The Real Reason it's Called "F-You Money"

One of many secrets rich people won't tell you

"The success comes, and you're on your own. There's no manual. One day, they give you a check…that you can't even relate to the zeros on the end, and you can get in a lot of trouble with that much money." -Tom Petty, Runnin' Down a Dream (documentary)

I went to business school because I wanted to make a lot of money. There were other legitimate reasons, but that was the driving factor.

One day during first year, a classmate shared the news that the company where his dad worked had just gone public and now his dad had "fuck you money" (FU$). He elaborated, "…meaning, he now has sufficient cash to tell his boss ‘F-you!’ and live with the consequences."

"Wow," I said, blown away by the concept. "That’s amazing!”

At the time, I was carrying the current equivalent of $150,000 in student debt, so any degree of financial independence sounded pretty cool. But to be so rich as not to need a job? That was incomprehensible.

Broke as I was, I didn't know what I didn't know about money. However, as too many lottery winners, young pro athletes, and yours truly learned after my own windfall, FU$ is more complicated than it sounds. While it grants the recipient a massive degree of career latitude, it also comes with rights, duties, and responsibilities, which—if not fully understood—will lead its owner down the wrong path. Not that anyone is going to tell you that.

Consider your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man: Peter Parker gets bit by a radioactive spider, thus endowing him with supernatural arachnoid capabilities. Isn’t he lucky? Because now he does whatever a spider can, climbs sky-scrapers, and catches thieves just like flies. He’s in a whole new league.

But those extraordinary capabilities also distort the relationship with his career and co-workers. Once a person can swing from buildings and capture crooks with sticky wrist jizz, how will he tolerate flying coach class to Milwaukee for the 30th Annual Packaging Materials Supply Chain Management Convention? (Yes, we are re-casting Peter as a mid-level logistics manager.)

He can't. And tolerance—especially late in a career—is a vital workplace skill. Maybe Peter doesn't make a big deal of it right away, but eventually, he's going to let his lame, non-superhero supervisor know that he's effing Spider-Man. And Spider-Man doesn't go to cardboard conferences!

This is what it's like to win, earn, or otherwise acquire FU$. Having the ability not to work distorts one's relationship with work. Pumped up by the superpower of wealth, a person's ego starts to talk shit about work's indignities and their sneaky, duplicitous boss. Left unchecked, new money will start making decisions on its owner’s behalf, and these decisions are rarely prudent.

Of course, FU$ is a tremendous privilege, but it is also a Career Detonator you don't even know you're carrying. Unless you purposefully embrace the ways work enriches your life—for example, by providing a place to contribute to the world among gifted colleagues—your professional future teeters one spark of indiscretion away from a meth lab-caliber explosion. Because, without you even knowing it, FU$ has slipped your mouth's safety lock to the "off" position, making it much harder to keep shut—especially if you were pre-disposed to run it in the first place.

When your boss outlines the itinerary for the Milwaukee event, which she regrets she will be unable to attend, you'll find yourself thinking, "Wait a minute, I'm rich. This bullshit is optional." Here, you learn that "FU$" doesn't just grant you the right to say "F.U." to your boss. It means that if you haven’t thought very clearly about what your values are and who you want to be, you will tell your boss—and maybe your spouse and other family members—to fuck right off.  

Of course, you could take the high road. You could decline her invitation firmly but respectfully and plan a graceful exit to preserve professional optionality. But where's the fun in nuance when you can go nuclear?

So you light up the boss in a conflagration of candor. Spittle-flying, you call out her shortcomings with gerund-laced eloquence, documenting her hypocrisy and tyranny so thoroughly that you believe your co-workers will rally around you and place a crown on your head. Instead, they pull a Bay of Pigs and run for cover.

Your opponent appears unfazed as she wipes the verbal guano from her chin, admires her filthy fingers, and replies with serpentine satisfaction, "Thanks for being transparent." Then it dawns on you: this is the final entry on your LinkedIn profile.

As Dr. Phil would say, "How's it feel to be right?"

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In a time of acute inequality, it is beyond taboo to talk openly about affluence. So instead of discussing the connection between our values and who we want to be when the money arrives, we leave it to the Kardashians to model wealth for us. No wonder so many newly rich people quit their jobs, bail on their marriages, and buy a bunch of superfluous crap.

If you don’t believe this is an issue, try to envision a vast field on which 2.5 million individuals are each assembling their own Ikea desk without reading the instructions. Think of how many unstable and incomplete modular abominations would result.

Now consider that in 2021, 2.5 million households in the United States achieved $1 million in net worth for the first time. And while there are all kinds of books on how to get out of debt or find the right credit card, there’s no instruction manual on how to have money. This means that almost all of these newly-minted millionaires will learn how to handle their bounty exclusively through trial and error. Most of these errors will be inconsequential, but some will be profound.

In service of these fortunate, hard-working, good-saving people, some of whom will eventually achieve 100% career flexibility, I offer FU$ Lesson #1:

Just because you can tell your boss to fuck off, that doesn’t mean you should.