Making Money is Fun!
We sometimes get too serious about making money! We get stressed over the lack of it. We agonise over how to get more of it. And we lose sleep if we lose some of it!
Why does money (or the lack thereof) have such an impact on our lives?
Money makes the world go round
Let's face it, we live in a globalised world run largely on the capitalistic, free market model where the exchange of goods and services is determined by demand and supply...AT A PRICE! That price means we have to pay for goods and service we consume. One of my good toastmasters friends, Patrick Chang once quipped that his mother told him, "Money is not everything, but everything is money!"
How true! In the backdrop of rising consumer prices, we need to work or run a business to earn an income that supports our living standard and it boils down to how much we earn and how much we spend. But have you ever paused to wonder why money is giving you so much pressure in life? That it may even affect your health, your state of mind, your happiness?
Why are we unhappy over money
Part of the cause of our own unhappiness over money is the scarcity mentality. We grasp what relatively "little" we have tightly because we are afraid to lose it. We think that it's a zero sum game, every dollar I spend is a dollar I have less! That's true only if your tap of income cash flows has dried up. One of the greatest fallacies we have in life is that I need to have ______. You can fill in the blank yourself. Our needs and our wants are different but few of us realise that we are driven by our wants most of the time.
Think for your own life. Look at the watch you wear, the brand of shoes you have chosen, that haircut or hairstyle you have on your head. You chose the brand, the cost and the product or service. Was it to satisfy your need or your want or both? In our consumption culture, we rarely pause and think about separating our needs and wants and because of our inate drive to want more, we tend to spend beyond our means, giving us financial pressure, being a slave to our jobs and being a slave to money.
Choose to satisfy your need or your want
There is another way out. You can control your spending by controlling your thoughts and attitudes towards how money should be allocated to our needs vs our wants. Our wants are plentiful and insatiable. Our needs, on the other hand, are limited and can be satisfied within a moderate spending pattern. What it takes is the discipline and focus that can only come if you make a conscious effort to distinguish between a need and a want.
I am not advocating being a miser and depriving yourself the fruits of your labour and buying clothes to look and feel good, food that satisfies your hunger and yet gives you a pleasurable dining experience. It is not wrong to own that fancy car, watch or home. What I am advocating is a consciousness, that ability to decide and not let your own inate desires drive you to consume. This consciousness comes gradually, through slowly coming to the realisation that, at whatever income levels and whatever wealth, if you cannot differentiate between needs and wants, then you will find that you need to drive yourself to that income level that feeds this insatiable desire, this never-ending cycle of consumption.
Save and invest, there are no shortcuts without high risks
Making money should be fun if you are not under the constant pressure to pay bills and expenses driven by conscious and unconscious wants. You can have abundance in your life if you take steps to prioritise your spending and to eliminate debt. Use your hard-earned income to save and invest consistently. To invest in genuine investments that yield slow but steady returns for the future. Overtime, you realise that making money can be fun because the more your earn and invest, the more your passive income grows and works hard for you! You are working hard to build up investible savings that also works hard for you 24x7x365.
Financial independence and security is important. But it comes not just purely from earning more money or buying lottery tickets. It comes also from knowing what you want to spend and knowing the consequences of each spending decision.
May you find that knowledge so that you can enjoy the process of making money!
Be well and prosper.
Why does money (or the lack thereof) have such an impact on our lives?
Money makes the world go round
Let's face it, we live in a globalised world run largely on the capitalistic, free market model where the exchange of goods and services is determined by demand and supply...AT A PRICE! That price means we have to pay for goods and service we consume. One of my good toastmasters friends, Patrick Chang once quipped that his mother told him, "Money is not everything, but everything is money!"
How true! In the backdrop of rising consumer prices, we need to work or run a business to earn an income that supports our living standard and it boils down to how much we earn and how much we spend. But have you ever paused to wonder why money is giving you so much pressure in life? That it may even affect your health, your state of mind, your happiness?
Why are we unhappy over money
Part of the cause of our own unhappiness over money is the scarcity mentality. We grasp what relatively "little" we have tightly because we are afraid to lose it. We think that it's a zero sum game, every dollar I spend is a dollar I have less! That's true only if your tap of income cash flows has dried up. One of the greatest fallacies we have in life is that I need to have ______. You can fill in the blank yourself. Our needs and our wants are different but few of us realise that we are driven by our wants most of the time.
Think for your own life. Look at the watch you wear, the brand of shoes you have chosen, that haircut or hairstyle you have on your head. You chose the brand, the cost and the product or service. Was it to satisfy your need or your want or both? In our consumption culture, we rarely pause and think about separating our needs and wants and because of our inate drive to want more, we tend to spend beyond our means, giving us financial pressure, being a slave to our jobs and being a slave to money.
Choose to satisfy your need or your want
There is another way out. You can control your spending by controlling your thoughts and attitudes towards how money should be allocated to our needs vs our wants. Our wants are plentiful and insatiable. Our needs, on the other hand, are limited and can be satisfied within a moderate spending pattern. What it takes is the discipline and focus that can only come if you make a conscious effort to distinguish between a need and a want.
I am not advocating being a miser and depriving yourself the fruits of your labour and buying clothes to look and feel good, food that satisfies your hunger and yet gives you a pleasurable dining experience. It is not wrong to own that fancy car, watch or home. What I am advocating is a consciousness, that ability to decide and not let your own inate desires drive you to consume. This consciousness comes gradually, through slowly coming to the realisation that, at whatever income levels and whatever wealth, if you cannot differentiate between needs and wants, then you will find that you need to drive yourself to that income level that feeds this insatiable desire, this never-ending cycle of consumption.
Save and invest, there are no shortcuts without high risks
Making money should be fun if you are not under the constant pressure to pay bills and expenses driven by conscious and unconscious wants. You can have abundance in your life if you take steps to prioritise your spending and to eliminate debt. Use your hard-earned income to save and invest consistently. To invest in genuine investments that yield slow but steady returns for the future. Overtime, you realise that making money can be fun because the more your earn and invest, the more your passive income grows and works hard for you! You are working hard to build up investible savings that also works hard for you 24x7x365.
Financial independence and security is important. But it comes not just purely from earning more money or buying lottery tickets. It comes also from knowing what you want to spend and knowing the consequences of each spending decision.
May you find that knowledge so that you can enjoy the process of making money!
Be well and prosper.
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