Lessons Learned in My 30s: Navigating Life’s Realities

Passive income doesn’t exist

If you want to make money, you need to work, but sometimes you can make money by doing nothing.

Is that passive income?

For instance, you can earn money in the stock market with minimal effort, but you pay with your mental well-being.

You can also make a lot of money by owning a large company where others work for you, but then you pay with the responsibility of managing both the people and the business. In the end, you always pay with something.

Money is fake

Money has value because people collectively agree that 100 euros is worth 100 euros and what it can buy.

Technically, you could use something like toilet paper as currency and buy a house if everyone agreed on its value. Remember the Tulip Mania, when a single tulip could be traded for a house? Some people work hard for money, while others seem to make it effortlessly — just look at the U.S. national debt.

Doing nothing is worse than doing something

We all die eventually.

Unless something significant changes, there is a 100% chance that we will all die, and everything we worked for…