7 Essential Money Lessons from ‘The Wealthy Gardener’

Key pieces of wisdom from father to son.

The Wealthy Gardener is a soulful series of short life stories and lessons by John Soforic, written as a go-to guide on wealth for his ambitious son.

It’s one of the most impactful books I’ve read this year, and I keep returning to it for evergreen wisdom.

Here are the 7 top lessons I learned from this book.

Life Has Seasons

I see a lot of my friends — people in their twenties — rushing to achieve financial success early, struggling hard to “make it” before a certain age. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned from TWG is that life (and wealth) has seasons.

“The first thirty years are for the learning of money…the next thirty years are for the earning of money, and the final thirty years, if done correctly, are for the burning of money”

The growth of financial prosperity has three acts: spring (0 to 30 years), summer (from 30 to 60 years), and fall (60+). If you are in your twenties, you’re still in your spring stage, planting the seeds.

As an overachiever, I sometimes struggle with feeling as if life is going too quickly, or that I am not becoming as successful as I should be. I started a business at 19 years old because I wanted to achieve financial freedom, fast.

I rushed.

As a result, I made a ton of mistakes and lost a lot of money. I got into debt. If only I read this chapter then, I’d know that I am still too early in life.

I quote this chapter every time I hear my twenty-year-old friends complain about not being successful enough. I also remind myself of it when I think about my future projects: “twenties are for building the foundation, I’ll have time to ‘build’ in the second stage of my life”.

It will ease your stress to grasp this truth of the wealth seasons.

As Lao Tzu said, “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

It’s Not About Earning, But Saving

You are rich if you have more money in the bank than you can spend. For some people, it might mean having millions, but as Derek Sivers recalls:

“I became rich at 22 when I had $12,000 in the bank and lived on $1,000 per month which I made from my music gigs…”

This lesson goes throughout the book: to become financially independent, you’ve got to have a high net margin on life (i.e., save money after covering expenses). It’s not the money that makes you rich, but the healthy habits behind money.

A few years back I was operating my business, and I was making twice as much as I am making now. But I didn’t save a penny. Instead, I spent everything on restaurants and glamourous lifestyle I thought I should have to impress my girlfriend and her friends.

As a result, I didn’t have any money left on the important things. I didn’t have a peace of mind either, and I was constantly in debt.

Derek Sivers:

It’s not how much you have. It’s the difference between what you have and what you spend. If you have more than you spend, you’re rich. If you spend more than you have, you’re not. If you live cheaply, it’s easy to be free.

Today I don’t have a business. I make less money, but I save more. And I have more freedom.

Go On Five-Year Crusades

Nothing gets done without years in one place. And the best returns in money and life come from compound interest.

It’s not the few big things that matter, but the many little things. It’s a continuous effort, daily work, and diligence that makes people successful (and rich).

Too often, if we encounter a problem or want to achieve a goal, we want it now. In TWG, the author talks about “Five-Year Crusades” — a 5-year dedication to improving one’s condition or achieving a goal.

If you’re massively in debt, dedicate the next five years to solving the problem. If you want financial freedom, tell yourself to spend the next five years saving money. If you’re building a business, allocate the next five years (minimum) to it.

“Continuous effort — not strength or intelligence — is the key to unlocking our potential…I found that wanting fast results led only to despair, but a steady effort over five years transforms all of life”

Whenever I get discouraged that my writing, money career is not going anywhere, I remind myself that I’m on it for the next five years. It liberates to view your life through marathons, not sprints.

Anything and everything is possible with a five-year crusade.

You Get What You Tolerate

My younger sister’s first job was at a Starbucks. She worked there for four months and would come home every night, exhausted from having to clean toilets for 6 hours per day.

She hated her job. She couldn’t tolerate it. But looking at how other people didn’t complain, she felt guilty for being so picky.

We often think that we get what we want. The breakthrough realization for me from reading TWG was that: We get not what we want, but what we’re ready to tolerate.

“Rule number one is that you will not get the richest condition you want, but the poorest condition you will accept.”

Think about it. If your boss is underpaying you, and you don’t say anything, you’ll always be underpaid. If you are ready to tolerate cleaning toilets for 6 hours each day, that’s what you’ll have.

If we want abundance but will accept mediocrity, we’ll get the latter.

Fortunately, my sister couldn’t tolerate it. After another Thursday night shift, she came home and said that she had quit. I hugged her. She will go far.

(Not that I have anything against working at a Starbucks)

Your Work Is Not a Lover, But an Enduring Friendship

For those of us who live by the “passion hypothesis” (i.e., the idea that our job must be extremely exciting all the time), this will be a refreshing lesson.

“If you engage in a service that feels right, that’s comfortable for you, that you can be friends with, and that only asks you to be yourself, then that is your path. Don’t ask a vocation to be a passionate lover. Rather, consider it an enduring friendship that you want to spend time with daily.”

Kevin Kelly once gave similar advice, “Don’t follow your passion. Instead, master some skill that other people find valuable and let passion follow you.”

Work doesn’t have to be exciting all the time. Sometimes it might feel like, you know, work. At this point, people obsessed with finding their passion might quit.

Even though writing is my “passion,” I don’t always want to write. I found that if I feel a deep sense of satisfaction and an inflow of energy after I finish work, then I am on the right path.

Love and passion burn and fade away. A friendship with your work, on the other hand, might last forever.

An Ambitious Life Is Not Always the Happiest Life

I don’t believe that you can become ambitious. You are either ambitious or you’re not.

Some ambitious people (like me) might sometimes feel they want to become less ambitious just for a second. To calm down, maybe enjoy life a little. To be happy.

But as The Wealthy Gardener reminds us:

“An ambitious life is not always the happiest life, but it’s a satisfying life.”

For ambitious people, chasing happiness might be the wrong goal. We should chase satisfaction from our work instead. Or as greeks would call it, eudaimonia — deep sense of fulfillment.

An ambitious person might think he wants to “make it” and sit on the beach, sipping Pina Coladas all year long. But he’d get bored in a week.

“If you have true ambition, you’re pretty much screwed anyway. You won’t be happy doing nothing, sitting on a beach, or ignoring your ambition. You’re driven, like it or not, to achieve something.”

Every one of us has a calling. Greeks called it daimon. Ignore it, and it’ll kill you. We have no other choice but to give in to it and follow our true ambition.

Listen to The ‘Unseen Force’

The author of The Wealthy Gardener talks a lot about the gut feeling, instinct, or the ‘Unseen Force’ that guided him in pursuit of wealth. He would connect with it through daily meditation practices, and by imagining the desired outcome.

Not a big fan of The Secret or “the law of attraction,” I was skeptical about this concept at first. But as I read further, I realized that what the author referred to, was nothing but a feeling of rightness.

“I’ve never seen good things happen when one ignores a troubled six sense,” he writes.

Oprah Winfrey gives similar advice:

If it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. That is the lesson, and that lessons alone will save you a lot of grief.

I have a similar rule in place: if there’s doubt, there’s no doubt. Meaning, if something feels off, it probably is.

But the best way to make decisions, I found, is to listen to both to feeling and rational thinking. When both are in accord, you know what to do.

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