3 Quotes to Change the Way You Think about Money

Image Source: The Street

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with money.

We usually resent those who have a lot of it, but spend our entire lives attempting to get it for ourselves.

We struggle, speculate, and squander during our prime wealth-building years, and then suffocate for the lack of ‘good enough’ money in our golden years.

You see, the biggest reason a vast majority of people never accumulate a substantial nest egg is because they don’t understand the nature of money or how it works.

Cash, like a person, is a living thing. When you wake up in the morning and go to work, you are selling a product to earn yourself a living. That product is ‘you’…your labour or hard work.

But it’s only when you realize that every morning your cash also wakes up and has the same potential to work as you do, you unlock a powerful key in your life.

Each rupee you save is like an employee. Over the course of time, as an owner, the goal is to make your employees work hard. Eventually, they will make enough money for you to hire more workers (cash).

Subsequently, when you have become truly successful, you no longer have to sell your own labour, but can live off of the labour of your cash and the assets you’ve built up using that cash.

However, it’s hard to understand and accept this truth amidst the daily grind of life.

But then, it’s only when you understand and accept this truth can you change the way you think about money.

Here are 3 quotes that can help you look at your love-hate relationship with money in a new light. These are simple sayings but carry great meaning as you would understand by the end of this post.

1. You don’t have to die in order to make a living.
As I’ve seen in life, if I work just hard and smart enough, money will come. Of course, I need a tinge of luck to accompany my labour, I don’t need to kill myself for some pieces of paper that can’t buy me happiness.

2. I used to have a drug problem, but now I have enough money.
Money can be addictive. Like a genie in a bottle, it has the ability to morph into any shape and help us make our most startling dreams come true. But then, it also leads us to dream anything (remember ‘needs versus wants’?), and then we get into the cycle of killing ourselves in the present to live a livelier future. Ironical!

3. The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any.
Well, that’s difficult because you already have the money to take care of your kids, and worse, your kids know that! 🙂

But it’s important for you as a parent to teach your children about the value of money – or they’d continue to believe that you can take out as much money as they want from the ATM!

So teach them about the proper use of money, the dangers of debt, and the power of compounding.

By the way, don’t just ‘teach’ them these critical lessons. Instead, ‘show’ them by practicing what you preach.

Change
Today is the festival of Makar Sankranti (also Lohri, Bihu, and Pongal), which signifies ‘change’ – moving forward in life, breaking with the past, and looking ahead to better times.

Why not take this pledge today to change how you think about your relationship with money?

At least I’m doing just that!