Money Is Stored Time
The most helpful perspective of looking at money is stored time. You can exchange money for time or time for money. It's like a balance. To make money you need to invest time. And you get back time by spending money. That can be time saved by hiring someone to do something for you. Even when buying a nice painting you are buying the stored time of a painter(not to mention the talent).
This perspective is helpful as it gives a clear motivation. You would want to leverage your time to make a lot of money. This can be working efficiently at things where you exchange your time for money like a job or freelance work. But such things only scale linearly. True leverage is owning a piece of something. Something valuable. Something exponential. This can be taking the time to build products that people want, invest or have equity.
On the other side of the equation, you want to make sure you are not doing anything stupid with your time. Let's say you spend 1 hour cooking to save money. Is the value of the saved money less or more than the value of 1 hour of your time? Have you ever thought about it? Cooking for fun or just as a hangout with friends or lack of healthier alternatives is a different value proposition. One that you might be more than happy to make.
Thinking of your time and money as an interchangeable value store gives a framework that you can leverage in your favour.