When we get used to having certain material things in our lives—certain properties, certain possessions, certain paraphernalia—it’s natural to become complacent and believe that we’ll have them in our lives forever.
We lose sight of, or deliberately ignore, the fact that we don’t ultimately have control over whether the things in our lives remain with us or are taken away.
The Stoics warned against this kind of complacency. Their view was that such things are essentially on loan to us from the universe and could be recalled at any time.
This awareness that we will not have them forever allows us to enjoy and appreciate the things in our lives even more while we have them.
The other danger is that if we don’t consciously and regularly appreciate what we work hard to get, we value it less and seek to acquire more because we believe we need more.
Becoming accustomed to accumulating things, however, leaves you constantly wanting more.
The Stoic philosopher Seneca summarized this well in his Letters to Lucilius:
Add statues, paintings, and whatever any art has devised for the satisfaction of luxury; you will only learn from such things to crave still greater.
Seneca, Letters 16.8
This insatiable desire to acquire means you are always at the behest of things outside your control. The universe can, whenever it so pleases, strike a heavy blow by deciding that the loan period on any one of your possessions has expired.
When this is unexpected, and when strong attachments to possessions have been formed, it can hurt.
A more helpful and healthy view of wealth might be to think of it as a favorable relationship between what one has and what one wants.
Rather than seeking to always enlarge the former, we would save ourselves time and tension by reducing the latter. We take less on loan from the universe and it consequently has fewer targets to aim at.
The things we buy beyond what is necessary are, by their very nature, superfluous.
We have protection from the elements and what we need to be healthy, but we exchange our time for money to purchase better furnishings, gadgets, and decorations to realize incremental improvements in luxury only to make ourselves more vulnerable to their loss.
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t possess anything, of course. Only that we should pay more attention to whether we need the things we’re striving to acquire and should cherish them while we have them.
The simple Stoic approach to wealth is to desire less. As Seneca put it:
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
Seneca, Epistles 2.6
To put this difficult-sounding task into perspective, here are seven further short pieces of advice from Seneca.
You might think of it as a Stoic get-rich-quick scheme.
1. To desire less, consider freedom:
He who has need of riches feels fear on their account. But no man enjoys a blessing that brings anxiety. He is always trying to add a little more. While he puzzles over increasing his wealth, he forgets how to use it.
Seneca, Letters 14.18
2. To desire less, consider the negative effects of riches:
Riches puff up the spirit and beget pride. They bring on envy and unsettle the mind to such an extent that a reputation for having money delights us, even when that reputation will do us harm.
Seneca, Letters 87.31
3. To desire less, remember the best things are free:
The things that are indispensable require no elaborate pains for their acquisition; it is only the luxuries that call for labor. Follow nature, and you will need no skilled craftsmen.
Seneca, Letters 90.16
4. To desire less, despise things unneeded:
It is in the power of any man to despise all things, but of no man to possess all things. The shortest way to riches is to despise riches.
Seneca, Letters 62.3
5. To desire less, redefine “rich”:
We talk much about despising money… that mankind may believe true riches to exist in the mind and not in one’s bank account, and that the man who adapts himself to his slender means and makes himself wealthy on a little sum, is the truly rich man.
Seneca, Letters 108.11
6. To desire less, put to use what you already have:
No person has the power to have everything they want but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.
Seneca, Letters 123.3
7. To get rich quick, desire less:
What I will teach you is the ability to become rich as speedily as possible.. I will lead you by a shortcut to the greatest wealth… not wanting something is just as good as having it. The important thing either way is the same – freedom from worry.
Seneca, Letters 119.1–2
