Last night I was with friends and we were talking about money and jobs.
As the conversation progressed, I kept thinking about how I (and others) think about money. Having a healthy perspective of, and relationship with, money, is key to living in today’s society.
Many of us want to do altruistic things… things that will help and bless others. Usually, this either takes money to do the things we have identified, or it takes money to pay our bills (house, food, utilities, etc.) while we do those things. You just can’t escape the idea that we need money to enable us to help/bless others.
Some of us don’t care about that stuff, but we want to experience some of the luxuries of life. That obviously takes money.
Some of us can’t even think about luxuries, we are just trying to figure out how to not lose our home. We feel like we are drowning… like all is hopeless, and we are out of control. We just want money to pay our bills and be okay again.
Our financial problems are multiplied when we have an unhealthy perspective of money. I attribute much of the unhealthy perspective with one of these two things:
(a) The misquote: Money is the root of all evil, supposedly from The Bible. Actually, the verse reads the LOVE of money is the root of all evil. Money isn’t evil, but if we LOVE money (more than God, ourselves, and others) then we do things to get or keep money without consideration for others. Please don’t perpetuate the myth/lie that MONEY is the root of all evil.
(b) Not having enough money. Not having enough money is like not having enough oxygen. It’s necessary to have… Money is how we function in, and as a, society. If we don’t have enough, we cut corners, which can cause serious health problems (illness, etc.). Not having enough money causes us to think about money in an unhealthy way.
Two contrasting phrases come to mind when I think about money: scarcity mentality and abundance mentality. Do you believe that there is enough to go around, and that you can somehow, ethically and morally, have enough, or more, money? If you do, you have an abundance mentality (with regard to money).
Do you believe that having too much money is evil, wasteful? If so, why? What is the root of your belief?
I worked with a guy who wanted to save the world, especially helping people in third world countries. From where I sat, his problem was that he didn’t have any money to do what he wanted. If he were better at his job, he could have changed his financial situation and been much more empowered to help others. Having a bad understanding of how to make money, and probably an unhealthy perspective of money in general, made it so that he could NOT change the world in the way he wanted to.
I can go on and on, but my main question for you is this: DO YOU have a healthy perspective of money?