started changing the way I think about wealth.

The Other Mat

There is another place where I’ve learned a lot about this.

The Jiu-Jitsu mat.

I am a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu brown belt. I’m also a partner in two Jiu-Jitsu gyms, and when I can, I teach the kids’ classes on Saturdays.

Jiu-Jitsu has a funny relationship with progress.

You can always get better.

But there is always someone who can submit you.

There is always another technique to learn.

Another weakness to fix.

Another belt.

In that sense, Jiu-Jitsu has no “enough” either.

And yet nobody sensible trains Jiu-Jitsu because they expect eventually to reach a point where they know everything.

The practice itself is the point.

Maybe work can be like that too.

Maybe the mistake isn’t continuing to work after reaching financial independence.

Maybe the mistake is believing that money must remain the scoreboard.

I don’t wake up at 5:00 because I’m afraid I won’t be able to pay my bills.

I wake up because there are still puzzles I want to solve.

There are still things I want to build.

There are still people I enjoy competing with.

There are still parts of myself I want to test.

That’s very different from needing another dollar.

So What Is Enough?

I’m beginning to think we’ve been asking the wrong question.

Maybe there isn’t one number called “enough.”

There may be several.

There is enough money to survive.

Enough to feel secure.

Enough to provide for your family.

Enough to have choices.

Enough to stop doing things you hate simply because you need the paycheck.

And then, eventually, perhaps there is enough money that the next dollar contributes almost nothing to the quality of your life.

After that point, the calculation changes.

The scarce asset is no longer money.

It’s time.

And the question becomes not:

How much more can I accumulate?

but:

What do I want to do with the time I’ve accumulated the freedom to control?

For me, the answer apparently isn’t sitting on a beach.

I want to work.

I want to trade.

I want to invest.

I want to build businesses.

I want to train Jiu-Jitsu.

I want to teach a group of kids on Saturday.

I want to love my wife and enjoy time and laughter with her.

I want to spend time with my sons as adults and watch where their lives take them.

And I want to continue searching for answers to questions like this one.

Perhaps that’s enough.

Or perhaps I’ll feel differently at 62.

I’m still trying to figure it out.

And that’s part of why I’m writing this newsletter.

This Week’s Question

If you already had enough money that you never needed to work again, what would you do on Monday morning?

And if your answer is exactly what I’m doing today, maybe you’ve discovered something more valuable than your number.

You’ve discovered what enough is for.