Are You Making Enough Money?

I suspect most people feel they need more money — not just to support their current lifestyle, but to provide for the one they aspire to.

Despite the risk of sounding politically incorrect or money grubbing: You want to make the big bucks. You don’t have to aspire to being a 1%’er, but you should be okay with making lots of money.

There is a spiritual snobbery some people take on about money. But really, to say you don’t like money would be to not like nearly anything — because money supplies nearly everything.

Think back to your own first awareness of money.  One executive told me, “As a kid I lived in California, and my dad and I would drive around Beverly Hills. He would point out wealthy peoples’ homes and tell me, ‘Thieves live there.’  That’s how I viewed people with money.”

We all have attitudes formed in our childhood about relationships about almost everything in life: the opposite sex, food, beauty, religion, money. Regardless of the subject,  it’s an outlook you can change with your own free will.

So let’s debunk some myths and mistruths we were taught while growing up that need to be corrected now that we’re adults:

…money is an acceptable topic of conversation

…money can buy happiness

…money does make the world go around

…money is not the root of all evil

…do what you love and money will follow only if others love it too

…if you do have health, kindness, balance, and money, you do have everything

…both smart and dumb people can make money

…rich people are not bad people

…people who say they don’t care about money either don’t have enough or have too much

I believe man was born to grow rich by using God-given abilities: intelligence, thoroughness, right-reasoning, promptness, tenacity, patience, labor. (When Moses came down from the mountain he did not bring a commandment, “Thous shalt not make money.”)

By using your abilities and making money, you give yourself power, leisure, solitude, and liberty.

It is true that money carries an assortment of distinct and powerful emotions for people, both good and bad. But that does not negate it’s role as a basic, important, and understandable system. For better or worse, money is the resource, now and in the future, that ties society together.

You can choose to spend it, save it, or share it —  but first you have to make it.