What I Talk About When I Talk About Money

The Virtuous Poor and the Morning Bell

For a long time, I treated money like a distant, unpleasant relative. I knew it existed, but I had no desire to speak its language. And I believed that was how an artist like me was supposed to be.

I was completely financially illiterate, and strangely, I was proud of it. I wore my disinterest like a tailored suit. I told myself that ignoring money was a form of virtue—that living without a plan made me more authentic, more artistic. I looked down on stockbrokers and bankers as if they were flightless birds, tethered to the ground by their greed.

But that was a lie. I was a hypocrite.

The truth, which I kept hidden in a small, locked drawer of my mind, was that I liked money. I wanted the things it could buy. My indifference was just a costume I wore to hide my jealousy. If I pretended not to play the game, I couldn’t lose. So, I read credit card statements without reading them. I saw the bold numbers—the interest rates, the promotional offers—but I let the meaning slide off me like water.

Then, the script changed.

We had children. Two of them. They arrived unplanned, shocking the narrative of my life into a new shape. Suddenly, the “virtue” of being poor felt heavy and irresponsible. I thought the solution was simple: I just need to work harder. I need a bigger fee. But a bigger bucket does not help if there is a hole in the bottom. I didn’t know how to patch the hole. I didn’t even know where the bucket was.

That was the reality until February of this year, 2025. That was when the fog finally lifted.

This morning, I took the children to school. The air was filled with the specific, chaotic energy of hundreds of families moving in different directions.

I kissed one of them goodbye. The other one—independent, eager—was already walking away before I could say a word. I stood there, feeling the sudden distance between us. But then, she stopped. She turned around, ran back, and hugged me.

I held her for a moment longer than necessary.

I watched them disappear into the crowd of other little ones, fading like a dissolve in a film edit. And as they vanished, the fear hit me. It wasn’t a panic, but a cold, sober realization of how close I had come to missing the train. If I had delayed this journey another year—if I had stayed inside my box, detached from the reality of the world economy….

The destination is still far away, hidden behind a curve in the road I cannot see yet. I am not even close to where I need to be. But standing there, I felt a quiet, solitary pride. I had finally broken the inertia. I am a different man than I was six months ago—that version of me is already a stranger. And I know, with a strange certainty, that the man I will be six months from now is waiting for me somewhere up ahead, ready to show me things I do not yet understand.

I walked back home. My dog greeted me at the door with her usual frantic excitement, begging to go out. She knew the routine: the children are gone, the house is quiet, and now the time belongs to her.

I wanted another cup of coffee, to sit in the silence and think, but the dog would not allow it. I took a few sips, feeling the heat in my chest.

“Okay,” I told her. “Time to walk.”

For her, it was time to smell the grass and chase the wind. For me, it was time to put on my headphones and check on the world of numbers—to finally learn the language I had ignored for so long.