Start Here: Decode the Money System - Know the Game #1/22

Know the Game - Level 1 (1/22)

You can feel it before you can explain it.

Your parents or grandparents bought a home on one income. A single salary used to cover rent, kids, food, a car, maybe even vacations. Today, two incomes struggle to keep up, and most people live one or two paychecks from stress.

Everyone says, “That’s just how life is now.”

No. Something changed. And if you don’t understand what changed, you’ll keep blaming yourself for a game that was quietly rewritten.

This first article is not about Bitcoin, investing, or price charts. It’s about decoding the money system you were born into, so you can see the board clearly for the first time.

Table of Contents

• 1. Why You Feel Something Is Off
• 2. What Money Actually Is
• 3. From Gold to IOUs: How We Got Here
• 4. A Debt-Based System: Why Money = Debt
• 5. Inflation: The Quiet Drain on Your Time
• 6. Why Saving Cash Feels Like Losing
• 7. Assets, Ladders, and Who Gets In First
• 8. You’re Not Crazy - The Game Is Rigged
• 9. REAL TALK - Your Assignment
• 10. Next Reads

1. Why You Feel Something Is Off

Look around and you’ll see the pattern:

• People work more hours than ever.
• Two-income households are the norm.
• Debt is standard - student loans, car loans, credit cards.
• Owning a home feels out of reach for many.

Deep down, you probably feel: “It shouldn’t be this hard if I’m doing everything right.”

This isn’t a motivation problem. It’s not because you “don’t hustle hard enough.” It’s because the foundation you are standing on - the money itself, is not what you were told it is.

To change your life, you don’t start with side hustles and spreadsheets. You start with the operating system: What is money, really?

2. What Money Actually Is

You were taught that money is dollars, bank balances, or numbers in an app. That’s the surface.

At its core, money is three things:

• A unit of account - how we measure value.
• A medium of exchange - how we trade value.
• A store of value - how we carry value into the future.

The third one is the most important for your life: store of value.

When you work, you spend your time and energy today and receive money in return. That money is supposed to hold that value so you can use it later. In other words:

Money is stored work. Money is stored time.

So if money stops storing value properly, it’s not “just prices going up.” It’s your past effort quietly leaking away.

3. From Gold to IOUs: How We Got Here

For a long time, the world used hard money - things like gold and silver that were scarce, took effort to produce, and couldn’t be created on demand.

Eventually, carrying gold around was inconvenient, so people used paper claims - IOUs that said, “this note can be redeemed for X amount of gold.” Paper was a proxy. The anchor was still the hard asset.

Over time, governments and banks realized something: if most people never actually redeemed their notes for gold, you could issue more paper than you had metal in the vault.

That’s where things started to drift.

In 1971, the U.S. fully severed the tie between the dollar and gold. From that moment on, major currencies became what they are today: unbacked IOUs. Their value rests on trust, policy, and force. Not on a scarce asset.

4. A Debt-Based System: Why Money = Debt

Here’s the part almost nobody explains clearly:

In our current system, almost every dollar is someone else’s debt.

New money is created when banks issue loans. You sign for a mortgage, car loan, or business line of credit, and fresh numbers appear in your account. That money didn’t exist before. It was created as debt.

Central banks create base money. Commercial banks multiply it through lending. Government deficits inject even more into the system. The result is a structure that depends on constant expansion.

And that leads to one brutal truth:

Because the system is built on debt, it requires growth of the money supply to survive. If money creation stops, the system seizes.

This is why inflation isn’t an accident. It’s not a bug. It’s how the current design keeps itself alive.

5. Inflation: The Quiet Drain on Your Time

Most people think inflation means “prices are rising.” That’s the visible part. The deeper definition is simpler and more revealing:

Inflation is the expansion of the money supply.

When more units of currency are created, each existing unit holds less power. Over time, what you can buy with the same number of dollars shrinks. That’s why your grocery bill creeps up. That’s why your rent renews higher.

But don’t miss the personal impact:

If you saved $10,000 and inflation is 10%, your buying power drops to roughly $9,000 - even if the number on your bank app still says $10,000.

You didn’t mismanage. You didn’t overspend. The system simply diluted your stored time.

6. Why Saving Cash Feels Like Losing

Your grandparents were told: “Save your money and you’ll be okay.” In a sound-money world, that made sense. In an inflationary, debt-based system, it’s a trap.

Here’s why:

• When new money is created, the value of existing money is diluted.
• Your savings don’t receive newly created money first, but prices adjust for everyone.

In simple terms:

When money is printed, your stored time is diluted. Savers subsidize spenders and borrowers.

That’s why you can save diligently and still feel like you’re falling behind. The container holding your time is leaking.

7. Assets, Ladders, and Who Gets In First

New money doesn’t fall from the sky evenly. It enters through specific channels - governments, banks, large institutions, and often flows into assets first: real estate, stocks, financial markets.

That’s why you see this pattern:

• Asset prices skyrocket.
• Wages lag behind.
• The cost of “getting onto the ladder” explodes.

Think about housing:

Decades ago, a typical home might cost three to four years of a median income. Today in many places, it’s ten-plus years, even if the house itself hasn’t changed much.

Did the home become three times more magical? Or did the measuring stick - the currency, become weaker?

This is the essence of a rigged game: those closest to new money and assets ride the wave up. Those trying to catch up with cash and wages chase a moving target.

8. You’re Not Crazy - The Game Is Rigged

When you look at your life and feel like something doesn’t add up, you’re not being negative. You’re picking up on reality.

The rules quietly changed:

• Money is no longer a neutral store of value.
• Most new money is created as debt.
• Inflation is built into the system, not a temporary glitch.
• Savers in cash are systematically diluted.
• Asset owners and those closest to credit creation gain an advantage.

This article is not about panic. It’s about awareness.

At Level 1, you’re not choosing solutions yet. You’re learning to see the board clearly. You’re realizing: “I’m not broken. The system I was dropped into is.”

9. REAL TALK - Your Assignment

10. Next Reads

• → Know the Game #2: The Day the Dollar Died - 1971 in 7 Minutes
• → Know the Game #3: How Money Is Really Created (Banks, Credit, and the Big Lie) #3/22