Post #14: The Utility of Money (And What It Means to Me)

I write about having "enough" money to take more time off of poker, do some traveling if I'd like, and the way I see money now vs. how I'd like to be.

One of the first purchases I ever wanted to make when I would “have enough money” was a brand of shoe that caught my eye immediately. Nike “Foamposites” were one of the most hyped shoes a few years back, and I always wanted to own a pair. I wanted to follow the hype to an extent, and be one of the “cool kids.” There was an unspoken status for those who have a pair to those who knew what they were. The status symbol was something I additionally wanted to purchase for myself, without the help of my parents (which they wouldn’t have helped with regardless, $300+ for shoes is ridiculous for a broke college student in its own right).

I’m not a part of the shoe culture of “sneaker-heads” by any means, but I consistently imagined walking into the gym at FSU where I’d play basketball every day for hours on end during my first summer semester; wearing “foams” for style points and switching out of them for my “wear and tear” basketball shoes. It was something I had wanted to accomplish on the forefront of my mind at the time. The style of the pair I wanted to buy was a more expensive pair than the average, which appeared in a chrome outer color and light blue out-sole. “Chromeposites,” were something that I knew I was eventually going to buy for myself when I had the means to (link here).

This goal was one of the many that helped propel my initial desire to pursue poker professionally and make enough money to buy them. If I remember correctly, they were the first personal benchmark of what “success” meant to me at the time. With my despise for strict scheduling and being on someone else’s clock, I decided from around that moment to start grinding more cash games and improve in the poker streets.

Fast forward to today, June 27, 2020. It’s been roughly 18 months from the start of “playing professionally,” where I’ve made more money than I ever thought I could in this short amount of time (aside from profit splits and staking deals), with enough in the bank to comfortably buy multiple pairs over, yet I still haven’t bought them. Be it that I don’t have that incessant “need” to check off that benchmark of success, but I think it stems more from the fear of possibly going broke again. If I bought something that was worth a good amount of money, would I be addicted to spending on mundane items and go into a manic spree which ends at becoming broke again?

The previous experience I had prior to professional poker being broke and in debt roughly two years ago points that question towards a deciding, “no,” but that fear persists. I still think somewhere in the darkest depths of my mind that if I forget about the rough times I had I’ll repeat history and revert to that state. There might even be a mental construction that I enjoyed being in that stage of grinding it up from nothing and returning to it, if I even gave myself the slightest chance. I don’t think that’s the case because I love progressing in my journey rather than regressing to the past, but it’s something to reflect on regardless.

The reality of the situation is that I’ll never be the same broke college kid again. I have a skill-set now that’s worth something. Rather than the idea of being good enough to be a “pro,” but actually being one. An example of this is that I thought I wanted to do a good amount of coaching work last month in May, where I was charging $50/hr, and received more work and potential clients than I could ever imagine in such a short amount of time. Realizing I undersold what my time and knowledge was worth, I’ll always have something to “fall back on,” if I ever put myself into a situation if I was broke again. I ask myself two questions all of the time, to consistently reflect on the way my life is moving, “If I was broke right now, what steps would I take to make money? If I had all the money in the world, what would I do with my time?” These two questions keep me grounded, and for the sake of this post, the former is the one worth addressing.

When I was in college, I couldn’t answer that question with certainty of how I’d be able to grind back to where I am now, but the answer is much more clear to me at this stage in my career. I’d simply do as much coaching work as possible at the inflection point of maximum hours and price for my time, and talk to my amazing network of friends in the poker community to get a backing deal. Then I’d grind the stakes (live or online, it wouldn’t matter) where I proved myself to be a long-term winner until I had enough liquidity to go on my own and veer back on the path to pursuing my goal of being a HSNL poker player. If I also wanted to, I could stream on Twitch and build a network and following in that community, and be able to make a couple extra dollars on the side as well from those who would support the content I put out on a regular basis.

As much as I’d like to think that I “only view money as a tool for the things I want to achieve (travel, food, etc.),” I definitely still hold on to the view of, “Now that I have some money I don’t want to lose it and return to the lifestyle I hated.” After a conversation with a great friend of mine in the poker community who’s been around for a much longer time than I have, we’ve talked about the idea of “Life EV.” He came up with this term that defines the ability to live a lifestyle to the fullest while having the means to do so. I’m more than within my means to be able to travel more than I am (post-Corona), and buy things that I’d enjoy for my own personal benchmarks and penchants; however I’m still holding on to the fear that I’ll be irresponsible and dust off my “life bankroll” through excessive purchases and travels. I haven’t shed the idea that I’ll never be as broke as I was again, due to the factor of my learned skill set and network of those who believe in me. He told me that he felt the same way I did when he started achieving the mid-tier level of success, and sheer time was a major factor that helped him get over that internal fear. Maintaining a conscious perspective of, “The money spent will give me a potentially unimaginably amazing experience in Life EV that I’m able to be grateful enough to have,” has led him to get over the mental block of the what money meant to him. After our conversation, I definitely had a brighter perspective of my near future and trying to gain more Life EV than I currently have.

I don’t hold on to that need of buying the Chromeposites anymore. It’s something that I can do for the former version of myself that wanted to internally prove that he would succeed in the road less traveled. Maybe I’ll even frame them as a memoir to the kid who grinded micro-stakes for countless hours in his dorm room, without a back-up plan, who thought that at some point he’ll make it to where he wanted to. It sounds well and good, but it doesn’t sound anywhere near as nice as taking a trip to FSU again, Chromposites on my feet, talking to friends about how bad I wanted to do this. Althought I’m nowhere close to my end goal in poker, and I don’t think I have one at the moment, it’s one of the things I can do for the former version of myself to gain that Life EV of fulfilling a goal I always wanted to achieve. I’ll make this happen soon, for sure.

Onward and Upwards.