Vitamin M Day 5: Ways to Get More Vitamin M
- Christopher Han
- 1 day ago
- 9 min read
There are only four sources of money in the entire world. Once you see them clearly, the noise quietens.
Here is something I find oddly comforting. There are only four sources of money in the entire world. Whatever the financial guru on the reel is selling, whatever the side hustle in the online ad promises, whatever the new asset class trending on Twitter, the underlying source is one of four. Once you see them clearly, the noise quietens.
The First Source. Labour
The first is labour. You sell your time and effort in exchange for a wage. This is what most people do for most of their working lives, and the global economy is fundamentally a labour-conversion machine. Labour is reliable in that it provides predictable income, but it has two structural weaknesses. It does not scale, because there are only twenty-four hours in a day. And it stops the moment you stop. Every hour of life spent earning a wage is an hour permanently traded for a fixed sum.
The Second Source. Skill
The second is skill. This is labour with a multiplier. The same hour of a junior associate's time and a partner's time is the same hour, but the partner's hour is worth twenty times more, because the partner has spent twenty years sharpening a skill the market values highly. Skill is the most underrated source of Vitamin M because most people do not invest in it deliberately enough. They believe they are doing so by being employed. They are not. Employment without deliberate skill development is just paid time. Skill development is paid time plus a curriculum. The difference, over a decade, is enormous.
The plumber who can install a complete heat pump system earns three times what a generalist plumber earns. The marketer who can run a complete acquisition channel earns five times what a generalist marketer earns. Skill is the slow and unglamorous work of becoming worth more per hour.
The Third Source. Capital
The third is capital. This is money working on your behalf rather than you working for money. It includes investments in equities, property, bonds, businesses you do not run yourself, royalties from work you have already created. Capital is what most people mean when they talk about wealth, and the rich do not get richer because they earn enormous wages. They get richer because they own things that compound while they sleep.
The shift from labour to capital is the most important transition in any working life. Almost no one teaches it. Almost everyone needs to make it. In Singapore the conversation around this is unusually distorted because property has been such a dominant capital asset for so long that we sometimes forget there are other forms. A balanced capital base, in the modern world, is rarely just real estate. It is real estate, equities, perhaps a small business interest, perhaps intellectual property. It is diversified, slow, and boring. Boring capital outperforms exciting capital, on average, over decades. This is one of the most consistently confirmed findings in finance, and one of the least obeyed.
The Fourth Source. Ownership of Leverage
The fourth is ownership of leverage. This is the layer above capital. Capital deploys money. Leverage deploys other people's money, time, or attention. A business owner has labour leverage. A landlord has capital leverage. A creator with a large audience has attention leverage. A software founder has code leverage. The wealthiest people in the world tend to combine all four. They started with skilled labour. They saved enough to acquire capital. They built systems that allow capital and labour to scale beyond their personal hours. The compounding of leverage is what produces the outliers. It is also where most of the catastrophic blowups happen, because leverage cuts both ways. The same arrangement that multiplies gains multiplies losses.
Everything else is a recombination. Side hustles are smaller-scale versions of the labour or skill source, sometimes ramping into the capital source. Crypto is an asset class within capital. Property investing is leveraged capital. Affiliate marketing is attention leverage. Coaching businesses are skill plus attention leverage. Once you can name the source, the marketing becomes legible. The thing you are buying is one or more of these four, dressed up in better clothes.
The Sequence. How a Normal Life Builds More Vitamin M
So how does someone in a normal life increase their Vitamin M.
I think the honest answer is a sequence, and the order matters more than most people admit.
Begin with labour
You begin with labour, because that is what most people have. The mistake is to stay there. Labour without skill development is a dead end, and the modern economy is making it deader by the year as automation eats the predictable work.
Pick a skill and compound it
The first move, while still inside labour, is to pick a skill you can reasonably become good at and start the long compounding. Three years to be respectable. Seven to be excellent. Ten to be the person other people refer to. There is no shortcut, and the people selling shortcuts know this and are betting that you do not.
Save into capital while building skill
While you are building skill, you save what you can, however small, and you put it into capital. The amount is less important than the habit. A young person putting two hundred dollars a month into a low-cost index fund from the age of twenty-five will, by the standard mathematics of compounding, retire wealthier than a thirty-five-year old putting four hundred a month into the same fund. The numbers feel impossible until you draw them out. A decade is the difference between a comfortable retirement and a marginal one, even though the second person saves twice as much per month. The capital source compounds on time, and time is the one input you cannot manufacture later.
Move into leverage when skill and capital compound
Once skill compounds and capital compounds, you can think about leverage. This is the stage at which a person stops trading hours for money and starts owning systems that produce money. For some people this is starting a business. For some it is climbing into senior roles where the impact of an hour's decision is enormous. For some it is creative work that earns royalties. For some it is buying property and renting it. The form is less important than the principle. You are now constructing arrangements where your time is no longer the binding constraint on your income.
What This Framework Gets Wrong, Or Leaves Out
I want to be honest about a few things this framework gets wrong, or rather, leaves out.
Luck
It leaves out luck, which is enormous. Most of the wealthiest people I know admit, when pressed, that the timing of their early decisions mattered more than the decisions themselves. They were in a particular industry at a particular time. They bought a particular flat in a particular year. The skill compounded the luck. The luck was the soil. We do not like talking about this because it complicates the narrative of merit. It also happens to be true.
Inheritance
It leaves out inheritance, which is the single largest predictor of wealth in most societies, including ours. The conversation about money in 2026 cannot honestly proceed without acknowledging that the starting line is not the same for everyone. People from families with capital have a calmer relationship to risk because they know the floor underneath them. People from families without capital are not lazy. They are running uphill in heavier shoes. To talk about money without naming this is to participate in the polite fiction that the genre has always preferred.
The slowness
It leaves out the slowness. The honest path to more Vitamin M is not the path the content economy wants you to see. It is repetitive, often dull, frequently unrewarding in the early years, and only rarely produces the dramatic narrative arc that gets shared. The people who actually grow wealth tend to be uninteresting on social media, because the boring habits do not photograph well. Save more than you spend. Invest the difference. Build a skill. Stay employable. Avoid catastrophic losses. Compound for decades. That is the entire game. There is nothing for an influencer to sell in those five sentences.
There Is No Single Right Way
The last thing I want to say is that there is no single right way. The four sources are real. The sequence I described is the most common. But people build wealth in many configurations, and some of the most healthy financial lives I have seen do not look like the textbook. A schoolteacher with thirty years of pension contributions and a paid-off flat is wealthier in any meaningful sense than a flashy entrepreneur with two failed businesses and a leased Tesla. The point is not to copy a script. The point is to understand the ingredients, mix them in the proportion that suits your life, and then have the patience to let them work.
Tomorrow I want to look at what is actually required, as a person, to produce more of this thing. Because the sources are external, but the production is internal.
Key Takeaways
The six points worth carrying out of Day 5.
There are only four sources of money in the world: labour, skill, capital, and ownership of leverage. Everything else is a recombination.
Labour does not scale and stops when you stop. Skill is labour with a multiplier and is the most underrated source.
Capital is what most people mean by wealth. The shift from labour to capital is the most important transition in any working life.
Leverage multiplies both gains and losses. It is the layer that produces the outliers and the catastrophic blowups.
The sequence labour, skill, capital, leverage works. Begin the next stage before the current one is comfortable.
Luck, inheritance, and slowness are real. Acknowledge them honestly. Avoid catastrophic losses, and let time do the multiplying.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the four sources of money?
Labour, skill, capital, and ownership of leverage. Labour is selling time for a wage. Skill is labour with a multiplier earned through deliberate practice. Capital is money working on your behalf through assets that compound. Leverage is deploying other people's money, time, or attention. Every income stream in the modern economy is a recombination of these four.
How do you build wealth from a normal salary?
Begin with labour because that is what most people have. Pick a skill you can reasonably become good at and start the long compounding. Save what you can into capital while building skill, however small the amount. Once skill and capital are compounding, move into leverage by starting a business, climbing into senior roles, creating royalty-bearing work, or buying property. The sequence matters more than most people admit.
Why is skill the most underrated source of money?
Because most people believe they are developing skill by being employed, but employment without deliberate skill development is just paid time. Skill development is paid time plus a curriculum. The difference over a decade is enormous. The plumber who can install a complete heat pump system earns three times what a generalist plumber earns. The marketer who can run a complete acquisition channel earns five times what a generalist marketer earns.
Why does boring capital outperform exciting capital?
Because diversified, slow, low-cost capital allocation compounds reliably over decades while exciting capital tends to concentrate in a single asset class with high variance. This is one of the most consistently confirmed findings in finance, and one of the least obeyed. In Singapore the conversation is unusually distorted because property has been so dominant that other forms of capital are often overlooked.
What is the difference between capital and leverage?
Capital deploys your own money. Leverage deploys other people's money, time, or attention. A business owner has labour leverage. A landlord has capital leverage. A creator with a large audience has attention leverage. A software founder has code leverage. Leverage is the layer that produces outliers, and also where most catastrophic blowups happen, because leverage cuts both ways.
Why does compounding favour the younger saver even at smaller amounts?
Because time is the one input you cannot manufacture later. A twenty-five-year-old saving two hundred dollars a month into a low-cost index fund will, by standard compounding mathematics, retire wealthier than a thirty-five-year-old saving four hundred a month into the same fund. The decade of compounding outweighs twice the contribution. The numbers feel impossible until you draw them out.
What does this framework leave out?
Luck, inheritance, and slowness. Luck is enormous and most wealthy people admit, when pressed, that the timing of their early decisions mattered more than the decisions themselves. Inheritance is the single largest predictor of wealth in most societies, including Singapore. Slowness is the part the content economy hides because boring habits do not photograph well.
Is there only one right way to build wealth?
No. The four sources are real, and the sequence labour, skill, capital, leverage is the most common, but people build wealth in many configurations. A schoolteacher with thirty years of pension contributions and a paid-off flat is wealthier in any meaningful sense than a flashy entrepreneur with two failed businesses and a leased Tesla. The point is to understand the ingredients and mix them in the proportion that suits your life.
Yesterday, Day 4: Can We Buy It (/post/can-we-buy-it). Tomorrow, Day 6: What We Need to Produce More Vitamin M (/post/what-we-need-to-produce-more-vitamin-m).
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