Why I’m Obsessed With Money (But Not for the Reason You Think)
A story about cats, survival mode, and what money actually protects.
The confession
I think I’ve finally come to terms with something.
I’m probably obsessed with money.
And honestly, if this blog exists as multiple posts about money, that’s probably pretty strong evidence for the case.
So I’ll concede the point.
But the reason matters.
I’ve actually tried to escape it.
I read books about designing your life. I read books about psychology and purpose. Sometimes I read pure nonsense just for fun, like wizard detectives with vampire girlfriends.
All of those scratch different parts of my brain.
But somehow I always drift back to the same shelf.
Personal finance.
And not because I want to buy more things.
The strange part is that books about money give me a kind of calm that almost nothing else does. I’m perfectly happy sitting on a beach reading about index funds or savings rates.
Some people relax on vacation with thrillers.
I relax reading about compound interest.
Not because I want a bigger house.
But because there’s something deeply satisfying about knowing you’re using money in the best possible way: protecting your life and protecting your time with the people you love.
Which, now that I say it out loud, is probably more evidence for the case.
Because every once in a while someone says something like:
“You’re kind of obsessed with money.”
And when people say that, they usually mean something very specific.
They picture someone chasing bigger houses, nicer cars, or the next expensive upgrade. The word carries a certain accusation. Greedy. Materialistic. Never satisfied.
That isn’t what I’m doing.
At least… it didn’t feel like it.
It took me a long time to realize that the reason I think about money so much has very little to do with buying things.
It has to do with protection.
The cats
My dad and his wife used to have a cat named Socks.
When my daughters were little, we would FaceTime them and Socks would wander into the screen. My daughters would start meowing at the phone and Socks would stare back like he was trying to figure out what kind of strange animal lived inside the device.
Over time their cats passed away, and they decided not to get new ones. Partly because caring for them was getting harder. Partly because I’m allergic and it made visiting difficult.
Eventually they moved to a smaller house in Arkansas.
About three weeks after they moved in, they noticed a few stray cats wandering through the backyard.
So they did what any cat lovers would do.
They started putting food out.
At first the cats kept their distance. They were feral. Suspicious. But slowly the relationship changed. My dad and his wife would open the door and talk to them while they ate. The cats came a little closer each time.
But every night the cats disappeared back into the woods.
And every morning my dad wondered if they would come back.
They had already noticed that some cats simply didn’t return.
Eventually they realized one of the cats was pregnant.
And that’s when the situation started to feel different.
It’s one thing to feed a few wandering cats. It’s another thing to realize a litter of kittens might soon be born somewhere out in the woods.
They had already seen that some cats didn’t make it back.
Winter was coming.
And the odds for kittens born outside in the wild weren’t great.
So they did what any cat lovers would do.
They bought a small outdoor cat shelter and put it on their covered patio.
Now if you think about it, there were many things they could have given those cats.
More food.
Better food.
Medical care.
More companionship.
But the thing the cats needed most wasn’t more.
It was protection.
Protection from winter.
Protection from predators.
Protection from the fragile reality of living completely exposed.
That little shelter didn’t turn them into house cats. They still roamed the woods. They still hunted. They still lived their wild lives.
But now they had something they didn’t have before:
A safe place to survive the night.
In the wild, that kind of protection can mean the difference between life and disappearance.
Survival mode
What struck me later is that those cats were living in what most of us would recognize as survival mode.
Every day depended on finding food, avoiding predators, and making it through the night.
If you’ve ever lived paycheck to paycheck, you know exactly what that feels like.
That little shelter didn’t make them wealthy.
It didn’t give them luxury.
It gave them a margin of safety.
A place where survival wasn’t hanging by a thread.
In human terms, that’s much closer to what people mean when they talk about financial independence.
Not yachts and luxury lifestyles.
Just enough protection that one bad week, one lost job, or one unexpected crisis doesn’t immediately throw your life into chaos.
The insight
That’s how I’ve come to see money.
Most people think money’s primary purpose is buying things.
And yes, money can do that.
But the thing money does better than anything else is something far more fundamental.
Money protects your life.
More specifically, it protects your time.
If your job disappears tomorrow.
If you get sick.
If someone you love needs you.
If you simply need space to breathe for a while.
Money becomes a kind of shelter for your time.
The same way that little wooden box became a shelter for those cats.
It doesn’t eliminate the wildness of life.
But it protects you from the harshest parts of survival mode.
The reframing
For most of my life I had to unlearn what the world teaches about money.
The world encourages you to use money to upgrade your lifestyle.
Bigger house.
Newer car.
More impressive version of everything.
But once you start to see money as protection, the equation changes.
You stop asking: “What can this money buy?”
And start asking: “What can this money protect?”
Your freedom. Your choices. Your ability to say no. Your ability to spend your time on the things that actually matter.
But here’s what I’ve realized more recently.
The shelter was never the destination.
I’ve spent my whole life doing what I was supposed to do. School. Career. Contributing. Building. Those things weren’t wrong — they gave my life structure and meaning. But they also told me who I was supposed to be. The “have to” was always there, quietly organizing everything.
Now it isn’t.
And that turns out to be a completely different kind of question.
Most people, once they have enough protection, stop thinking about money. Problem solved. Move on.
I haven’t been able to do that. And for a long time I thought something was wrong with me.
But I think what’s actually happening is that money keeps revealing something new about how I want to live. Every time I think I’ve figured it out, I change a little. My priorities shift. What felt like enough last year becomes a different question this year.
Money has become the lens I use to understand what I actually value. What I’m willing to trade my time for. What I’m not. How much of my life I want to design intentionally versus just let happen to me.
Other people use religion for this. Or therapy. Or philosophy.
I use personal finance.
Which probably sounds strange. But the questions money forces you to ask — what do you actually need, what are you afraid of, what does a good life look like — turn out to be some of the most interesting questions a person can sit with.
And the answers keep changing. Because I keep changing.
That’s why I keep reading on the beach.
Not because I haven’t found the shelter.
But because I’m still figuring out what to do with the freedom inside it.
And that feels like a story worth sharing.
Time is your most valuable resource.
Money is just the practice that protects it.
Great read Andy!