Thoughts on Money

I spent the day involved in activities whose goal was making money. When I got home, ready to relax and not think about money I got a call from a friend who wanted to talk to me about money. He had just suffered what to him was a major financial setback and he wanted to share his pain a little. He is presently living on social security. He gets five hundred sixty two per month. He was expecting to get another two hundred fifty bonus this month as part of Obama's stimulus package. When he got his check, though, the $250.00 had been deducted because of a student loan he had taken and not paid back over twenty years ago. He really needed and was counting on that two hundred fifty.

My friend believes that "money is god". It is the most important thing in life and that if he had enough money his life would be perfect. He believes that money would enable him to do whatever he wanted and this would enable him to always be happy. As much as he desires money, though, he has done very little in his life to get any. He has no money at all, spends every cent he gets and works as little as possible.

There is something about the attitude that money is god that rubs me the wrong way. It has always seemed to me that there has to be more to life than making and spending money. However, if I am honest with myself I cannot understate the significance of money or deny how important it is to me. Matter of fact, when I got home tonight, wanting to relax I was thinking about playing poker. Poker would be no fun at all if it wasn't for money.

I don't think that money by itself is the answer to life's problems. I do believe that developing a healthy and balanced attitude towards money is a key to happiness. This is not a simple thing, though. I find myself constantly calculating in my mind my financial situation. I am always considering 1- how much money I have, 2-how to get more, 3-how much more I will be definitely getting, and 4-what to do with my money. Even when I had more money than I needed I still thought about these four things. My level of addiction to the these thoughts about money is high.

On one hand I can't control the endless stream of thoughts about money and my finances. On the other hand putting too much emphasis on money doesn't seem right . I wake up one day with the motivation to make a lot of money and with the atttiude that I can and will do whatever it takes. The next day it seems meaningless to be wasting my time making money when I presently I have enough to survive and why should I worry about the future. I don't beat myself up about this conflict, though, because from my observations of other people this is normal. The fact that I am aware of this battle helps me in dealing with it.

I don't think that there is a correct attitude towards money. I don't think that there are even general guidelines worth following. These guidelines are artificically created by people who want to influence us for there own reasons. We come to believe that our attitudes towards money are our own when in fact they are a result of our being programmed. It is so easy to get trapped in a lifestyle that has been created by following the beliefs, atttitudes, and goals of others, and that is not really based on a clear understanding of what we really want. This is one of the big challenges that we all face. What is important, I believe, is that we try first to understand our present attitudes and behavior in regard to money and then honestly determine what it is that we really want in our lives and how we can use money to best achieve these goals. We might be surprised by what we learn.