why it’s so important to either be rich or highly skilled there are endless benefits to being rich, but the most important one is your ability to transact equally with everyone around you once you are financially free a good framework for life is to transact equally with everyone you interact with. religions refer to this as "treat your neighbour as you want to be treated" and there is a non-obvious truth to this most people think that transacting equally with others is important bc it is the nice thing to do. but there is a more important reason. any time you put yourself above or below another person, your subconscious tells you that you are not good enough i, for example, have an overfocus on money and success, ie my ego and sense of self worth is too attached to success. as such, i sometimes put myself above others who have less but that simultaneously means that i put myself below others who are more successful than me, of which there are many people. it’s better to decouple self worth and success and transact equally when you are not financially free and have a job, you inevitably have an unequal transaction with your boss he is above you, you are below him he tells you how much money you get, when to come to the office and you need to ask him for permission to go on holiday. you are literally below him and that’s not good for your selfworth if you are rich or highly skilled, you can be partners with a company and transact equally, thus, not reducing your self worth one last bull