Whoever told you otherwise is wrong. If you've ever been backcountry camping, you'll know that water is scarce. You'll get to the next body of water when you get there. Until then, you drink from what you've been able to filter and store from the last body of water. If you run out of water, you dead. When you get to the next body of water, you feast, drink, filter, store. Water is the essence of life.

We live in a concrete jungle. We have jobs or investments or whatever, and these are our sources of life. But no job is forever, and we always move on. When money is good, you store it for later, because it won't last. Sometimes we go through draughts. We ought to have prepared for draughts. Your present self might be quenched, but your future self needs your present self to take care of him. And you do this by storing up money for the future.

Some in r/MGTOW argue that a man ought to go his own way, whatever way that is. We can go a foolish way. We can become drug addicts, harming our potential for self-actualization -- that is bad. We need to preserve the self across time, and we do that through accumulating the thing of life: money.

Put aside women in your 20s. Because you need the time in your 20s to make mistakes, to pick yourself up, to become hardened to life, and to learn how to find success in a world where none cares about you. In your 30s and 40s, you will have the best chance of financial independence.

Once you get money in your 30s and 40s, you become an economic hub. People gravitate to you, and you have the option to bring people into your life, and reject them outright.