Bryan Johnson, tech millionaire, anti-aging influencer, and founder and CEO of Blueprint, said in a podcast with Nikhil Kamath, that money is a nightmare. He said that money colours everything and all relationships. Prashanth Prakash, Founding Partner of Accel India, founder of BioPeak and Longevity India, argued that money brings in the liberty to do whatever one wants.
In the latest episode of ‘WTF is with Nikhil Kamath’ podcast, Johnson said, “When I made money, I wish somebody would have given me advice like…let me just sit you down and tell you – money is a nightmare. It is, on so many levels. It warps all of your relationships, like every person in your life. It’s like you have three people in your relationship, you, your money and the person, you are in a polyamorous relationship.”
He elaborated this with the example of the relationship between an uncle and a niece. “Your niece has a birthday party and it is customary for a $10 gift. Your niece is like, ‘oh my rich uncle can certainly afford a $500 gift’,” said Johnson, adding that if you give a $10 gift they would argue about what you are doing and why you are not giving them a $500 gift.
“Or you are out with friends for dinner and the cheque comes, and everyone’s eyeballing each other and it’s like ‘why didn’t you grab the cheque, you have the most amount of money?’ So it is like it colours everything. It gets more complicated with stuff like dating,” said Kamath.
Nikhil Kamath asked Bryan Johnson if he could have it another way, with no money and no importance that comes with it, would he prefer it.
“If that were the case, I would rationalise it in my mind and make a case for it. I think in any situation we are all going to make the argument that whatever situation we are in now is the best situation,” said Johnson. He said given a choice of being either a millionaire who gets a lot of attention vs someone who did not make that kind of money, he would “flip a coin”.
Prashanth Prakash said, “But remember, the independence that you have now and your ability to kind of define and redefine and do things your way, would you still be able to do it without money?”
Johnson replied, “I am calling bullshit on myself. If you ask this open-ended, suggestive question of this parallel life without money, we are all going to just make shit up.”