The term fuck you money seems to have originated from actor Humphrey Bogart somewhere around 100 years ago.
He apparently kept a crisp $100 bill in his drawer at all times to remind himself that he didn’t need to accept a shitty acting job.
His fuck you money can be pretty simply explained:
*somewhere in the 1920s*
Shitty director: Hey Humphrey, how abouts you do this here commercial for the war, it pays well.
Humphrey: Hey, no thanks, fuck you.
It’s not about being a baller
Oh to be in simpler times. Nowadays fuck you money (FYM) has been consumed and propagated by those who are incentivised to sell a lifestyle to young men who feel lost.
In this world you often see the term used with stories like ‘wow I know this guy and he’s such a chad he booked out an entire restaurant just because he could’.
When I was younger I remember having dinner (crazy story that’s too long to tell) with an extremely wealthy Chinese guy. The staff had started packing up the tables around us. He informed them that they would be staying another hour, because we were not done.
My 18-year-old self at the time thought this was a baller move, now I think of it as a bit of a dick thing to do. We could have just gone to a bar nearby, but I’m pretty sure that guy wanted to make an impression.
It’s hard to talk about this world without mentioning Andrew Tate, so we might as well touch on him (without his consent of course, as is his mandate).
He is someone who has screamed from the tallest of mountains that he possesses this kind of wealth and that it is the ultimate goal of being a man.
A level of wealth that allows him to own expensive cars and say or do whatever he feels like doing. Which sounds great except what he seems to really like doing is getting charged with crimes.
He might have enough money to say fuck you to some influencers, but the courts will not accept that as a plea.
Know who you are fucking
My dad always said the worst person to negotiate with is someone with nothing to lose, and it’s something I’ve always kept in mind.
The first thing you need to understand is the relationship within the negotiation, who needs who more?
If I’m halfway through painting a client’s house and they start being really painful, where do I stand? Is there outstanding payment owed that would give them the upper hand? Do I have other clients lined up? Have I already bought a shitload of this weird fucking melon colour that this dude wanted in his office?
Here we see FYM play an interesting role. The painter’s version of FYM could be as simple as having a few weeks of savings, enough to say fuck you and your stupid melon walls either stop being an asshole or I’m going to the pub.
All of us have FYM until some limit. Andrew Tate has it until he is up against the law, just as you might have enough to say no to working overtime, but still have to work your 9-5.
How much is enough
The manosphere speaks of FYM as a mythical, ever expanding goal. Like reaching nirvana or becoming enlightened.
The Elven Undying Lands seem real in comparison to how Twitter speaks of ‘making it’.
It is almost a theological conversation if you replace ‘manifest’ and ‘grind’ with ‘pray’ and ‘believe’.
Once someone (me) comes in and bursts the bubble asking for measurements and falsifiable theses the whole thing collapses.
The discussion of how much is enough is uncomfortable because it seeks to define an end point, a tangible figure. Most would rather exist in a world where striving for more is the permanent, never-ending goal.
What is FYM… Like actually
Let’s switch this up real quick, what if we changed it to the fuck-you mindset and completely removed the money part.
Fuck you mindset and fuck you money combine to form a list of things that you’d like to be able to say no to.
It is the full inventory of stuff you really don’t want to do, and being able to not do them.
But it has to stop somewhere. Unlike the unfalsifiable thesis of ‘doing whatever you want’ that is easily sold to children, we must remain in the real world.
Let’s use some examples from my own life.
First, the easy stuff. I am able to not work a job, I’m able to travel pretty much wherever and whenever I’d like, and I’m able to refuse partnerships or work that might come across my hypothetical desk (I currently resemble a prawn on my couch).
Then, the next level. I don’t want to clean my toilets, so I’m able to use money to pay a weekly cleaner. I’m also able to pay a teacher to teach me French privately because I don’t want to do group classes or use more of my time than I would if I had private lessons.
Let’s go one step further. I don’t want to be uncomfortable while I sleep, so I have a fancy bed that heats and cools throughout the night. The same is true for travel, but this is where I begin to hit my wall. Sometimes I’m able to justify upgrading my flight, but other times I would still rather spend that money on other things.
The wall gets harder when we go to other things I don’t want to do. I don’t want to pay my taxes, or my rent, or wear clothes all the time, but these are things that I must submit to.
My leverage is gone, no amount of money allows me to say fuck you to the tax man, because I’m on the wrong side of that negotiation.
Hedonic Adaptation
It is also true that we normalise everything. If you slowly cross everything off your list then you will find your brain will normalise the results.
Flying business class turns into the normal and all of a sudden you find yourself wanting first class.
This is how lifestyle creep plays a role and makes us forget all of the things we should be grateful for not having to do ourselves.
The answer is to reclaim your time and buy yourself out of trivial tasks you don’t want to do, but don’t lose your mind and become a pretentious prick not willing to do anything difficult.
If your mum asks you to help set up her new phone, just bite your tongue and go do it.
Don’t be an asshole
If you say no to everything you don’t want to do then you will turn into an asshole.
As much as I love some of Naval’s work and even used his framework on EP1 of my podcast, this clip makes me want to headbutt a screwdriver.
Naval says he doesn’t reply to emails or calls and his wife is not allowed to schedule him for anything because he might waste his time.
I’m sure that shit goes hard as fuck if you’re a tech founder in San Fran but to me that just sounds like something an absolute wanker would say.
He has adopted FYM without restrictions, and in doing so has become someone who you wouldn’t want to be around.
Sacrifice
I spent several years with something that bordered on addiction, whether it be screens or trading or social media.
At the end of 2021 I actually hired a friend of mine just to check the messages I received overnight and tell me that everything was okay so that I could eat or exercise without getting straight onto screens.
Waking up in a state of paralysis for months on end is sometimes what it takes to try and make money fast, and most of the time it results in you losing it all.
The effects that this kind of commitment to the game has on your personal relationships, your work, your motivation and your ability to participate in the real world are tangible and often painful.
All of your sacrifice goes into the equation. We are defining FYM as a list of things you don’t want to do, and it is a completely legitimate position to take if you are against sacrificing certain things.
Once again we all need to draw our individual lines. Being there for family and loved ones should always be the priority over the pursuit of wealth.
If in the pursuit of being able to say no to things we say no to the wrong things, then the sacrifice is too great. The ends do not always justify the means.
Money can’t buy
I happened across this tweet recently, thanks to the wonderful algorithm that rewards cringey rage-bait.
Although my general policy is to not add fuel to a dumpster fire, I believe it adds an interesting example to the conversation.
This man, asshole, guy, whatever. Allegedly got dumped four days before his app went viral. Having now achieved a high level of wealth, he signs off by saying ‘She had the winning ticket. She just sold too soon.’
Skipping over the obvious misogyny where he implies that his money somehow would make him a more appealing partner, he has also fundamentally misunderstood FYM.
He believes his wealth accumulation and success places him in the category of FYM, but he is incorrect.
Not only can he not purchase or recover his previous relationship, which a long ranting tweet would imply he still cares for, his ex-girlfriend is the one rocking a fuck you mindset.
She understood that her partner was worth $50k and building something, but thought absolutely nothing is worth staying with this sack of potatoes. And hey, I’m cute enough to find another guy who treats me right and doesn’t stare at his nerdy lil tiktok app all night.
She understood her power and place in this negotiation and decided that he was something she wanted to be able to say no to, so that is exactly what she did.
She had the fuck you mindset, he eventually got the FYM.
Conclusion
I am a secular man who likes to rely on facts.
As much as I understand the seduction of messaging like ‘escaping The Matrix’ or ‘doing whatever tf you want’, I don’t understand those concepts.
These are undefined and theological to me.
What I understand is Humphrey Bogart saying no to something he doesn’t want to do.
Our primal impulse is to reject what we do not like. Try feeding a kid a vegetable they don’t want to eat.
But somewhere along the way we grow up and realise we can’t just avoid paying taxes or going to work, then over time we normalise everything. We lose our voice and our power to say: fuck off I don’t want to do that.
To me, having FYM is being able to spit the vegetables out and go take a nap instead.
We should never feel obliged to do things just because they are the norm. Aside from the few things discussed, we should consider everything optional.
Our ability to select from these options is based on our fuck you mindset, and whatever our version of fuck you money is.
To me, money is used to reclaim your time wherever possible, avoid doing trivial things you don’t want to do, and increasing your likelihood of success in whatever domain you wish to improve on.
My version of fuck you money is spending several hours writing this post instead of going to work, and my version of fuck you mindset is not caring if anybody reads it, because it’s exactly how I wanted to spend my time anyway.
