Written by With all of the changes that are happening in my career life, mo
ney has been on the forefront of my mind. What I am realizing as I get older (and hopefully wiser), is that how money affects our daily lives is entirely dependent on how we think about money. For most of my life, money has been a constant source of stress. I have typically held the belief that money is something that is always out of reach, and there will never be enough to pay the bills.
Like most of us, I was not given any kind of education on money management. The education I received was as follows:
- Make as much money as you can, so you can buy as much and as often as you can. (This of course was re-iterated to me a hundred times a day with every commercial or advertisement I saw)
- Don’t worry if you can’t afford what you want. That’s what credit cards are for! (This of course was exacerbated by the “instant” credit I received while in College… and horribly broke).
- Money is a means to an end to achieve the “American” lifestyle of a big house, a new car every three years, and enough gadgets to compete with your neighbors. This… well this is a Keeping up with the Jones mentality that sadly my family and many other people in my life seem to have held on to.
This is a terrible money management plan! If we allow ourselves to get into this lifestyle, we can’t get out! At the depths of my debt, I was using all my available money to pay my credit card bills each month. The only problem with that was since all my money went to credit card companies, I ended up having to use my credit cards to pay for food, gas, doctors appointments, a new tire, etc. I was treading water. I did this for the first 15 years of my adult life. I operated under the belief that participating in the working stiff life was what you did, and spending everything I had and then some was the way of the world.
Then I woke up and I changed my thoughts about money. I got out of debt. I let go of some of the material things that owned me, and I found an appreciation for activities and experiences that don’t require spending money to enjoy. I realized that there was more to life for me than the 9 to 5 routine, and I didn’t want to spend my life working for… stuff. My new belief system is as follows:
- If I am always working for money, I am never free.
- If I don’t have the money for something, I won’t buy it.
- What is more important, a bunch of things I don’t need, or my life? Because if I am running a race to acquire the great American lifestyle, then I’m giving up precious time in my life to work.
What these beliefs have translated into, is a new system of money management in my life. I no longer buy stuff just for the sake of buying it. In fact, the weekend pastime of shopping is nothing more than an absurdity to me. I have opened savings accounts, money market accounts, and an investment portfolio to go along with my 401K through my job. Every available amount of money I have after I pay my bills goes into one of those accounts. Compound interest is now my friend, not my enemy.
Money is a necessity of life. We can either learn to make it work for us, or continue to work for it. The changes that I made, to educate myself, to find a new way of looking at money, did not come until I changed my perception of money. There are some great resources out there. If you’re grinding away at your job to pay for all your stuff, and finding it impossible to get ahead, educate yourself. There’s a better way. Here are some great places to start:
- Learn some great ways to reduce your debt and save money at No Credit Needed
- At Bargaineering, you can find out about investing, saving, and more
- Get some tips on changing your personal finance future from The Happy Rock
- Wisebread makes finance, debt reduction, and frugality seem like fun
- And finally, for those of you who are really ready to make some seriously drastic changes and get out of debt fast, try Early Retirement Extreme. He has a great 21 step program.
- Check out this post and some other great finance and money resources at Kidmoney, intelligent speculator and fatguyskinnywallet carnivals!
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