What’s the money for?

Confession: I spend a lot of time thinking about money.

It used to be because I felt I didn’t have enough of it, and I still feel that way sometimes — like when I made less than $900/month for three consecutive months not long ago 😰 Freelance life, amiright?

But since I started regularly budgeting in 2018, I feel a sense of control and freedom around money, even when my income is lower than I would like. The methodology behind my favorite budgeting app is “Give every dollar a job.” This approach helped me understand my expenses and goals in a new way. I felt like I was finally telling my money what to do and watching it go to work.

My sense of financial control and freedom increased tenfold when I got married and moved to a low cost of living area in a country with a publicly funded health care system. Suddenly, my expenses plummeted, and my basic needs were fairly easily met. (Not to discount how hard my husband works to earn his income, of course.)

So, when I started working for myself in March 2022, there was virtually no pressure to make a certain income by a certain point in time. 

But when I did start making money from freelancing, I soon had one goal:

More.

I quickly realized that there’s really no ceiling on how much you can earn as a freelancer. I had my first (and only, so far) $10k month just a few months into my freelance journey. Making money while working for myself was thrilling and addictive — it still is. 

But with my basic needs easily met and a few savings goals (vacations, home renos, student loan payoff) established, I keep coming back to this question:

What’s the money for?

For many people, money is for survival. It’s for housing, food, bills and little else. Despite ever-increasing corporate profits, wages have not kept pace. The cost of living continues to soar. 

For the elite, money is for making more money, and no amount is enough. Billionaires are not just hoarding obscene wealth, they are extracting it from the labor of underpaid workers, the exploitation of natural resources, and the manipulation of systems designed to protect their interests. Capitalism’s growth imperative is an exponential cycle that demands endless expansion, no matter the violence and exploitation required.

For the rest of us, we tend to see ourselves as somewhere in between these extremes, but we are, in fact, much closer to the first group. Most of our money is for survival, but we have just enough extra to fall into the trap of aspirational spending and lifestyle inflation — an insidious cycle of earning more and spending more that is so ingrained in our culture, it is almost inescapable. 

I’m desperate to avoid this trap. Sure, I have some modest goals for my freelance business, but I don’t want to pursue growth for its own sake. I don’t want to spend my whole life working. 

I don’t need much. I’m trying to want less. 

So, once your basic needs are met, what’s the money for?

For me, it’s for experiences with my loved ones. It’s for joy, art, expression, and connection. 

It’s for creating, not consuming. 

It’s for community, not accumulation. 

It’s for generosity, not greed.

I just wish our governments and economic systems would catch up.

See you next week,

Kara

Kara Detwiller is a writer based in small-town Saskatchewan. She specializes in long-form content writing for enterprise SaaS, cybersecurity, and manufacturing clients. She is also working on her first novel, among other creative pursuits. To connect, reply to this email or find Kara on LinkedIn or Bluesky. To support her work on Wishful Working, share this email with someone or buy her a “coffee.”

Why Wishful Working? I write this newsletter because I want to see more people enjoy a life not centered around work. For some, the path to freedom and flexibility is through self-employment, but we also need to challenge cultural norms and champion healthier working conditions and work/life balance for all types of workers.