Let's start with the most heartbreaking conclusion:

Financial freedom is not about how much you earn, but how much you can keep. The difference between these two concepts is astonishing.

What is the most harmful piece of motivational fluff on Chinese the internet? It's "I'll start investing once I have money." Honestly, this sentence is almost equivalent to sentencing yourself to a lifetime of working for others.

From a systems engineering perspective—and not those vague financial advice clichés—a person's ultimate trajectory is actually determined by a very simple factor: savings rate. It's not about how hard you work, not about how awesome your industry is, and not about how fierce inflation is; it's about how much resources you can intercept from the system to build yourself an escape boat.

Looking at it from another angle, systems theory doesn't care about your feelings; it only cares about structure. In the entire economic system, what are you? Not a struggler, not a middle-class elite, and certainly not someone with a bright future. You are simply a node in the energy flow—income flows in, expenses are recycled by the system, and only savings are the part of energy you "steal" from the system.

Pay attention to this word: steal. Because from a system logic perspective, the money you keep was originally meant to be spent, taxed, or eroded by inflation. The part you manage to retain is essentially a loophole in the system.

This is why high-income poor people are everywhere. Income is just the energy flowing in; what truly determines whether you can turn things around is how much you intercept.