MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, June 25, 2026 – Deep-tech founder James Sackl is urging Australians to rethink the financial lessons they have been taught for decades. In a newly published article, Sackl argues that pursuing higher-value opportunities is often more effective than concentrating on saving small amounts of money over time.
Sackl leads Wallace Biotechnologies and Terraform Technologies, two Singapore-domiciled ventures, and publishes essays through the Golden Age section of his website.
His latest piece, titled “Don’t Save Money,” takes aim at the common message that financial security is built primarily through disciplined saving.
“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 reducing expenses has natural limits, whereas the ability to increase income is far less constrained. Sackl contends that people should spend more effort building valuable skills, creating opportunities, and protecting their time from low-return activities.
His argument is rooted in personal experience. At twenty-one, he generated $21,000 in advance advertising sales for a website that existed only as an idea, securing customers before writing any code. Years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, he developed a rapid antigen testing pen that went on to produce $130 million in sales.
“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.”
Building businesses around long-term value
The same philosophy can be seen across Sackl’s current ventures.
Wallace Biotechnologies is pursuing technologies aimed at improving long-term human and environmental health outcomes. Terraform Technologies focuses on large-scale energy and resource production using fusion energy, with particular emphasis on harnessing the sun.
Sackl says both businesses prioritize future resource abundance over short-term outputs, reflecting his broader view that time is the most valuable asset individuals possess.
“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.”
