Reading this book will shake your opinions and confuse the hell out of you all the way through. You'll laugh often, disagree, become pissed off and finally shake your head at the deepest most original wisdom you may have ever read.
Sukop's style is arrogantly irreverent and you'll love it as he kills your sacred cows. An example ... "Common sense tends to degrade what works. Maybe the solution for monetary disparity in the world is not to fight greed but to promote it heavily."
Seriously, there isn't an author alive or dead who understands more about money and what causes it to flow than Egbert Sukop. If you want to read something powerfully fresh and definitely groundbreaking - buy this book. --Tom Volkar

“Oh, Egbert, you are so funny! I'm in stitches everytime I read your newsletter. To take an unvarnished truth and make it funny is one thing, but you are completely off the charts in driving home a point with such alacrity and humor! You hit the bull's eye and drive the arrow clean through the wall!” --L.C.

"I'm dumbfounded, awestruck, perplexed, befuddled. I'm a miserable bastard going through a divorce and unemployed, who at 35 doesn't know what to do for peace of mind or soul. I'm not looking for you to solve my problems - I just find your writings fascinating." --B.T.

"Wow, your site has an attitude. Every god damn site I go to is so politically correct, other than porn sites. You say it like it is. Thanks." --C.

“I totally appreciate your reminders and insights. I need the wake-up call. It's comforting. I do print them out from time to time and read them out to my mother, and she loves it too. It lets us know it's ok to be more ... human. God bless U.” --P.

"Did you know that you belong in the loony bin, you screwball? No one can help you anymore, you idiotic imbecile."
Anonymous, Schweinfurt, Germany

“You have unconventional wisdom that's unique to you. I'm not sure what the mainstream would think of what you have to say. I've noted when I talk to people along the lines that you lay out, they tend to get turned off or even a little pissed off. I think the reason for this is it tends to go against everything they have been taught and believed all their lives.  Well, I'm going to go back and read some more of your rants as I find them quite refreshing.” --K.B.

"To me the ideas as published on your site are new and refreshing. I have done a lot of the other motivational stuff such as goal setting etc., and it is time to break out of that and get a life! Your approach seems much more natural and I would like to learn more about it."
R.S., The Netherlands

"I have not laughed as much as I have reading the information on moneybymistake.com. Laughing is something I have needed to do right now because I have been taking life all a bit to seriously over the last couple of months. I have been able to laugh at myself and the mistakes I have made with money as I read through your website. You know what? The sun will rise tomorrow whether I have money or not and it is up to me to choose the attitude of how I will greet the day and others around me." --M.P., Australia

”Oh, by the way ... I really enjoyed your newsletter on 'will power'.  It opened my eyes on how habits come about.  I'll drink to that! You've been the highlight of my day.” --B.A.

Life is messy.

We promote brands and groups, our true religions.  The value of YOU--the individual--is yet to be discovered.  The bigger picture, the greater good, the higher purpose, and not to forget new age's “higher self" are inhumane terms expressing neglect and outright disdain for individuals and their legitimate interests.  The ladies and gentlemen of the Seattle School District even believe individualism is pathological.

They are idiots, I know, but freedom and individuality are still suspect and not just in the eyes of a few deranged Seattle school teachers.  Plenty of motivation for me to instigate you, the true and authentic individual to live as you damn well please.  Nothing will make you and everybody around you happier:  Do what you want to do.  

money and meaning

"There is a theory which states that if anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states this has already happened." --Douglas Adams

Hey Compadre,

Child's play is fascinating. We love watching babies and small children do what they do. They act without any sense of purpose. Baby's drooling and giggling is not rooted in some pathetic mission statement. Your three year old doesn't need health reasons to be convinced that riding his bicycle in circles--in other words, for no particular reason--is great fun for himself and will be enjoyed by everybody.

The more purpose children learn to implement in their activities, the more boring they become to watch. Once your girl is on the principal's honor roll she annoys the crap out of her classmates and out of everybody else. Hence the even more annoying bumper stickers. No one displays a sticker: “My baby drooled on my new tuxedo today.” There is no public parental pride in the sweetest things you may ever experience in life. Instead, we are most proud about how boring and predictable our brats have become.

Play of children excites us, yet it lacks importance and meaning. Small wonder that our general aim for importance and meaning destroys our and our children's excitement about life. Children don't drool and play for the greater good. They drool and play mindlessly. You may be afraid to deny infants and toddlers a deeper meaning underneath the stuff they do all day, but it is void of the type of meaning you demand of your own actions and contemplation.

Cold hard cash has such a poor reputation, because it has no meaning: just face value. Hell, people aren't pleased with the value of their own faces. Religion can't stand your face, and that's perhaps where you learned to disregard yourself. Religions want your soul. Will they pay for it like a decent devil would? No way, organized religion is after your soul and your money, but you as an individual are considered worthless and dangerous. You are bad news, a sinner who must strive to become better, even though the earthly soul managers guarantee you today you have no chance to ever accomplish what they ask you to do.

The so-called greater good you are supposed to be living for, the higher self of new age fundamentalists, and society's gentle demand “to give back to your community” are expressions of pure disdain for you, the individual and her interests. The religion of environmentalism takes it one step further: “Humankind is the worst that has ever happened to planet Earth. Buy a Toyota Pious, asshole.” Nice! How could the world ever make it through hundreds of millions of years without environmental wise guys? A mysterium, if not the greatest of all. And our dear governments, as you've figured out yourself in your ripe age, are not particularly fond of individuals either.

Human beings are addicted to search for the meaning of life. Wait, not even meaning is enough for us. We are on the noble and solemn quest to dig up “deeper meaning” someday. Why? Because we hate our lives so much that we can't take it and enjoy it as it is. If you--yes, you all by yourself--are not valuable and enjoyable enough, you're having a problem indeed. Finding meaning may not help you. Randomly making up meaning out of the blue, as our dear religions do professionally with phenomenal material success, does not create true meaning either. What if there is none, meaning of life that is?

What if there is as much meaning in baby's or great grand pa's drooling and unintelligible mumbling as there is in your hyper important business of bringing about peace on Earth and Starbucks to every street corner in China? What if there is no meaning? When life is void of meaning, you are it! People don't want to face that void. It scares them. They want to have something to hold onto that makes sense or at least promises to make sense.

Belief in and search for meaning of life--it doesn't matter if there is such a thing or not--prevents you from guilt free enjoyment of individuality and freedom. Funny paradox: our pathetic and insatiable craving for meaning and importance ignores the individual “as is”. Our reality is not good enough for us, and while slaving away in the name of self-improvement, we are losing everything special and extraordinary we do have to offer. We are losing what we are trying so hard to find.

When you do what you truly want to do, your happiness is likely to increase sharply. You cannot present a finer, healthier, and yes, even more meaningful gift to your loved ones and to your (human) environment.

Taking money for that is as sacred as it gets.

Egbert Sukop

P.S.: "At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves." --Charles Bukowski

P.P.S.:  If you enjoyed it, hated it, or if you are not so sure, go to Yahoo Groups and read past issues of my free money-by-mistake newsletter: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/moneybymistake/.  And, while there, go ahead and subscribe also: You will receive upcoming issues via e-mail.

P.P.P.S.:  You think I should cough up some blog type thingy related to issues discussed here? Why not? Check it out at Google Schmoogle.