MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, June 25, 2026 – A newly released essay from Melbourne entrepreneur James Sackl argues that financial growth is driven more by increasing income than by aggressively reducing spending. The article, published this week on Sackl’s website, presents a case for treating time as a scarce asset and investing it where returns are highest.
Sackl is the founder of Wallace Biotechnologies and Terraform Technologies, both headquartered in Singapore, and writes regularly under the Golden Age banner.
In “Don’t Save Money,” he challenges the widely accepted idea that wealth is primarily the result of disciplined saving habits.
“Everyone gets the same line drummed into them young,” Sackl writes. “Spend less than you bring in, tuck a bit away every week, and you’ll be comfortable one day. Sure. Your mum and dad would approve. It’s also the slowest road to anywhere I know of.”
The essay argues that most people eventually reach a limit on how much they can cut from their expenses. Income, by contrast, can grow dramatically through entrepreneurship, innovation, and high-value work. Sackl suggests that many people underestimate the importance of assigning value to their own time.
His perspective comes from firsthand experience. Before launching his first company, Sackl secured $21,000 in advertising commitments by pitching businesses throughout Melbourne, despite the website still being in development. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he later created an all-in-one rapid antigen testing pen that generated $130 million in revenue.
“Saving has a floor. You trim, then trim more, and one day there’s nothing left to trim. Earning has no ceiling,” Sackl says in the essay. “All the money that ever made a real difference to me came out of the hours I spent earning, not a cent of it out of the hours I spent doing without.”
Long-term thinking across biotechnology and energy
Sackl says the ideas discussed in the essay are reflected in the design of his companies.
Wallace Biotechnologies is focused on improving health outcomes for both people and the environment over decades. Terraform Technologies is developing energy and resource systems intended to use fusion energy, particularly solar energy, to create abundant low-cost resources.
Both companies have been built around long-range planning and sustainable resource generation. Sackl believes individuals should apply similar thinking to their own schedules and priorities.
“Squeeze forty dollars off some bill and you’ve burned a clear hour doing it,” Sackl writes. “The forty you’d have made back by Friday anyway. The clear hour you don’t get back till you’ve slept.”
