N0CNSR · Money

Do you want to be rich or just look rich?

Sun, 04 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

You step out of a car you're more afraid of scratching than you are of losing another year of your life. Adjust your watch. Make sure the logo on your clothes is visible. Now you can walk into the restaurant and carefully study the right-hand side of the menu.

Just make sure nobody notices.

Everything you own is expensive. You look like you've got life figured out, free and independent. You've got everything except the right to decide what to do with yourself. Somehow, that still belongs to whoever sends you your paycheck.

I have nothing against expensive things. Like cars? Buy cars. Love watches? Great. I'm not interested in playing some enlightened asshole who's happy with a bowl of rice and inner wealth.

I'm interested in whether you can still afford your purchase after you've made it.

Can you turn down a degrading job? Survive a few months without income? Help someone you love without having to sell all this splendor at half price in a hurry? Or do you now have to put up with even more shit because status got more expensive, and freedom wasn't included in the package?

There are things you own. And there are things that make you get off your ass every morning and go to a job you hate, even though you've wanted to leave for ages.

It's especially funny when you're spending money to impress people you don't even like. Your coworker needs to be fucking blown away. Your ex needs to regret leaving. Your old classmate needs to see who's made it.

He'll look at the photo for three seconds. Then go take a shit.

And you'll keep paying for the next five years.

Incredible trade. Three seconds of someone else's attention for a substantial chunk of your future. I hope he at least hit like.

The problem isn't the loan itself. You can borrow money for different reasons, and treating every bank agreement as a moral failure is stupid. The problem starts when you take on obligations to create an impression your actual life can't make.

You want to look like someone who has options. So you buy something that leaves you with fewer of them.

Then you have to maintain the image. A car like that needs the right clothes. The clothes need the right places. The places need vacation photos from a trip you haven't earned the money for either. The set needs more props, and inside it sits one exhausted motherfucker counting the days until the money arrives, hoping payroll won't be late so he can make the loan payment on time.

Here's a simple, uncomfortable question: if nobody ever finds out about this purchase, do you still want it?

No photo. No key casually dropped on the table. No opportunity to work the price into a conversation. Just you and the thing.

If yes, great. If the desire suddenly deflated, maybe you weren't buying a thing at all. Maybe you were trying to rent other people's respect.

But respect on a monthly payment plan is a shitty arrangement. Miss the next installment, and suddenly it turns out you still don't have an answer when someone asks who you are.

I'm much more impressed by the ability to walk away calmly. From a company. From a bad relationship. From a country that's decided it gets to run your life. The ability to refuse instead of agreeing just because there's a payment due next week.

That ability usually doesn't have a logo. It's hard to show off to a waiter. It might just look like someone in an ordinary T-shirt who's in no hurry to be anywhere.

You have every right to want a beautiful life. But at least check who's getting it: you or the audience.

Because while they see a rich person, you see a bank notification. And somehow, that's what determines how your next month will go.

Don't die before you're dead

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Get rich or die tryin'.

Sounds like another quote under a photo of some guy wearing a watch worth twice your house. But at least there's some will to live in that line. Some intention. Instead of this bullshit of yours: “Well, it's basically fine.”

Fine is the most dangerous fucking thing that can happen to you. Because when things are bad, at least you try to change something. When your ass is on fire, you run.

Once your ass settles into a comfortable chair, that's it. End of the road. You can sit there until they put you in the ground.

There's that worn-out saying: when you were born, you cried and the world smiled. Live so that when you die, you're smiling and the world is crying.

Yeah, fuck it. Today we're a motivational quote club. You'll survive.

There's one thing about that line that interests me. Will you have anything to smile about? Not your neighbors. Not your boss. Not the relatives you've finally managed to convince that you're the head of the family.

You.

Did you actually live? Try the things you wanted to try? Ever stake anything on a decision of your own? Or did you just carefully tick every box someone else put on your life's checklist before you even got here?

A job. A loan. A car on finance, because apparently you're not enough of a success without one. A mortgage.

A family you started because it was time. A kid nobody was ready for. But your parents insisted.

At home, you don't talk anymore. You hand each other invoices. Who's more tired. Who owes whom what. Who fucked everything up again.

And you sit in your car in the garage for an extra fifteen minutes. Because it's the only place where nobody wants anything from you yet. But hey, you've got a proper life, just like everyone else.

Fucking congratulations.

Then the state needs cannon fodder. And it turns out your beautifully planned life can be canceled with a single piece of paper. Yesterday you were choosing a trim package. Today you're lying in a trench, waiting for a drone to hit you in the fucking face in 3, 2, 1...

And somewhere, your car payment and mortgage are still being debited. Meanwhile, your wife is working out how she'll buy a new iPhone with your death payout while your boss fucks her. Yeah, they've been having an affair for over a year, and you had no idea. Your boss arranged that draft notice for you, by the way.

I need money for a very simple reason. I want to be able to say: “No.”

No, I won't work here. No, I won't live here. No, I won't put up with being treated like this. No, you don't get to have my life just because I can't afford next month's bills.

That's what I want to buy. The freedom to walk away. The ability to choose. Time that belongs to me.

So when someone tells me “money can't buy happiness,” I want to ask:

How many fucking times did you hit your head on the tiles?

Try choosing where to live without money. Try leaving a job that's destroying you when you've only got enough in your account to last until Friday. Try helping someone you love when that help costs money you don't have. Then tell me how little money matters.

It doesn't guarantee a happy life. But a lack of it is fucking great at turning your life into a complete shitshow.

And against that backdrop, there are people who sign military contracts and go off to kill for a couple of million rubles. Sell their own lives. Not ten years of work. Not an apartment.

Their entire fucking remaining lives!

For an amount you can spend without even figuring out where it all went. An amount you can earn in a month or two! And for that money, they go and take someone else's life.

You have to be a scumbag to agree to the second part. And a complete fucking moron to think the first part is a good deal.

You wanted to make a living. Somehow, the contract had you agreeing to give up your life instead.

I don't want my life to consist of waiting. For Friday. For a vacation. For a bonus. For the loan to be paid off. For retirement. For the right moment.

Because there's one unpleasant thing about all of that. While you're waiting, your life is already happening. You're spending it. Every day. Every hour.

And I find it completely fucking insane how carefully people count their money and how casually they give away their time.

An hour here. An evening there. Three years at a job you've been meaning to leave forever. Five years living a life you've been meaning to change forever.

But you canceled that extra five-dollar subscription. Well done. Saved some money.

Now some clown is bound to show up and start talking about work-life balance. Buddy, I want to know where your actual life fits into that balance.

You spend all day doing something you hate. Then you spend the whole evening trying to recover. Over the weekend, you recover just enough to do it again on Monday. And this is supposed to go on for another thirty years.

At what exact point in that schedule were you planning to be free?

I don't need a cult of sleep deprivation. I'm not interested in bragging that I spent sixteen hours at my laptop and now my eye won't stop twitching. But I need something to show for the time I've spent.

If I'm working my fucking ass off, I want to know what I'm building. What I'll have to show for it. Whether I'll have more options a year from now. Or whether I just sold another chunk of my life at a higher price, and now I can afford a more expensive cage.

Working for someone else is fine. Learning on someone else's dime is great. Getting paid for your skills is fucking brilliant.

But I don't want my well-being, until the day I die, to depend on whether some boss decides to renew my access to a paycheck.

I want my own business. My own income. The ability to lose one client, one project, one market, and keep living. Because I've got another hundred!

Yes, a business can swallow you whole too. You can start your own company and become its most fucking exhausted employee. That's why what interests me is the freedom I'll actually get out of it.

You can keep the word “entrepreneur.” Along with the business card.

You don't have to become a billionaire. But at least try to find out what you're capable of before you settle for good into a life you can barely stand.

Do the thing you've been putting off for years. Learn what you're missing. Start building a way out if you can't leave yet. And stop calling it stability when you're terrified of every month ahead.

You have some amount of time. You don't know how much. And what scares me personally is the prospect of one day realizing I could have tried all along. Could have taken a risk. Could have lived differently.

Things were just more or less convenient. COMFORTABLE! And I decided not to make a move just yet.

Then I fucking ran out of time.