We hear it all the time: money is not important, money is the root of all evil, money cannot buy happiness and so on. We've heard about it since childhood. Parents, teachers and adults in general kept telling us to the point that most of us believe it today. And tomorrow we'll tell our kids the same.
A high-paying secure job
We've spent 13+ years in school, then we work for the next 50 years of our lives, 37 hours a week, for someone else. We do this, and we never stop to wonder. Wonder why? Why do we work the best hours of our day, in the best years of our lives, just to end up in some nursing home waiting to die, having never actually lived. Or if we have lived, we didn’t do so for the 70+ years we’ve been alive. We might have good memories from our childhood and from a fractional part of our adulthood. The majority of our life though, had no meaning. Is that what we want?
What do we have to show for it? Nothing, because we decided not to care about money. But reality is that we do care about money. Your teachers do. Your parents do. All adults do. We say that it’s not important, yet we cringe when the government is making life more expensive, or when our bosses do not give us the raise we want, or when rent increases, or when the bills pile up, and we have to stay home for the rest of the month.
There are multiple ways to gains financial security, but most people think “a high paying secure job” is the only way. But a secure job does not exist. There is always a chance that you will be fired for various reasons, that you will become unable to work because of medical conditions or accidents, that the job itself becomes obsolete as technology progresses etc. The only secure thing is your mind and what you teach it. Teach this secure asset of yours how to make money, how to keep the money you make, how to get back up when you fall to the ground financially and how to seize your own life.
When we are unsatisfied with our financial situation, we do not change our lifestyles, teach ourselves financial literacy, and plan our finances with clear goals. Instead we get angry. Angry at our boss for not giving us our raise. Angry at the government for screwing the middle class over and over again. Angry at our spouse or kids for taking too long baths. We never get angry at ourselves for deciding that money is not important!
Money is a magnifier
Even if we got that raise. Even if it were a huge-ass fat motherfucker raise. We would still be miserable after a little time. Why? Because our spending habits rise too. The more money we get between our hands the more we spend. The more money we get between our hands, the bigger house we buy. The more money we get, the more debt we take!
However, money is a magnifier. If you don't consider money important and you have bad spending habits, more money will hurt you. Because the more you have, the more you will spend and the bigger loans banks will offer you, thus getting you into bigger debt. If you are good with money, if you embrace it, love it, understand it, you will increase your cash flow further. You will create money with money. You will never be short of it. This will grant you possibilities and freedom in life that most people can't even imagine. Whatever relationship you have with money, the amount you have will magnify both its strengths and weaknesses.
The other path
The other path, is a way of life, that most people do not consider. After all, that lifestyle is reserved to a privileged few, right? Wrong!
Doing what you want to do and making a living off of it, has never been more accessible than today. The internet is a powerful tool for those that learn to use it right. Nowadays people earn money doing odd things. Like destroying iPhone's and putting it on YouTube or writing a blog about cats. If they can earn money doing that, how odd must your passion be, that you cannot make money doing it?
What all these people have in common is that they are financial literate, and they see a moneymaking opportunity when it shows itself. If you gain this knowledge, you can do it too. Learn to the business behind the activity, not the activity itself. It is not the cat stories that make money in the cat blog. It is the cat products that are mentioned, the ads on the page and the affiliate links provided that make the money. If you have a big enough audience, no matter in what medium or why they are interested in you, you can make money. If you can create a business out of anything, you will never be anxious about financial security. You can loose it all, and you will be fine. Because tomorrow is another day, and you will make that money back. If you ever reach this point in your life, that is when you truly can say
"money does not matter".