The habits that got you here are not always the habits that let you live here.
I have more money than I've ever had in my life, and last month I bought a used toaster off Facebook Marketplace because the new one was $38.
It works fine. The toaster. I'm not complaining about the toaster.
I'm complaining about the man who drove forty minutes to a stranger's garage to save $24 while sitting on enough money to pay his rent for two years.
This is the trap. You spend a decade training yourself not to spend money so you can build something. You get disturbingly good at it. Then the business works and the money comes, and you sit there with a wallet that finally has weight in it, and you cannot, physically, make yourself open it.
The skill that got you here is now the skill that's strangling you. And nobody warns you because everyone is too busy congratulating you for being "smart with money."
From the inside, it looks like this. You're at a restaurant with a woman you like. You look at the menu, and the prices feel like an attack. The salmon is $34. You can afford the salmon. You could afford the entire menu. You order the chicken because it's $19, and you tell yourself the chicken sounded better anyway.
It didn't. You wanted the salmon.
You fly somewhere, and the airline offers you an upgrade for $80, and you say no. Then you sit in the back, knees to your chest for ten hours, and tell yourself you're staying grounded.
You don't visit your parents as often as you should because the flight is $400, and $400 still feels like $400. You make four times what your dad ever made, and you fly home half as often as he flew home when he had nothing.
That last one took me three years to admit out loud.
I grew up in a house with nine kids and one bathroom. My dad worked nights for thirty years. My mom stretched a single chicken across three meals. When she found a coupon for free yogurt, she would talk about it at dinner like she'd hit the lotto. I am not making fun of her. I loved her for it. I still love her for it.
But somewhere in there, I downloaded some software I still can't uninstall. The software says: every dollar you spend is a dollar that could have been a wall against the bad thing coming. The bad thing is always coming. Spending is leaking. Saving is safety. Money is for fear, not for living.
That software was the right software when I was nineteen and broke and trying to start something. It was the right software at twenty-five when I was reinvesting everything into the company. It was the right software at thirty when I was eating ramen, so payroll would clear.
It is not the right software at thirty-eight when I'm trying to actually have a life.
What changed wasn't a system. I didn't read a book about scarcity thinking. I can't stress how much that kind of thing makes me want to throw a fucking brick.
What changed was a woman I dated for about six months in 2023. She came from money. Not crazy money. Just enough that she had never learned to flinch. We were on a trip, and I was doing the math in my head at every meal, and she watched me do it for about three days. Then on the fourth night, she said, very gently, "You know you're allowed to be here, right?"
I had no idea what she meant. She had to explain it twice. The second time, I almost cried in a restaurant in Mexico City because she was right and I had never noticed.
I am not cured. I bought the used toaster a month ago. I still flinch at the $14 sandwich. I still feel weird ordering the salmon.
But I order it more often now. And I noticed last week that I flew home to see my parents twice in three months and didn't think about the price once.
Progress is not a number. Progress is the gap between the flinch and the choice getting wider.
You worked for the money. The money is supposed to work for you. Not sit in an account being admired by a man who still drives across town for a free yogurt.
Spend something on someone you love this week. Not a lot. Just enough that the old software complains.
That's the sound of you finally being allowed to be here.
— Best, Jose
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