Money, money, money – is it funny?
Listening to the ABBA number “money, money, money must be funny in a rich man’s world…” got me thinking about the money habits that we develop over time. We rarely consciously think and develop our money habits, more often than not, these are strongly influenced by our family and peers.
Habits which stay with us for a life time and over the course of time define whether we can get off the tread mill at 45 or stay there till 65.
When you think about it, money is actually a limited resource available to us after putting reasonably long hours and comes to us usually at monthly intervals or irregular intervals when we are entrepreneurs.
Managing money is a habit, and like we all know it takes 3 months to get into a new good habit and probably 3 days to get into a not so great habit. Do a rain check now on what are your money habits – do you SPEND and SAVE what is left or SAVE and SPEND what is left?
We do love to measure, don’t we?! We measure our success by our income growth, our children’s success by their academic track record. Have you ever considered, how often do we actually measure if our money is growing at all and if yes, at what rate…
My personal observation is that we do research different situations. For instance, taking up a new job/assignment sees us giving adequate time getting our homework right. And every situation that requires a big spend will see us taking hours and maybe days too planning it, remember the last party hosted or the family vacation planned!
However, when was the last time you sat down and checked out your investments, were they growing sub-inflation or were they beating inflation by a happy trot?
So, how can we define Wealth? Simply put, Wealth implies everything that we own which in its turn has the capacity to grow and generate returns for us. This could be the financial investments, property, gold or even the paintings and antiques that one chooses to buy.
This brings us to the question, what is an optimal even if not perfect way to look at managing our wealth?
Taking my inspiration from an all-time favorite song, ”Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…”. I look forward to sharing pointers on creating Smart Money Habits, where YOU take charge and design your personal strong financial foundation.
This series will cover topics about the steps to effective Money management,
- Identify your financial requirements
- Get your emergency measures right
- Create a stable assets base
- Design your growth engine
Monitor and course correction
Like your little balcony garden which needs attention and nurturing to grow, our money habits too require attention to create wealth. Getting it right is the equivalent of creating your own little money tree. Not getting it right means giving up your option for a stress free life. This is one area where passing the buck simply boomerangs.
And the onus rests with you.
To know more, feel free to reach us on info@gcia.in
