All money means to me is a pride in accomplishment. — Ayn Rand

All money means to me is a pride in accomplishment.

Author: Ayn Rand

Insight: Most of us are taught to feel guilty about caring what money represents—that wanting financial success makes us shallow or greedy. But there's something worth untangling here. Money, stripped of the shame around it, can actually be a scoreboard for something legitimate: did you do something people valued enough to pay for? Did you solve a problem? Make something they wanted? That's the accomplishment part, and it's real. The tricky bit is that money can also become a scoreboard for things that have nothing to do with actual accomplishment. You can inherit wealth. You can get lucky. You can compromise your values and still get paid. So the pride-in-accomplishment thing only works if you're honest about what you actually accomplished. A big paycheck for work you rushed, or for something that helped no one, doesn't generate real pride—it just generates a bill that needs paying. The people who genuinely feel proud of their financial success aren't usually obsessing over the number itself. They're thinking about the skill they developed, the trust they earned, the problem they cracked. The money is proof that something real happened. That's a healthier way to relate to it than either pretending money doesn't matter or letting it become the whole point.

Source: Philosophy: Who Needs It, p. 40, 1982