"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."
- Thoreau
goes beyond money and assets. Wealth is an attitude, a skill and a way of living. It’s about peace of mind, flexibility and generosity of spirit.
Research shows that more money doesn’t buy happiness. Once you have enough money for the basic necessities of a good life, more money tends to bring little additional and meaningful happiness and can even bring its own hassles and additional risks and responsibilities. Nevertheless, wealth provides freedom, choice and the ability to purchase life enhancing experiences and adventures such as overseas travel, inspirational adventure activities and the time and resources for advanced education.
In this and upcoming blog posts, I want to share with you some ideas and life enhancing strategies about wealthing your life. I hope you enjoy them and find them useful.
About Wealthing
The key to wealthing your life is to bypass the greed for mere money and instead build skills and strategies into your life for creating true wealth. Of course, I could write a whole book on Wealth Creating and many people have already done so. I highly recommend you read some.
However, I must stress that what follows is general life advice and in no way constitutes financial advice. For specific financial advice, pertinent to your life, personal situation and requirements, you should always seek professional advice from a registered Financial Advisor. With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s explore some tips, distinctions and thinking tools that support wealth creating.
Let me tell you a story...
Using Money
I was at a local produce market where I spied a flower stall filled with beautiful bouquets. “I know”, I thought “I’ll buy my beloved some beautiful flowers, she’ll love them”.
Now you see, since I teach and run workshops on negotiation I always like to practice my skills and techniques whenever I can. So I walked over to the vendor and started negotiating.
“How much discount will you give me now, for those two bunches of flowers, and make such a great customer like me, really happy?” I asked with a smile. With a cheeky glint in his eye, the vendor smoothly responded, “Ah, my friend, I can see you like a bargain. However, my prices are as low as I can go. So there’s no discount available. However, if you buy the flowers now, I can give you a bonus that is worth much more than a few dollars. How does that sound?”
We bartered back and forth for a few more rounds, as I attempted to determine how firm he was on not dropping his price and to find out what this ‘bonus’ was.
“I’ll give you some very powerful advice as the bonus” he said. “Advice that has such value it will make you much more money than you could ever get from the few dollars you could bargain on these flowers.” “And I’ll tell you what, if you don’t feel the advice is worth it, then I’ll give you the flowers for free. But I know you’ll see how powerful the idea I’ll share with you is.”
He had me very intrigued now. He’d done his negotiating job well. So I capitulated, and agreed to buy the flowers at the original price and waited anxiously for him to wrap the flowers and share with me his sage advice.
“Ok”, he said, handing me the flowers and taking my money. “When you first came over to my stall, I heard you say ‘I think I’ll spend a few dollars on these beautiful flowers for my beloved’, is that not true?”
“Yes”, I replied, “I do believe you are right.”
“Well”, he asked, “Once you have spent your money, what has happened to it?”
I pondered… what does he mean? What happens to money once you’ve spent it? I looked quizzically at him.
“It’s simple”, he smiled, “It’s gone! When you spend your money, it’s gone. You don’t have it any more.”
“However”, he continued, “if you ‘Use’ your money, rather than spending it, what happens?”
I looked at him, thinking… “I guess when you use money, you have created value with it and you still have the value”, I replied.
“Yes!”, he laughed, “you’ve got it! When you find yourself about to purchase something, ask yourself: will buying this use my hard earned money wisely or will it merely be spending it? Will this be the best use of my money? Do I really need to spend this money?”
“If you follow this powerful advice, you’ll find yourself generating true wealth. Your purchases will add value to your life and you won’t waste money spending it on frivolous purchases.” His face lit up with the biggest of smiles, as he asked, “Now tell me, isn’t that powerful advice, and isn’t it worth more than a couple of dollars saved on these beautiful flowers!”
Use money, don’t spend it!
He was right! It was fantastic advice: “Use money, don’t spend it!” What a powerful thinking tool. I thanked him profusely. He had added another useful distinction to my understanding of how to generate wealth in my life.
I truly suggest you commit this thinking tool to memory and use it and practice it every time you consider making a purchase. The tool orients you to questions of purpose, outcomes and value. Do you really need to make the purchase, will it be the best use of your money, will it add true wealth to your life? If not, then don’t make the purchase, save your money.
Use this life enhancing tool and you’ll find yourself growing and creating more wealth in your life. And stay tuned for some more life enhancing ideas, thoughts and distinctions on wealthing your life in upcoming blog posts.
Thinking Tool – Using Your Money Wisely
Use money, don’t spend it.
