👋 What’s FU Money?

Yes. This is the CityChad, your money and lifestyle sage, showing you how to make budgeting as smooth as silk. Let's start sewing!

In this week’s edition:

• Markets: Bidenomics + BTC $31K+

• Chad of the Week: Alex Hormozi

• Article: 👋 What’s FU Money?

• News: Elon vs. Zuck

MARKET REVIEW

Global stock markets changed little from last week.

What caught our attention was US president Biden’s attempt to start a new catchphrase: “Bidenomics”.

It first came across like that kid at school that wanted to give himself a cool nickname: lame.

But politicians never miss a chance to take credit, and this was his to brag about how the US economy has been basically kicking ass since the pandemic.

To be fair, the US has been outperforming most other markets for a long time (even before Biden, though).

And the economy’s resilience has surprised analysts, with Goldman Sachs having reduced the probability of a recession in a recent forecast.

Unemployment has stayed incredibly low, and they have also avoided a recession.

However, voters are not buying it as he is still rated poorly in his handling of the economy.

Inflation (surprise, surprise) seems to be driving this, despite its recent decline. Well done, America, though.

In the crypto world, we saw Bitcoin reach a year-to-date high close, passing $31,000.

The biggest crypto asset has cooled down since (not usual after such a violent rally), now hovering above $30K.

As we discussed last week, the renewed institutional demand for the crypto asset seems to be driving the pump. Sorry to those who sold at the start of the year.

CHAD DE LA SEMANA: ALEX HORMOZI

Once I heard that there are no rockstars anymore.

Well, I think they just changed form, Alex Hormozi is one of them. An Iranian-American dude of innovation and entrepreneurial brains.

The guy is actually passionate for fitness and it shows, since he made much of his fortune by selling his own company called Gym Launch, helping fellow gym owners make their gyms become crazy profitable by teaching them to manage successful marketing campaigns and keep their clients loyal.

Beginning with this small fortune, he's become a venture capitalist, working through Acquisition.com.

Alex invests cash into businesses he thinks have potential, and then helps them to achieve their full potential.

This is his area of expertise, businesses that are struggling, but still have a solid product, a passionate team, and tons of potential.

In my opinion, what makes him a Chad is not just his keen eye for business, but that he’s a driven man that also believes in giving back to the community, evidenced a few years ago when he said he decided to donate all his fortune to charity after he died.

Quite a bold statement but an extremely noble cause after all.

He’s unapologetic about being himself, the sign of any true Chad.

Find more of him on his YouTube channel, it has a lot of great content for entrepreneurs.

👋 WHAT’S FU MONEY?

TLDR: FU Money is a crass way of defining the level of money you need to be able to tell anyone to get lost. Apart from being a satisfying concept, determining that level can be a useful exercise in prioritising your time and attention. Most importantly, how not to fall into the trap of wanting more when you don’t need to.

• What’s FU Money

• Defining your Level

• The Trap of More

• Chad’s Thoughts

WHAT’S FU MONEY?

According to Financial Samurai, the term F You Money seems to have first been mentioned by Johnny Carson in a Rolling Stones interview in 1979 and then by Burt Reynolds in the 1986 movie, Heat.

FU Money is a crass way of defining the level of money you need to be able to tell anyone to get lost.

No job, no person, no responsibility can make you work for the sake of more money if you don’t want to.

Wouldn’t we all want to be there?

In fact, it’s just another way to talk about Financial Independence.

HOW TO DETERMINE YOUR LEVEL?

Money Blogger Elliott Appel, recommends setting out three levels of FU Money.

These are roughly based on short term, medium term and long term levels.

However, we are only interested in long term goals.

Besides, telling someone FU, is not something that gets quickly forgotten.

There are a number of approaches to this.

As you may recall when we talked about the FIRE movement, the general rule of thumb is to have 4% of your yearly living expenses invested in income producing assets.

For example, a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds.

Looking at historical returns, this should be enough to cover your expenses and protect your capital over the long term.

But if you think about it, that’s a lot of money you need to have saved.

Say you have $1m, at 4% that’s only $40K a year. Hardly living the Chad lifestyle.

We are all for intelligent and frugal living when it makes sense.

Cutting your expenses makes sense, if the marginal cost does not take away the marginal benefit.

In The Four Hour Workweek, Tim Ferris does an excellent job of describing how Geo-Arbitraging (living in cheaper places) and other life hacks, can be a great way to do this.

But $40K a year won’t go that far in most places today, so it is a fine balance of finding your yearly expense number and still maintaining a high quality of life.

So what’s the right number?

Financial Samurai’s poll put the number more at $5,000,000.

That would give you about $175K in risk-free income. Not bad at all. But ultimately it is up to you to determine your number.

Should you try to get there? Keep reading.

AVOIDING THE TRAP OF MORE

Determining your level seems to be the start but not the end of the question.

A lot of successful people run into the issue that they want more once they have the FU Money.

It’s like an endless treadmill.

Sam Parr, from the Podcast “My First Million”, said that most successful people will say: my net worth goal is three times what I have now.

And then say the same thing once they have it.

Not a good outcome if you’re not having fun getting there.

CHAD’S THOUGHTS

Having FU money is nice. Who doesn’t want to be able to be financially independent?

It’s a worthwhile goal.

But there’s something about that term that doesn’t quite sit well with Chad.

That’s the crux of the matter.

Saying FU to life feels like you’re coping out. Like you’re running away from the pressure of having to show up.

Don’t go about it that way.

What a Chad would do is to enjoy the journey. Get to FU Money because it’s fun, not because you need to run away.

If you’re not happy with your life, money will help a lot, but it probably won’t fix how you got there.

Focus on making the change in attitude to enjoy the money making grind every day.

If you don’t like your situation, change it before you have to wait to have FU Money.

Keep reading CityChad to find out how!

NEWS: MUSK VS ZUCK

This (virtual) town ain't big enough for the both of us and I'm going to give you a beating on a cage fight!

What to say about these two tech titans?

They’ve had their disagreements in the past. I remember when they were discussing the possible regulations of AI like it was yesterday. We have come a long way since then, though.

Recently Meta showed some plans for making a Twitter-like platform called P92 that would integrate with their ecosystem, allowing people to connect with their contacts from Instagram and Facebook.

Twitter’s hegemony on the short text format social media would be directly menaced by the new social network.

This beef has more meat.

We can trace it to 2016 when a SpaceX rocket carrying a Facebook satellite failed, resulting in its destruction.

Beside leaving people from sub-saharan Africa without internet service, it planted the seed of this competition.

After that, there haven't been major incidents but small details that stir the fire; for instance, Musk deleted the SpaceX and Tesla official Facebook pages and Zuckerberg, also said that Instagram takes a toll on mental health.

For his part, Zuckerberg has been more discrete and only answering when provoked.

There’s only one way to end this competition, we know it, you know it, they know it. And it is the way conflicts have been settled since the dawn of humanity, with a good ol’ fashioned beating.

They have been teasing each other with the possibility of a cage fight that would take place in Las Vegas, specifically in the Vegas Octagon, by Zuckerberg's suggestion.

Will this actually happen?

I think that is improbable but not completely impossible.

Musk is quite eccentric and possesses an especial sense of humour, while Zuckerberg is into fighting and has been taking Jiu-jitsu lessons for the past 18 months.

If it happens I’d put my money on Zuckerberg, he’s younger, has training, and looks more agile.

In contrast, Musk doesn’t work out and, although he has body mass on his side, I doubt that would be enough to counter real training.

Whatever the outcome, can’t wait to see how this one ends!

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Disclaimer

The material on this email and our website is for informational and entertainment purposes only and we make no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of its content – it is subject to change. Please conduct your own due diligence and research.

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The Chad index (“the index”) is a combination of historical returns for the following assets:

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