The Money Shift

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Money.

Not how to make it. We have covered that. Not how to invest it. Plenty of people smarter than me can teach you the specifics of index funds and real estate allocation and all the rest of it.

I want to talk about how money changes you. And more importantly, how to make sure it changes you for the better instead of worse.

Because here is the truth that nobody with a rented Lamborghini and a YouTube channel wants to tell you: money does not change people. It amplifies them. A generous man with more money becomes magnificently generous. An insecure man with more money becomes spectacularly insufferable. A disciplined man with more money builds things that outlast him. A reckless man with more money just creates bigger, more expensive messes.

If you do not get intentional about your relationship with money before the big checks start rolling in, you will end up as a cautionary tale instead of a success story.

The Money Trap Nobody Warns You About

When most men start making real money, whether that is cracking six figures, hitting multiple six figures, or crossing into seven, they step onto what I call the Upgrade Treadmill.

They make more, so they spend more. New car, because the old one suddenly feels embarrassing. Bigger house, because the neighbors are doing it and your partner mentioned it twice. Nicer restaurants, because you can afford them now. Better vacations, because you earned it. Upgraded everything, because that is what successful people are supposed to do, right?

And suddenly the man making $250K per year is living paycheck to paycheck, just with fancier problems. The stress is the same. The anxiety is the same. The 3 AM wake-ups wondering about money are exactly the same. The only thing that changed is the thread count on the sheets he is losing sleep in.

I watched this happen in real time to a close friend. He went from $80K to $300K in three years. Incredible achievement. The kind of income jump most people dream about. But by year two of the new income, he was more stressed about money than he had ever been.

New mortgage on a house he barely had time to enjoy. Two car payments. Private school tuition. A country club membership he used maybe four times per year. Monthly expenses that had expanded to consume almost every dollar that came in.

He had tripled his income and eliminated his freedom. He was making more money and enjoying life less, which is the cruelest irony of the Upgrade Treadmill.

That is the trap. More money does not automatically equal more freedom. It only translates to more freedom if you are disciplined enough to let the gap between your income and your lifestyle grow wider instead of keeping it the same width or, even worse, letting it shrink.

The Wealth Mindset Shift

There is a fundamental difference between being rich and being wealthy. Rich is an income number. Wealthy is a position. And the difference between the two comes down to what you keep and deploy, not what you earn.

I know men who make $500K a year with a negative net worth. Everything they earn flows right back out, funding a lifestyle that looks impressive from the outside but is a house of cards on the inside. One bad quarter, one health emergency, one market correction, and the whole thing collapses.

I also know men who make $120K a year and are genuine millionaires. They own appreciating assets. They have investments generating income while they sleep. They could stop working tomorrow and maintain their lifestyle for years without panic.

The difference is not math. It is philosophy. It is how they think about every dollar that comes through the door.

Wealthy men think in terms of assets, not purchases. Every dollar has a job description: invest, protect, or deploy. If a dollar cannot do one of those three things productively, it sits on the bench until it can.

This does not mean living like a monk. I enjoy good scotch, quality clothing, and experiences that make life worth living. But those expenses come from a position of strength, not desperation. They are conscious choices, not unconscious habits.

The 30/30/30/10 Framework

Here is the framework I use for income above my baseline living expenses.

30% goes to investments. Index funds, real estate, whatever your strategy is. This is the money that works while you sleep.

30% goes to business reinvestment. Tools, education, systems, team members. This is the engine.

30% goes to your lifestyle fund. This is where the nice things come from. But only from this bucket, never from the other two.

10% goes to generosity. Charity, tipping well, helping someone who needs it. This is the part that keeps your soul intact as the numbers get bigger.

The specific percentages are flexible. The principle is not. Separate the money before you spend it and never raid one bucket to fund another.

Money and Identity

When you start earning significantly more than the people around you, your identity gets challenged in ways you did not expect.

Some people in your circle celebrate your success with genuine warmth. Others resent it, sometimes in subtle passive-aggressive ways that are even harder to deal with than outright hostility. And some just quietly pull away because they do not know how to relate to you anymore.

This is not anybody’s fault. It is the natural friction that happens when someone in a group breaks away from the pack and starts operating at a different altitude.

How you handle this friction determines the kind of wealthy man you become.

Option one: you shrink. You downplay your success, drive the same car, never mention what you are building. You make yourself smaller so others feel comfortable.

Option two: you broadcast. Every conversation revolves around your business, your numbers, your new acquisitions. You lose yourself in the identity of being the successful guy and do not notice until much later that nobody actually wants to be around that person.

Option three: you own it quietly. You do not hide what you have built, but you do not lead with it either. You let your presence speak instead of your possessions. You stay connected to people who matter because they feed your soul, not because they need your money.

Option three is the Savage Gentleman way. Wealth as a tool, not a trophy. Means to an end, not the end itself.

The Money Conversations You Need to Have

If you are married or in a serious relationship, money is either the foundation of your partnership or the fault line running through the center of it.

Most couples fight about money. But they are almost never actually fighting about money. They are fighting about values, priorities, fears, and the future they each imagined but never discussed out loud.

If you want to stop the money arguments, have the values conversation instead. Sit down together and answer these questions honestly:

What does financial success look like for our family in five years? Not a number. A picture. What does daily life look like?

What are we willing to sacrifice now for what we want later? This is where real alignment either happens or does not.

What is our “enough” number? The income level where we stop chasing and start optimizing for quality of life.

Where do we disagree, and how do we navigate that without one person winning and the other losing?

These conversations are uncomfortable. But they are significantly less uncomfortable than the alternative, which is years of simmering resentment that eventually boils over in ways that cannot be taken back.

Building Wealth Without Burning Down Your Life

Something bothers me about the “grind culture” narrative. This idea that building wealth requires sacrificing everything else: your health, your relationships, your mental peace, your presence as a father, all in service of some future payoff that may or may not arrive.

That is not building wealth. That is building a prison with a nice view.

Real wealth is financial freedom combined with time freedom combined with relationship health combined with physical vitality. You cannot optimize for one and neglect the others. They are all connected. Pull one thread and the whole thing unravels.

The man who makes seven figures but has not been to his kid’s game in three months is not wealthy. He is just funding his future regret.

The man who is present for dinner every night, takes care of his body, nurtures his most important relationships, and builds income streams that do not demand his constant attention? That man is wealthy regardless of what his bank account says. And eventually, because his foundation is solid, the bank account catches up anyway.

The Automation Advantage

One of the biggest shifts in my own wealth journey was automating the work that used to eat my time. When you are spending hours on repetitive tasks like data entry, follow-ups, social media scheduling, invoicing, and administrative busywork, you are trading dollars for hours. And that trade only works until you run out of hours, which happens faster than you think.

Make.com is the backbone of my automation stack. It connects tools, automates workflows, and handles the repetitive operations so I can focus on high-value work. If you are doing anything manually that a machine could handle, you are leaving money and time on the table every single day.

For managing your professional network, which is one of the most underrated wealth-building tools in existence, Clay (https://clay.earth/?via=dan-kaufman) is outstanding. It helps you stay on top of relationships without letting anyone fall through the cracks. The next big opportunity in your life will almost certainly come through a person you know, not an algorithm.

And for understanding where your time actually goes each day, because that is the first step to reclaiming it, Rize gives you brutally honest productivity data. You cannot optimize what you cannot see.

The Generosity Principle

I saved this for last because it is the most important and the most counterintuitive thing I will say today.

Generous men build more wealth than selfish ones. Not as some cosmic reward from the universe. As a practical, observable, repeatable reality.

When you are known as someone who gives freely, whether that is your time, your knowledge, your connections, or your money, people want to be in your orbit. They bring you opportunities. They refer you business. They vouch for you in rooms you have never stepped foot in. They think of you first when something valuable comes across their desk.

Selfishness shrinks your world. Generosity expands it. And the size of your world is directly correlated to the size of your opportunities.

This does not mean being a pushover or saying yes to everything. It means operating from abundance instead of scarcity. Trusting that there is more than enough and that the fastest, most reliable way to get more is to give more first.

The wealthiest men I personally know are all absurdly generous. That is not a coincidence. It is a strategy that compounds over decades.

Want to build a complete system for creating real, sustainable wealth without sacrificing your health, relationships, or sanity? Reply with the keyword WEALTH to learn about our 8-Week Mastery System, the comprehensive program for men who are done leaving their potential on the table.

Your Weekend Assignment

This weekend, two things.

First, run the numbers. Honestly. What is coming in each month, what is going out, and what is the gap between them? If you do not know your numbers with precision, you cannot manage them. And if you cannot manage them, they will manage you.

Second, if you are in a relationship, have the values conversation. Not about bills. About the future. About what you are building together. Use the questions above as your starting point. Do it over coffee on Saturday morning when you are both rested and clear-headed.

These are not comfortable exercises. But comfort has never built anything worth having.

Until Sunday.

Stay sharp. Stay generous. Stay dangerous.

Marcus Cole

The Savage Gentleman

Money and Self-Worth: The Hidden Connection

There is one more thing I need to address before we wrap this up, because it is the elephant in the room that most financial advice completely ignores.

A lot of men tie their self-worth directly to their net worth. When the business is thriving and the account is growing, they feel like they matter. When things dip, when a deal falls through, when a quarter underperforms, they do not just feel financially stressed. They feel worthless as human beings.

This is dangerous territory. And it is more common than most men will ever admit, because admitting it feels like weakness.

Here is what I want you to understand: your value as a man, as a partner, as a father, as a human being on this planet, has absolutely nothing to do with the number in your bank account. Nothing. Your character, your integrity, your presence, your willingness to show up for the people who depend on you, those are the things that actually define your worth.

Money is a tool. A powerful, useful, important tool. But it is a tool. It is not your identity. The moment you let your bank balance determine how you feel about yourself, you have given your power away to something completely outside your control.

Build wealth aggressively. Pursue financial freedom with everything you have. But build it on a foundation of knowing who you are regardless of what the numbers say on any given Tuesday.

That is real strength. And that is what separates a wealthy man from a man who simply has money.

See you on Sunday!

Marcus

Refined. Relentless. Unapologetic.

Build empires. Command respect. Leave legacies.