Our ability to cultivate inner peace and our relationship with money are inexorably linked to one another. For that reason, money and its many impacts on our lives will be a key area of exploration on this site. Like many people my relationship with money and its effects on my life has been a source of stress for me. As the years have gone on my relationship with money and my ability to manage it has improved so I’m glad to share my thoughts and experiences with you.
Over time there are a number of money related themes that I will explore but it’s important to start out by highlighting an important big idea with respect to money (and wealth in general). The blind pursuit of money just for the sake of accumulating great wealth is one of the surest ways to not find inner peace. Because while money allows you to take care of yourself and your family, and affords you access to luxuries that could give you some happiness, the pitfalls of money increase as you accumulate more of it. One key pitfall of the pursuit of money is the tendency of people to become obsessed with accumulating more of it. In fact, many of the world’s wealthiest people have been known to be obsessed with the preservation of their wealth.
Steve Jobs was set to be fabulously wealthy when Apple Computer went public but it’s known that he refused to allow shares of Apple stock to be granted to certain early employees, in addition to the fact that as a multi-millionaire he refused to pay the mother of his child and she had to live on welfare for a time after the child was born. I previously mentioned how the world’s richest man (at times), Warren Buffett, drives a used car and eats McDonald’s for breakfast. Oil magnate J. Paul Getty was at one time the world’s richest man and he was notoriously stingy, including only agreeing to pay a multi-million dollar ransom for his grandson up to the level of tax deductibility! It’s quite possible that Buffett is the exception as he seems to be quite content but Jobs and Getty, and many other super rich people do not seem to have had great inner peace in their lives.
Of course, we should have such problems as having so much money that we don’t know what to do with it. From a practical perspective I think it’s important for 99.9% of people to simply focus on building a healthy relationship with money. This can be achieved, in part, by deliberately assigning money a level of importance in our lives relative to other things. As such, thinking about money is as important as how it’s earned and what you do with earned money.
Some things to ponder include the following. Is money more important than your relationships? Is money more important than your integrity? Is money more important than your health? For many years of my life I didn’t ponder these questions and they were never raised by people in my life who were in a position to teach me things. So I had to learn through (painful at times) trial and error, which in turn lead me to seek out ways to improve my relationship with money. This is important because money is something that, like it or not, is a central part of all of our lives.
We must also acknowledge that money does not protect us from life’s many pitfalls. Not too long ago there was a time in my life when I was at a peak of my personal wealth, with a large house in a great area, a mid six-figure retirement account and no debt besides my mortgage. At the same time my marriage was headed for divorce, I was stressed out all the time and couldn’t sleep at night. So while I was at peak wealth I was not anywhere near my peak inner peace.
Finally, in addition to our relationship with money we must consider how money affects people close to us, especially our immediate family and spousal relationships. Because even if you have a good relationship with money, they might not. That difference can lead to family turmoil and arguments over money. It’s all very complicated, but we start with awareness that money is an important part of lives. We know that we must learn about money, and we must develop a healthy money philosophy that enhances our inner peace. With that in mind we can start to make things better.
In The Midst Of A Journey 