Some people make terrible decisions regarding money. Relentlessly, they work hard to embrace a mistake after mistake. Nothing can stop them from squandering. They are wandering in the mist, passing by with their fortune, and guess what – they are in the majority.
I’m not talking about compulsive buying, gambling, spiraling debts, or mounting vulnerability to fraud. It’s all about how they treat their relationship with money, their beliefs about getting rich, and family stories about the money they share. It is the whole mindset and their approach to savings, spending, and wealth.
At home, you learn how to fold your clothes, at school, you learn how to calculate the triangle area, but nobody shows you how to approach money. Why? Because most parents don’t care. They are burdened with paying the mortgage or school fees, always late, always in debt while the savings are scarce. Unless you are fortunate, no one tells you anymore how to seduce a woman or harness money. Or the Internet does. Wealth is a quality of those lucky bastards smiling from glamorous pictures. Right?
I’m going to show you briefly the missing knowledge your father may have forgotten to reveal. It is mostly about the attitude with money; about the relation. You better get it before you eagerly throw yourself into the world of deferred payments, stock markets, or dazzling Instagram fortunes.
Ok, here we go. Read it thoroughly.
A. “Everything has a price, not everything has value.” (1)
It used to be that price and value were closely related – marching hand to hand. The exchange was equivalent and mostly based on the amount of work invested. The craft and trade used to be all about it. It is past now; we detached ourselves from the concept of fair exchange quite long ago.
Salespeople want you to concentrate on price. As long as you elaborate on price, you focus on the wrong end of the problem, and you likely miss the whole point. You forget to ask yourself a question: what is the actual value. Is it really for me, do I need it at all, what stories am I told to induce my internal desire, are those stories true or just alluring. Do they bypass my intellectual judgment (common sense) and target only my emotions? Do I want to make my decision while I am driven by emotions?.
Marketers are relentless in their effort to convince you that you utterly need what they offer. Unless you break the spell, you buy what they serve. And if you meekly listen to those whisperers- you’ll most likely get a story about appealing mirage. At the same time, the real value is transferred from you to those who offer the tales. You get the price, but what about value?
So ask yourself questions. Ask them yourself as often as you can, the best before you purchase. Once you correctly identify the value – you can turn your attention to the price. Not the other way around.
B. “Price is what you pay, value is what you get.” (2)
It is simply not enough to ask yourself, can I afford it? Because the basic answer most of the time is: sure, yes. People seldom ask themself: am I giving here more than I am getting? What do I lose if I transfer a part of my wealth to someone else, what is my real cost? Is it about money or time it took to earn them? Is it healthy for my future wealth? What am I actually sacrificing here?
Most people quite easily trade boring numbers (the price is boring) for dreams of how they would feel when they get something they desire. How can such thinking be in balance?
I like the notion of price to how often used ratio. For example, if you pay 5.000 dollars for a watch, it seems expensive compared to 500 for a bike. When you assume that you use this watch every day for the next five years or so, and the bike will be used for seven days a year only – you may adjust the price calculation. And very likely, you will receive quite different results.
The price may stop you, but it is the value that moves you. The energy comes from value, never money. The money itself only captures and conveys energy. This energy is stilled and waits to be freed and used – and that is the role of value.
Price is prone to change in time more than value. If something has real value, it’s usually solid over time. It stays. There are exceptions, like when you need something on accident, but the rule applies in most cases. Price changes, quite often, because it is whimsy in nature. But if you master the ability of deferred gratification (it can be developed, especially early in life) – you are in control. You can choose your moment, pick the best time to buy. It is the quality of good hunters possess just as well.
Time control also has another advantage. Your emotions and desires shift. If you can’t change the price – you certainly can use the time to examine the value and see if it remains useful. Remember? Some of the things you fancied or desired before have little or no value to you now. Time can reveal hollow or outdated value estimations.
But what if the price hunt becomes your life? Then you are doomed. Hunting for great deals may be a joyful ride, a captivating one. It’s immensely engaging. It is a rollercoaster of pleasures. But think whether its fun to ride on a rollercoaster for more than 2 hours, what about a lifetime?
Compulsive spending breaks the relation with money. The energy invested in earning money is wasted. A wealth squandered on temporary whims exposes the lack of profound purpose.
C. ” Each person’s valuation of money is based on the stories we tell ourselves about it. …So yes, there’s money. But before there’s money, there’s a story. It turns out that once you change the story, the money changes too.” (3)
“We tell ourselves a story about how we got that money, what it says about us, what we’re going to do with it and how other people judge us.” (3)
I would say most of those stories, that drive you in life were born in your family, they sank in, and you just repeat them with minor modifications. But when you grow old, you should be able to hear and recognize new stories – this is how you learn. Sometimes you have to rewrite or increment the old ones to let them continuously support you and help you build personal wealth. The problem is people stick to what they learned at home.
What if you were born in a small village and moved your life to a big city? How many of those stories will hold? Some probably will stay true, but even good stories become obsolete. Outdated stories about money ones may drag you down. The good thing is, as we grow, we have an enormous capacity to incorporate new ones – these, that will change us.
Some stories were never for everybody, like the one: use only the means you have hard-earned. If you follow it thoughtfully, you would probably never accept a concept of leverage. The one that helped many to grow business and fortunes faster (but zeroed many savings just as well).
We live different lives now. Technology went wild; we observe the emergence of financial products tailored nearly to an individual. Great opportunities emerge, the boats sail west again and again, and new fortunes need new stories. Stories are the new gold.
The remarkable thing is that stories about how to make money are not the most important anymore. In many countries, almost anyone is able o make enough of it to lead a safe and comfortable life. The new stories are about our life story, how we came to wealth, how we can dent the world with it, how it became a core definition of who we are and our legacy.
Last but not least. There are essential stories about how our money might disappear or shrink or be taken away. Such stories root deeply in our fears and sense of security. They are particularly important because they describe and define how we function in case of failure.
If you are under the strong influence of such stories – they may cringe you, limit your ability to invest, and build wealth. They will always focus you on the downside, diminishing the evaluation of potential gains. Every time an opportunity emerges, you may hear that playback stopping you from taking reasonable risks. It means acting below your capacity.
There is another lurking danger you should be aware of – a possession. Sometimes you possess money, and sometimes it possesses you. If we identify ourselves with money, then a loss of money is about losing a part of ourselves.
The blog post is continued in part 2.
(1) So popular I can not attribute it entirely. Likely Oscar Wilde
(2) Warren Buffett
(3) Seth Godin