You're Chasing Money The Wrong Way, Start Doing This Instead...

Disclaimer: This is not a detailed analysis. These are my thoughts, from which I hope you’ll learn something or maybe you could correct me if I’m wrong.

I don’t hate formal education. I learned a lot in my life through the formal system of education. But here’s where I draw the line—MONEY!

People spend their entire lives towards a paycheck. They go to office, work a 9-5, and then every year-end they ask for a 10% raise on their last paycheck. But what they do not realize is that they have been fooled by the concept of money.

Money literally is a ‘promise’. Someone who gives you that paper promises to give you equivalent goods that can be bought using that paper. And it does exactly that. But here’s where most people get it wrong— they chase money, but the value of goods that money buys changes every single day!

Now before we dive too deep, let’s take a step back. Imagine when you were young, your parents used to tell you “get good grades in school, if you want to get to a better place in life”, “get good grades in school, otherwise you will fail in class.” They try to motivate you and scare you so that you work towards getting good grades. While that advice is true, we (or atleast me) never asked them what do we “actually” receive at the end of doing all this hard work. When school got over, we realized that oh, it is helpful to get into college. When college got over, we realized okay — it is for us to get a good job.

But when you finally got that job — something feels off. You started questioning yourself — why am I paying so much in taxes and getting so little in return? Why do I have to work so much, to get so little? Why is the cost of housing so exponentially higher even though I followed all the “rules”?!

“If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun” — Katharine Hepburn

The above quote fits here right.

Now let’s recap what happened: You got good grades, you followed all the rules of society, you followed all the laws of the country i.e. you became a good citizen — and most importantly you became the person society wants you to be.

But here’s the problem: no matter how much package you might have, you never seem to become “rich”! If in the early 2000s, 5 lakhs per annum was considered a good package, then in 2026, 30 lakhs per annum is considered a good package. The problem wasn’t with the money, it was with the concept that you had bought into.

The price of flats and land is still high as before. And in today’s time, you need more money than ever to survive a decent life.

The problem is not that this money isn’t enough. It is totally enough, but the problem is that this money hasn’t kept up with the value of the goods that this money had promised to give you in return.

Now let’s get to the heart of the topic.

You go to work, you work hard all year, and then you go to your boss and ask them for a 15% raise. Guess what he/ she says “Sorry, business is down, we can only give you a 10% raise.” You get a raise of 10% thinking, atleast it matches inflation which is 5%, and move on.

What you don’t realize is that you can keep on earning “money”, but its the government that controls your money’s value.

Meaning, in 2026 if you earned 20 lakhs per annum. In 2027, the government decided to print more money, and guess what — the same 20 lakh of yours now fetches 10 lakhs worth of goods.

Who is crushed here? The person who followed all the rules.

If the government printed money at a 20% rate, your employer’s 10% raise or the stock markets 15% year-on-year rise will NOT make a difference.

A 20% YoY money supply in the market means that your current money will get reduced to half in 3 years. It means to have the same amount of money, you need to get atleast a 20% growth in your money.

If you study economics, to learn the same things, they will explain you too many complex definitions to tell you how that is not exactly how money printing works or rate of money supply works. But what they do not do, is to explain things simply.

So you earn money aka “promises”, while the government decides what its actually worth!

What a fair game right?!

But chasing money was always a false metric.

You keep wanting to earn money, and in return employers want to exploit you for more work, businesses want to charge you higher prices for their goods, and so on and so forth.

While at the same time, its the governments (more so the US Federal Reserve and then your country’s central bank), that decides how much money to print, and how much that money is actually worth.

“The rules were wrong.” — Shreyas Taware

The real things to chase are resources. So what are resources in today’s time:

1. Attention
   Go to YouTube, Go to Instagram, or here on SubStack - create something! Humans were meant to create. You were not meant to work a 9-5, and live paycheck to paycheck. Getting a job was always a false “rule” of society. You don’t create anything new with a job, all the while employers fool the average worker with “come up with something” or “we hear your ideas”— no they don’t. And even if they do, the company takes the credit of your ideas.

2. Fellow Humans
   If you can make other people work for you, that is a resource more valuable than money. If you can get support from people (example - as politicians do), you have more likelihood to “make it” in life. Think of it as in olden times, people who lived in groups had more likelihood to survive than hermits. After all, humans are social animals. And you are more likely to survive when you are in a tribe.

3. Assets
   A mechanism or a method that earns money on a recurring basis while you may or may not do the work.
   Example: a business, land ownership, cryptocurrency, or stocks

4. Your Time
   This is the biggest one. Companies want your time, so that they can exploit and extract more value out of you. But time is going to pass anyway, so instead of using time to receive something so uncontrallable as “money”, why not use that same time to build an asset which receives resources that you can exchange for money.

5. Your Energy

   It is the work you do aka your energy that is the most valuable resource. If all the employees in the world quit today, corporations wouldn’t function. But does that mean employees would die of hunger — no, there is enough food for everyone to live on earth. 40% of food that is produced goes to waste. So again, companies need you. But ironically, it is the job seekers that are the most desperate people on earth.

“The real value is not in the money we earn, but in the work we do.”
— Jiang Xueqin

So, how do you escape this matrix?

1. Think

Think about what the media tells you, and try to read between the lines.

Think about what corporations or politicians tell you, and what they actually do.

Think critically, I’ve created Hermi for exactly that.

2. Create Assets

Find your Ikigai.

Don’t let your talents go to waste.

“It takes the same amount of energy to do a job, so you might as well put it in something you love doing.”

Buy my ebook “15+ Ways to Make Money Online”, it has specific tools which will help you make a living online in 2026, and I promise you won’t find those exact tools using AI.

And that is it for this blog. If you liked my blog, please let me know in the comments.

Hi, my name is Shreyas Taware. I quit my 9-5 in May 2025 to pursue my entrepreneurial dream. I am the Founder of Hermi — a mobile app that helps you think critically, and plan situations in advance. I am also the Co-Founder of “All Things AI” — an agency that builds websites, mobile apps, and automations for businesses. I love blogging and write across Medium, Dev, and HashNode as well. Please subscribe if you like my content and I will see you in my next blog!