Oh, that ain't workin', that's the way you do it
The phrase "make your money work for you" is oft-repeated to the extent that it is now modern folk wisdom. It's conceptually simple: money saved or invested earns returns, via combinations of interest, dividends, and valuation increases. So, save your earnings and put them "to work" such that in some future years you have more money then you had originally. Your money has gone off on it's own and increased in value!
I say modern folk wisdom but the idea is ancient. The parable of the talents praises the wisdom of the slaves who invest their master's riches in contrast to the folly of the slave who simply hides the money given to his care.
From the Book of Matthew, chapter 25, verses 26-27:
You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.
The parable is just that, a parable, it's not financial advice. But it could only hit with its audience if they already understood the financial message.
And while I think it's savvy advice, it's also misleading. The only reason money deposited with a bank can earn interest is because the bank uses those deposits to lend out at a higher interest rate to borrowers than they pay depositors (this is a simplification but a useful one). Borrowers pay back the principle and additional interest, and they can do so because they work to earn money to pay it back (again, a useful simplification ignoring business lending which still ultimately requires people working and a surplus from their labor).
Until recently I hadn't seen this critqued anywhere else. This excerpt from Micki McGee's book "Self Help, Inc." summarizes more succinctly than I could (empahsis added):
To a certain extent, Orman is correct: while money isn’t alive, or a life force, or "feeling offended" at one’s disrespect, a significant number of economists would agree that money is "congealed human labor." Human labor and, therefore, life are frozen in this abstract form. When Orman talks about investing one's money so that "it will work for you," she is describing the way in which interest and dividend income are derived from the expansion of the economy, which is, of course, dependent on the productivity of working people. Thus when an investor's money is "working" for that investor, somewhere, someone is working and taking home less than the value of what he or she has produced in his or her day's work. Or, more aptly, everywhere, almost everyone is working, producing increments of value for which they are not compensated.
Your money doesn't work for you, your money forms a bridge for you to farm other people's distributed labor. Whether that's "good" or "bad" is immaterial to the first requirement of operating with a usefully accurate model of the world.
Originally published 2026-03-04