A few months ago – a woman came into my office. I was a bit taken aback as she was dressed pretty shabbily and her hair was disheveled. Honestly, I wondered if she had the wrong office. Turns out she was worth $12 million. But the real kicker was that she was worried that she didn’t have enough money and would end up as a bag lady living on the streets. How can this be?
Although her case is an extreme example, most of us suffer in some way when it comes to money. Where is the next dollar going to come from? How am I going to pay off the Visa bill? Will I have enough for retirement? And on and on it goes.
In my experience of working with clients for 25+ years, I can safely say the question of “enough” really isn’t about the numbers. Sure we need money to survive, but let’s be honest, the math needed to balance our chequebook isn’t all that hard. It’s the “relationship” we have to money that holds us back from looking at money too closely. And if we give money the cold shoulder, how can we possibly become successful or comfortable with it?
In my favourite money book, “The Soul of Money” Lynne Twist describes money as the “most universally motivating, mischievous, miraculous, maligned, and misunderstood part of contemporary life.” I agree completely.
We figure that if we work harder and make more money, we will have more – perhaps so we will be more? In a culture that largely defines success through monetary pursuits and the acquisition of more material things, who can blame us. But somehow we know this isn’t quite right and, judging by the state of the world and our personal suffering, we have to begin questioning the conventional wisdom of acquiring and accumulating beyond what we truly need. Gandhi said it beautifully: “The world has enough for our need but not for our greed”.
Perhaps we need to think about what’s enough – for us. How much do we really need? Are we earning and spending our money in ways that are consistent with our higher values and commitments? This certainly doesn’t mean deprivation, poverty or lack, but it does mean being conscious about how money flows through our life.
It also means taking responsibility for our personal finances and paying attention to what we spend money on. It means taking charge of our money and holding it accountable to our highest beliefs. It means believing that we are ok right now, no matter how much money we have.
I came across a quote by a great spiritual leader who said that “money is a medium of transformation”. What’s so reassuring about this phrase is that it captures both the potential that money has, and at the same time it puts money in its proper place. It’s simply a medium, not an end in itself.
It’s certainly not easy to maintain this higher level perspective living in the midst of our consumer culture. But the more awareness that we have about the role that money plays in our life, and the more we can clear any blocks we have around our relationship to it, we can then aspire to see the transformative powers that money has.
What this allows us to do on a practical level is to look at the numbers without fear, plan for the future with confidence and enjoy what money has to offer without guilt. And that is enough!!! – Karin Mizgala
Karin Mizgala is a Vancouver-based fee-only financial planner with an MBA and a degree in psychology. She’s the President of LifeDesign Financial and co-founder of the Women’s Financial Learning Centre.
