[lemmings19]

Certainly if you live in a city, money is everything. Without it, you are homeless and wondering where you'll sleep next or what you'll eat. Where to shower, how you'll find work, get your hair cut, and so on. All of these things require money to obtain, more or less.

The countryside might be a different story, if you're willing to work wherever you can find it. Room and board on a farm perhaps; that costs nothing if you are willing to work. Tent in a forest; this costs nothing, as anyone can scrape together a tent and sleeping bag. Cities have no room for these things.

A bare minimum amount of money can be everything. Once you can feed and house yourself, why not focus on life and making the best of it? I think money is everything _until_ you can sustain the bare minimum. After that... if you still think money is everything, you have lost sight of the rest of your life. That or you have kids.

[Swizec]

> After that... if you still think money is everything, you have lost sight of the rest of your life.

I think a large part of it is that I've spent the first 25 or so years of my life living hand to mouth. As such I'm probably never going to get used to the idea that you can ever have "enough" money.

What if something happens? Is your stash really big enough to tie you over? What if it isn't? What if ... basically I think that once you're in a money-tight situation for a prolonged period, especially if it was when you were growing up, that leaves a mark that's never going to go away.

As the anecdote attributed to different rich people says: "Yep, my son tips more than I do. He's the son of a millionaire, I'm the son of a <insert poor-ish profession>"

Maybe I hit a double whammy as well.

My girlfriend's parents emigrated to the US from a relatively well-off French background. It's not all roses of course, but to my understanding they were never broke broke. Her grandma, for instance, has an estate that's been in the family for 300 years.

I emigrated to the US from a single-parent background in a postsocialist country. My maternal grandparents went bankrupt when my mum was 15 or so, my dad's grandparents died by the time he was 5. Great grandparents' assets were mostly wiped out during WW2 (partially effect of war, partially socialist redistribution of wealth). So really I have about 4 generations worth of baggage about "Fuck we're broke!".

There's no way that doesn't have an effect on how I think.

[kinkrtyavimoodh]

But how many of the people who say money isn't everything do so from their self-made hut in a farm living off of food they have grown / killed themselves etc.?

I don't mean to make an ad hominem, but I think it's fair to say that lofty pronouncements such as how much money does or does not matter from people who have basically never actually had to experience extreme poverty sound a little hollow.

[_audakel]

I love that, money is everything until you have the bare minimum.

I just graduated and moved across country for a new job and for the past few years have been incredibly worried about money constantly. I worried that the rest of my life I would be completely obsessed about having enough money. Now that I'm starting to get some paychecks the sense of relief of not having to worry if I'm going to go hungry/not make rent etc is incredible

[KGIII]

I believe the implication is that it is not everything, but that it is still something. They aren't saying that money is nothing, just that it is not the only thing.