Four Things ‘The Social Network’ Taught Me about Money

This is a guest post from the guys behind MoneySuperMarket.com.

BASED on the novel ‘The Accidental Billionaires’, The Social Network is a movie about money and success – and the effect it has on friendships.

David Fincher’s film documents the founding of Facebook and was critically and commercially acclaimed when it was released last year. This year it has won a deluge of Oscar and Bafta nominations in the run up to the awards season.

Watching the film recently (it was just released on Blu Ray and DVD in the UK), it occurred to me that the film serves as a cautionary tale, and that there might be a few things we can learn from it – not least, about money.

With that in mind, here are four things The Social Network taught me about money.

1. Don’t borrow money from friends

Although it will never happen on the same scale as that portrayed in The Social Network, borrowing money from your friends can change the dynamics between pals.

In the movie, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin lends the website’s creator Mark Zuckerberg $19,000 to get the project started. The film then depicts Saverin’s gradual phasing out of the company, eventually leading to him take legal action against his former friend to claim back the Facebook shares he believes he is entitled to.

Borrowing from a friend can make the burden of debt feel greater, as you care about the person you are borrowing from. Similarly, lending money to a friend can create an uneasy atmosphere when it comes to collecting the debts.

2. Make investments

Though the film portrays the ugly aftermath of the falling out between Zuckerberg and Saverin, Saverin reportedly owns a 5 per cent share in the website as of January 2011, worth around $2.5 billion.

By my calculations, this means Saverin (eventually) got back 131579-times the amount he invested. Obviously this was a once-in-a-generation opportunity, but even if you just open a savings account and reap the interest your savings accumulate, you will be making money from your money.

3. You have to spend money….

It’s a huge cliché of course, but it does seem to be that you have to spend money to make money.

In the movie, Mark Zuckerberg asks Eduardo Saverin for more money for server upgrades to deal with the kinds of traffic he knew the site would generate – acknowledging the reputational damage that could be done to the site if it was offline because it couldn’t deal with the numbers.

Of course Zuckerberg’s traffic forecasts were accurate, and the rest – as they say – is history.

4. Money isn’t everything

Of course that’s a hollow sentiment if you’re sitting on a behemoth like Facebook, but there are constant allusions to the fact that Zuckerberg didn’t care about money when he was creating Facebook. Instead the film portrays a character desperate for friendship and acceptance from his peers.

It’s great to be financially stable, but we’re not all going to be .com billionaires like Mr. Zuckerberg. Value your health, and relative prosperity compared to people in other parts of the world.