Key Takeaways
- Just as you can have healthy and unhealthy relationships with food, the same can happen with money.
- Unhealthy money relationships involve secrecy, carelessness, and leverage, whereas healthy relationships view money as a tool for enjoyment, needs, and wants.
- Check in with your own money relationships to see if you have any unhealthy ones you can replace with healthy ones.
Don’t you just love those studies out there that said coffee was unhealthy, and then it was healthy, and that chocolate was unhealthy, now it’s healthy? I don’t know, there’s so much back-and-forth on the health of food, I can’t ever keep it straight! Let’s look at money as being healthy or unhealthy, in terms of your relationship with it.
First, let’s look at the unhealthy side:
- Secrecy – One of the things we see around money sometimes is this secrecy about it. For whatever reason, maybe there’s a shame associated with it, or there’s something being taught to you that you are never supposed to talk about money.
- Carelessness – Maybe you don’t care about spending money. You spend it everywhere, and it doesn’t really matter to you what you spend it on. There’s no accountability, no intentionality, nothing, just spend it if you’ve got it.
- Leverage – This one can be very cruel. You’ll see people using money as leverage sometimes. It’s the quid pro quo, the “If you do this, I’ll give you this money.” It makes you not want to deal with these kinds of people because you know it’s always going to be about money.
The healthy relationships around money view money as a tool:
- A tool in life – We live in a capitalist, free market society, and money is the medium with which we buy goods and services to live our lives.
- For enjoyment – As a tool, money can buy different experiences that are fun, that help others, and can be given to others to watch them have the enjoyment of using that money.
- For needs – You use it to pay for all the necessities in life, to include the basics such as food, housing, and clothing.
- For wants – With the money you have left over from paying for your necessities, you can buy the things you want, in a healthy manner. This means for things that aren’t causing you addictions or problems and so forth.
When you look at money, check in with what you are doing with it, assess that to see if you’ve got any of these unhealthy relationships with money, and try to replace them with healthy ones. It will make your life a lot simpler when you’re dealing with money and can even improve the relationships you have with everyone around you.
Until next time, enjoy!
Gary