Rethinking Cash, Part One – Changing Your Attitude About Money

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Cash. Coin. Currency. Dough. Dinero. Moolah.

Money.

The concept of money exists in a weird sort of paradox in our society. Depending on who you ask & how they’re feeling that particular day, it’s both good and bad, wanted and not, easy to come by and impossible to find, it can’t cause happiness but it sure can help, it’s the root of all evil and it gives you a leg up in life, it increases authority and decreases authenticity, and so on.

Having messed up attitudes about money, can, unsurprisingly, lead to messing up your finances. Think about it – do any of these sound familiar?

• Money changes people.
• Rich people only got that way by being greedy and unethical.
• People who don’t have money only got that way by being lazy and stupid.
• People who don’t have money are more virtuous than people who do have money.
• And, subsequently, poor people who spend money on “fun” things deserved to be judged. Because, hello, they’re poor and should therefore be virtuous.
• Classy people don’t talk about money.
• People who openly admit they want to make more money are selfish.
• People who raise their rates are greedy.
• People who work to spend less money are cheap, miserly, and not fun to be around.
• People who own luxury items are shallow, vapid individuals who obviously value objects more than people.

Here’s my viewpoint: Money is just money. It has no intrinsic value except that which we give it. It has no control over our life and our actions except that which we give it. It has no ethical designation except that which we give it.

It’s nothing but a tool, a means to an end. What end is your choosing. Whatever value you assign to money should come from you & nobody else.

Whatever you think about money right now, it’s a necessity for getting about in every day life. Why not assign it a positive value?

Personally, I’d like to make more money.

(And you can tell that I’m still working on my issues surrounding money, because my immediate instinct was to follow that sentence with, “I don’t want to be filthy rich or anything…” Why qualify that statement?)

Still stuck?

Well, try this: what exactly would you do if you made more money, anyways?

If I started making a six figure yearly salary, starting tomorrow, I would:

• Pay off our debts as a couple.
• Start putting money away in a savings account.
• Set up a monthly donation to one or two of my favorite charities.
• Hire somebody else to clean so that I don’t have to do it.
• Buy one of those fancy litterboxes that cleans itself.

Thinking about what I would do if I had more money is one of the exercises that helped me start to change my attitudes around money. Does any of that look like a nefarious, greedy scheme? Uh, no. So why would I think that making more money, or wanting to make more money, would make me greedy, nasty, mean, or selfish? It simply doesn’t make sense.

Worst case scenario, I’m anti-cleaning. Which, in the long run, isn’t such a big deal.

If you want to make more money but deep down harbor the attitude that money is evil, the cognitive dissonance that causes is going to not only give you a headache, but turn any sort of progress into an uphill battle. Even if you aren’t sure how you feel about money, it’s worth dedicating some time to figuring it out & making sure that your feelings, thoughts, and attitudes towards cash are all aligned. That way, you’ve got nothing holding you back.

What would you do if you had more money? Do you get confused when you try to untangle your feelings around money?