What Is Family Wisdom

My grandfather told my father something before he passed away:

"A person cannot earn a finite amount of money."

According to my father, my grandfather was born into a landlord family, and our ancestors were quite wealthy in Shandong. Later, after the founding of New China, the family dispersed, and they lost all their properties and land. But my grandfather’s words stayed with my father.

Later, my father passed this wisdom down to me.

So when I started investing in stocks, futures, and gold, not only did my father not stop me—he was very supportive.

Because he understood: earning a finite amount of money only allows you to live a finite life.

1. What is “finite money”?

Let me explain this phrase first.

By “finite money,” my grandfather meant money earned by selling your time.

For example, working a job.

You earn 10,000 yuan a month, totaling 120,000 yuan a year, and after 40 years of work, you retire with a total of 4.8 million yuan.

This number is calculable.

Miss a day of work, and you lose a day’s pay.

When you can no longer work, the income stops.

This is linear income, also called active income.

Its essence is: your time and life are clearly priced.

There’s nothing wrong with this—most people live this way. But if you’re thinking about financial freedom, this model is basically impossible.

Because you only have two hands, and only 24 hours in a day.

The ceiling on earning money through trading time is fixed.

2. So what is “uncountable” money?

My grandfather didn’t specify, but my understanding is: money that comes in without directly selling your time.

That is, investing.

Let me give you an example to clarify.

Back then, I made a trade that lasted less than three months, and the profit was equivalent to three years of my salary from working.

During those three months, I ate, I slept, I felt anxious when I lost money, but the moment the profit hit my account, I suddenly remembered my grandfather’s words: “A person cannot earn a finite amount of money.”

If I had only been working, earning that three years’ salary would have required me to sit at my desk for three full years—8 hours a day, 5 days a week, rain or shine.

But that one trade took three months, with no more than 2 hours daily spent analyzing charts and reviewing trades. The rest of the time, the market was working for me.

This isn’t about luck; it’s about the difference in models:

Work is addition: do one day, earn one day’s pay. Stop, and the income stops.

Investing is multiplication: money itself generates more money. As long as your direction is correct, compound interest helps you build a snowball.

The ceiling of working is the starting line of investing.

3. But investing isn’t gambling

I need to clarify something here.

Many people think investing is gambling—chasing highs and selling lows, acting on rumors, following the crowd. That’s earning risky money, not “uncountable” money.

True investing earns money from knowledge. My grandfather was born a landlord, but according to my father, his family’s wealth didn’t come simply from collecting rent. He understood grain prices, understood good and bad harvests, knew when to stockpile and when to sell.

Isn’t that the “futures trading” of that era?

So “a person cannot earn a finite amount of money” doesn’t mean you should gamble. It means you should develop an ability to make money without constantly selling your time.

This ability requires:

**Knowledge accumulation:** understanding economic cycles, industry trends

**Disciplined execution:** holding what you should hold, cutting what you should cut—this is the hardest part

**Patient waiting:** opportunities are everywhere, but good opportunities require patience

My father supported my investing not because he wanted me to gamble, but because he wanted me to develop this ability.

4. Work vs. investing: it’s not either/or

Let me say something that might offend some people. I’m not advising you to quit your job and trade stocks.

The meaning of work isn’t just the paycheck. It provides you with cash flow, social connections, and a reason to get out of bed every day. For most people, work is the foundation; investing is the amplifier.

Work keeps you alive.

Investing helps you thrive.

The best approach is: use your job’s cash flow to fund your investment seeds; use your investment returns to strengthen your life’s foundation.

In my early years of investing, I experienced losses, blew up accounts, and stared at screens late into the night with anxiety. But because I had a job, I could endure it, learn gradually, and wait for those right trades.

My grandfather’s words were passed to my father, and now to me. I will pass them on someday too.

Not to encourage the next generation to gamble, but to remind them: don’t spend your life just as a paycheck.

My grandfather passed away before I was born, so I never met him or heard him tell those family stories firsthand. But his one sentence has been passed through three generations and still influences my choices today.

That’s probably what is called family wisdom.