PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

The best things in life are free

But you can give 'em to the birds and bees

I need money

That's what I want!

Your lovin’ gives me such a thrill

But your lovin' don't pay my bills

I need money

That's what I want!—The Beatles

Money, Money, Money Money, Money!  

Money, come to me!

My Grandmother is 82 years old.  She’s fit, active, and a hellraiser if there ever was one.  She’s also very loving and quite good with money, so I asked her what she thought about money and the role it plays in life.  Here’s what she said: 

1.  Money is like Lysol; it kills 99% of problems.  

2.  Anyone who tells you money doesn’t buy happiness is lying.  

3.  A woman’s best protection is a little money of her own. No, she said, make that a lot of money of her own.

4.  All my life I've noticed that rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have big TVs and no libraries.  

5.  The same goes for houses and cars.  Rich people have small cars and big houses.  Poor people have big cars and small houses.🤔

Then she showed me a scrapbook, or vision board, that she’s been putting together for over 50 years.  "I look at this every single day of my life," she said.  I was stunned because she'd attained most of the things in her scrapbook/vision board.  

I’ve taken the parts of her collection that resonated with me, added some of my own, pulled together some pictures, and used them here to make my own personal digital vision board, because, let’s face it, without money—we’re fucked.   And I've taken the same pledge Grand did.  I promise to look at this every single day, no matter what else I'm doing.

I've also included stories from some interesting people with money and their take on it to encourage me when the going gets tough.  Because life is nothing if not sun and storms.

 Money, come to me

Let me feel your arms around me

This was meant to be

And, I’m oh so glad I found you

Need you every day

Gotta have your presence around me

Money, always stay

‘Cause I can’t go back to livin’ without you

If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die. —Warren Buffett

 

“Money grows on the tree of persistence.” — Japanese Proverb

Translation:  Never Give Up

 

$ Mo Money, Mo Money, Mo Money, Mo Money, Mo Money,  Mo Money, Mo Money, Mo Money $

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I want money, a LOT of it

 Money:  It's good  for what ails you.—me

                  Excuse me.  Someone's knocking at my door.

"Prayerize it.  Visualize it.  Actualize it."

“I take my financial life to heart, for money, when handled wisely, is a shield against many of life’s storms.”

Not a dream — My reality.

6.  Your Mission, should you choose to accept it:  Make as much Money as you can and live your life as you damn well please!—my Grandmother

 

 

I want enough money to buy my freedom.  I want to have just enough to say Fuck You to people and things I don’t believe in or like.—me

 

  In the 1920s and 30s, Humphrey Bogart famously kept a $100 bill in his dresser drawer at all times.  (Back then, that was a nice chunk of change that you could live on for about two months.)  He explicitly referred to it as his "fuck-you money".   According to Bogie, the entire purpose of building wealth was so that you could “tell any son-of-a-bitch in the world to go to hell.”  It gave him the leverage to never be forced by a studio to take a terrible acting role.   Hats off to Bogie.  Because I feel the same way.     

'Fuck you money’ is the exact amount of money required to comfortably say no to any request or job without suffering financial consequences.

7.  Fuck you money is the best kind.  Keep a lot of it.—my Grandmother

 

I love money.  I love everything about it.   I bought some pretty good stuff.   Got me a $300 pair of socks.   Got a fur sink.   An electric dog polisher.   A gasoline-powered turtleneck sweater.   And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.—Steve Martin.  Translation:  Don’t be stupid!

Poverty can't buy a mothafuckin thing—me

 Health, Wealth and My Loved Ones

That's all I need.—me

Believe you can, and you’re halfway there. —Theodore Roosevelt

The best thing money can buy is financial freedom

I'm Naming it and Claiming it.

Thanks, but I've got this.—me

I don't know if money buys happiness or not,  but it damn sure buys almost everything else.—me

Life Stories on Money:

Dollar Bill Y'all!

 

 

Despite being one of the wealthiest and most successful stars in early Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin

was notoriously cheap and terrified of losing his fortune.  Chaplin's view of money was so warped by his impoverished childhood in late 1800s London that he never quite believed his wealth was real. 

 

His peers noted that he rarely carried cash.  When he did, he folded bills into tiny, microscopic squares and hid them in the lining of his coat.  If he absolutely had to pay for something, it would take him several minutes of agonizingly picking apart his own clothes to retrieve a single dollar.

And he had good reason to hold on to his cash.  Chaplin’s childhood in Victorian South London was defined by severe destitution, abandonment, and systemic cruelty, directly forging his lifelong obsession with hoarding wealth.

 

His family disintegrated when Charlie was only three.  His father abandoned them, refused to pay child support, and spiraled into severe alcoholism, dying of liver failure at age 38.  Left entirely alone, his mother took in sewing and dressmaking to survive, but the stress shattered her mental health.  

She was repeatedly committed to insane asylums, leaving Charlie and his older brother, Sydney, to fend for themselves on the streets. By the age of seven, Charlie, his brother, and his mother were forced to surrender themselves to a grim workhouse after they had no food left, where they encountered mind-blowing cruelty.

 

When they weren't in the workhouses, Charlie and Sydney lived in a succession of freezing, squalid, single-room rented flats across South London with no running water, where they basically starved.  Charlie survived by running up and down the streets to steal food.

 

Performance wasn't an artistic calling for Chaplin at first—it was a literal survival strategy.  He first stepped onto a stage at age five.  His mother was performing at a rowdy saloon when her voice cracked and failed entirely.  Sensing a riot, the stage manager pushed five-year-old Charlie into the spotlight.  He sang a popular song, and the crowd loved him so much they threw pennies onto the stage—which Charlie stopped singing to pick up, a precursor to his lifelong fixation on cash.

 

By age nine, looking for any way out of the workhouse, he and Sydney used their natural showmanship to join a dancing troupe.  This gave him a steady stream of work and finally took him away from the mean streets of London.  But he'd been so scared by poverty and destitution that the trauma never left him, and he held on tightly to his money his whole life long.

 

 

 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Viola Davis’s relationship with money is deeply serious, grounded, and intensely realistic.  Today, she is an elite EGOT winner with a multimillion-dollar net worth.  However, her view of wealth is shaped by what she calls "abject poverty" in her childhood.   She has a uniquely raw and profound perspective on what money can—and cannot—do.

 

Davis grew up in Central Falls, Rhode Island, in condemned, rat-infested apartments where her family routinely lacked heat, running water, and food.  She has openly shared that she was so hungry that she rummaged through garbage cans infested with maggots and stole from corner stores just to have something to eat.  Because of this, Davis treats money not as a score to keep, but as a defense mechanism.

 

Davis admits she never feels fully safe being relaxed about money.  In her mind, financial abundance could always be temporary.  She refuses to buy luxury cars and skips regular luxury treatments like manicures because growing up in crowded, impoverished spaces led her to reject frivolous spending habits.  She lives as my grandmother observed:  Rich people have small TVs and small cars.

 

Davis and her sister, Dr. Deloris Grant, both benefited from the federally funded Upward Bound College Access program as teenagers.  The program helped them escape the limits of extreme childhood poverty.

 

To ensure the next generation has the same exposure to the world, they established the Upward Bound Scholarship.  They regularly and quietly give back to the students in their hometown.  

Davis pays for student travel and out-of-town field trips, ensuring that low-income kids have the financial backing to leave their immediate neighborhoods, explore new cities, and see theater productions.

 

Her sister has said that of all the concerns they could have about the safety of the kids on these field trips, Viola’s primary concern is always, ‘Are you sure they have enough to eat?’  

Hunger left an indelible scar on Davis' life.  It's wretched, and it goes hand in hand with poverty.  

I want money, honey!

The safest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it in your pocket.

  

 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

Keanu Reeves is another example of what my grandmother observed: Rich people have small cars.  He views money as a tool for freedom and generosity rather than status, famously stating that he has made enough to live comfortably for the next few centuries.

He's known in Hollywood for his acts of kindness towards those less fortunate than himself.  Despite a career spanning over four decades and billions earned at the box office, his relationship with wealth is legendary for its complete detachment from Hollywood greed.  He lives a remarkably modest lifestyle and gives astronomical sums to charities, crew members, and total strangers.

He also discreetly manages a private, unpublicized foundation that he funnels millions of dollars into, which supports children's hospitals and cancer research, inspired in part by his sister Kim's battle with leukemia.

Early in his career, he found out a set builder on the movie Chain Reaction was having massive financial trouble.  Keanu personally gave him a $20,000 Christmas bonus on the spot.

 

Matrix Resurrections: When the franchise returned for a fourth film, Keanu learned that some of his longtime friends and crew members couldn't afford to attend the premiere.  He paid for all their flights, hotel stays, and premiere tickets out of his own pocket.

He is the soul of generosity.  Money begets money.  You gotta love this guy.

 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Michael Jordan didn't grow up poor or hungry.  But he certainly had nothing even remotely close to what he has today.  He's the wealthiest athlete in history with a net worth of over $3 billion, but his massive financial empire exists because he listened to his mother’s brilliant advice.  In 1984, a young Michael Jordan was completely obsessed with Adidas.  He had absolutely zero interest in signing with Nike,

a company then known mostly for track-and-field shoes, not basketball.  In fact, Jordan didn't even want to fly to Nike's headquarters in Oregon to meet with them.  That’s when his mother, Deloris Jordan, folded her arms, put her foot down, and gave him 'The Look' that Black kids all over America know the meaning of.  

 

She looked at her stubborn twenty-one-year-old son and delivered a strict ultimatum: "You are going to go listen.  You may not like it, but you are going to go listen." She made him get on the plane.  During the meeting, Nike executives laid out a revolutionary plan to create an entire brand around him called "Air Jordan." 

Jordan was still hesitant, preferring the cash guarantees Adidas might offer.  Deloris, acting as his ultimate advisor, told Nike they could have her son under one strict, unprecedented condition: Michael had to get a percentage of every single Air Jordan shoe ever sold.

Nike expected the Air Jordan line to make maybe $3 million in its first four years.  

Instead, it made $126 million in the first year alone.  

Because of his mother's foresight, Jordan's relationship with money shifted from chasing a fixed salary to building a long-term equity empire.  

Decades after retiring from basketball, the Jordan Brand brings in over $6 BILLION in annual revenue for Nike, netting Jordan hundreds of millions of dollars in passive royalty checks every single year without him having to lift a finger.

Jordan has plenty of Fuck You Money:  His agent, David Falk, revealed that Jordan once turned down a $100 million deal for a two-day appearance at a golf tournament simply because he didn't feel like doing it and didn't want to dilute his brand.  

For Jordan, money reflected his ultimate competitive drive—if a business deal didn't match his elite standards, no amount of cash could buy his time.  

(Somehow, though, I think I'd have taken the $100 Mill.  For TWO DAYS' work?  Come on!🫨)

 I think the moral of this story is:  When Yo Mama speaks, LISTEN!!!!!

LOL!

But seriously, though, it's what Warren Buffett meant when he said: "If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die." 🤔

Money, Money, Money Money Money!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Fuck You Money:  "I don’t want money for the sake of money.  I want it for the independence it gives me.  I want to be able to say to the world, 'Go to hell. —Clarence Kelland 

Me too.  Me too.

 Fuck You Money:   "The purpose of wealth is freedom; it’s not to buy fur coats, or drive Ferraris, or sail yachts... It’s so you can be your own boss, and do what you want, when you want, with whom you want."—Naval Ravikant   👏👏👏

 

I❤️this: "When I was young, I thought money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know it is."—Oscar Wilde

 

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.—Woody Allen🤭

And I want as much of it as I can get for as long as I live.  I want BANK, baby!—me

Money, Money, Money Money Money!

“People will lie, rob, they will cheat

People don't care who they hurt or beat

For a small piece of paper, it carries a lot of weight

For that mean, mean, mean, mean Green”—The O'Jays

For Jade Love,  By Jade Love,  and Of Jade Love/  MONEY!  2026