Mark Twain was obsessed with money. That is one of the most fascinating themes in Ron Chernow’s epic biography of the great writer (which we’ve been talking about recently). Twain earned lots of it. He spent lots of it. He chased all sorts of business ideas and schemes and scams to get more of it.

Toward the end of his life, short on funds, he had to go on a lecture tour to pay his bills. The tour, which took him all over the world, put him many miles away from his family when his beloved daughter, Susy, suddenly died. “He never forgave himself,” Chernow writes, “for not being with her when she died or seeing her in her coffin. He compared her to a bank treasure whose value he had not recognized until it vanished in the night.”

Twain simply could not understand what money was costing him—that it distracted him from both his real work (writing amazing books) and his real treasure (his family). And so it goes for many of us, too. Our lack of discipline, our lack of priority, our lack of perspective costs us time, costs us relationships, costs us peace. It takes us away. It takes our life force.

Obviously we have to work. And sure, more money is better than less…but only to a point, only within reasonable boundaries. Remember—it’s not money that’s evil, but the love of it, especially when that love robs us of priceless time with the people we love.

P.S. Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow sat down with me for the Daily Stoic podcast to talk about the ways personal struggle helped define the legacies of many of the historical figures he wrote about, including Alexander Hamilton, Ulysses S. Grant, and Mark Twain.

If you haven’t yet read any of Chernow’s amazing biographies, we have some of my favorites, including Mark Twain, Alexander Hamilton, and Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. available at the Painted Porch.