This article is a companion toMoney matters: does your spending reflect what you value?
I’m stepping into a new phase with money. I’ve decided to earn more, and build more wealth.
This isn’t because I want an even bigger house or a nicer Porsche. But because I’ve realised that if I really want to live out my core values, I need resources to direct towards them. And I’m (hopefully!) in a phase where I can prioritise this a bit more now that my children are older and some personal matters are more settled.
In my previous article, I wrote about the gap between what we say matters and where our money actually goes. This article is about the other side. Not how you use money, but whether you’re generating enough of it to fund the life you say you want.
For me, right now, earning more isn’t so much about security or lifestyle. It’s more of a mechanism for doing more of what I care about — for my family, for the people around me, and the causes I care about.
Think of this article as a personal manifesto, and a possible call-to-arms for you.
Earning well can be values-aligned behaviour
A lot of financial commentary focuses on spending. Cut back. Optimise. Find cheaper alternatives. Live below your means. Skip the latte.
Less attention goes to the other side: if living well requires resources, then earning enough to fund that life is itself values-aligned behaviour. The question isn’t whether you want money. It’s what the money is for.
There’s something worth sitting with here. If you’re talented enough to earn significantly more, is spending your mental energy saving $50 a week really the best use of your capacity? That energy could go toward building something — a business, a practice, a body of work — that generates income, creates value for the people it serves, and funds what you say you care about.
I personally don’t like the idea of a world where capable people orient their lives around minimising expenses when they could be directing those same talents outward. Frugality is a useful discipline. But if it becomes the primary strategy for someone who could be contributing more, it starts to look like a misallocation — not just of money, but of what that person could offer others.
The identity problem
In my previous article I wrote about identity maintenance: people who’ve internalised being careful with money, to the point where spending feels like a betrayal of who they are. That identity might have been essential at one point in time, but it might not be as relevant for their current season or chapter of life.
There’s an equivalent on the earning side. Some people feel uncomfortable wanting to earn more. It can feel shallow and greedy. Like something you’re not supposed to say out loud. Especially if you’re already comfortable.
But that discomfort conflates the desire for money with the desire for what money makes possible. Wanting to earn more so you can give generously to causes you care about is not the same as wanting to earn more so you can buy a nicer car or a boat or a bach. The dollar amount might look the same from the outside. The intent is completely different.
I’ve noticed this in myself. There’s a part of me that resists focusing on earning or building wealth because it feels like it clashes with the kind of person I want to be (or, potentially, the person I used to identify as). But when I actually think about why I want more resources — to be more generous, to bring family and friends together, to fund things that matter — the resistance doesn’t hold up. The values aren’t in conflict. My identity just hasn’t caught up.
Selfish now, selfless later
There is a tension that’s inherent in this philosophy. To build the capacity to be more generous, I need to be more focused — which in the short-term can look like the opposite of being generous.
It requires being more protective of my time. Of saying no to things I might normally say yes to. Of investing in projects and skills that build earning capacity rather than spending that time on small-scale helpfulness. Of prioritising my own output over being available.
From the outside, this can look less generous. Someone who used to say yes now says no. Someone who replies to emails doesn’t do so anymore. Someone who used to give their time freely now guards it. The behaviour looks selfish even when the intent is the opposite.
I don’t think there’s a clean way around this. You can’t build something bigger without redirecting resources — including time and attention — toward building it. The person who wants to give $100,000 a year to effective causes first has to earn it, and earning it requires focus that could have been spent elsewhere.
The risk is that this becomes a permanent excuse. “I’ll be generous later” is its own version of the moving milestone from the first article. So being brutally honest with yourself matters: am I actually building toward something, or am I just deferring generosity indefinitely?
For me, right now, the answer is building. I need to hold myself to that.
What values actually cost
It’s worth being concrete about this. Not in a budgeting sense, but in terms of what it actually takes to live by what you say you care about.
If you value health, you need money for quality food, for professionals, for equipment, for the flexibility to rest when your body needs it rather than pushing through because you can’t afford not to.
If you value relationships, you need money for travel, for hosting, for the ability to say “I’ll cover it” without stress. For being the person who makes gathering possible rather than waiting for someone else to organise it.
If you value time, you need money to buy it back — to hire help, to automate, to not spend your weekends on tasks that drain you.
If you value giving, you need money to give meaningfully. Not leftovers. Not whatever you can spare after everything else. Giving that reflects genuine priority.
None of this is extravagant. But none of it is free. And if you’re not earning enough to fund these things, then at some point the constraint isn’t spending. The constraint becomes income.
It’s worth being honest about what “I can’t afford it” sometimes really means. Often it’s not that the money isn’t there. It’s that earning enough to comfortably fund these things hasn’t been prioritised. It’s a different problem with a different solution. It’s not cutting back further, but building the capacity to earn what your values actually require.
Getting the balance right
This isn’t an argument for maximising income at any price. The question is always whether the earning serves your values or replaces them.
If earning more means never seeing your family, it’s probably not values-aligned. If it means doing work that compromises what you believe in, the money isn’t worth it. If optimising for income comes at the expense of everything else, you’ve just replaced one form of misalignment with another.
Personally, the goal isn’t to accumulate for the sake of accumulation. It’s to have enough resources to do what matters — to not have to choose between seeing family and staying within budget, to invest in health without guilt, to give meaningfully to causes without feeling budgetary constraints.
There’s a way of thinking about earning that reframes it entirely. If the money you earn funds generosity — to family, to causes, to people around you — then earning is a form of service.
Expanding capacity
I called this article “expanding your capacity” because that’s how I’ve started thinking about it. Not “making more money” — which sounds like an end in itself. But expanding the capacity to live by what I care about.
For me, that means building things that generate income. It means being more intentional about where my time goes. It means accepting that a season of focus now is the price of being more generous later — and holding myself accountable to actually following through on the “later” part.
Money isn’t the point. But it’s the lever. And right now, for the things I want to make possible, I need a longer one. Not to accumulate more — but so that when it matters, I’m not the constraint.
In terms of the gap between what I value and what I spend on, the bottleneck is my capacity to earn and build wealth. That’s my truth, for this season and chapter of my life. What is yours?