My Changing Money Mindset
A Personal Journey: How Redefining Wealth Transformed My Life
Your money mindset is a powerful motivator. This is the meaning you attach to money. As I used to tell my wealthy clients, when you understand the childhood messages that shape your money mindset, you can make much more thoughtful decisions that truly reflect your values and priorities.
So I feel it’s only fair to explain my own money mindset and how it changed dramatically over the years.
I was a small, unathletic kid who had a terrible stutter. I was teased quite a bit. Other boys told me I threw like a girl, and mocked my stuttering.
My mother told me that things would get better when I grew up. She assured me that when I was an adult, nobody would care how well I threw a baseball. My intelligence and my persistence would serve me well. My future was bright.
She was right. I thrived after high school; excelled academically in college and law school, worked at a prestigious law firm, then launched a wealth management firm with my brother when I was only 31.
I was the CEO. Nobody picks on the boss.
In the first half of my career, money was my key metric for success, security, power, and control. That mindset motivated me to work hard and become financially successful, but it came with a high personal cost.
The more money I earned, the more successful I was. I felt powerful and in control. I had the power to hire and fire. I had enough money to take my wife out to fancy dinners, send my kids to private school, and live in a beautiful suburban home.
It was a trap.
I lived in fear of my clients leaving me, my business failing, and my image of success crumbling. Every major expenditure was tinged with doubt. I worked long hours. Worse still, when I was home, my attention was often on my business.
I rarely felt successful, secure, or powerful. The glow of each business success faded fast. No matter how much money I earned, I always knew somebody who earned more or had a more “successful” business.
Two decades after graduating from law school, 13 years after starting my business, and in the middle of a divorce, I finally started to figure it out.
Using money to inflate my sense of self-worth, security, power or control was an illusion, a mirage in the desert. Chasing an illusion inevitably ends with disappointment and frustration.
Money can purchase life’s physical necessities such as food, housing, clothing, transportation and health care. It can enable you to hire people to do the things you don’t like to do, so you can focus your time on the things in life you enjoy. If you have enough money, it can allow you to experience life’s luxuries.
Money, however, can’t buy what makes life exceptional. It can’t buy love, faith, hope, meaning, integrity, resilience, persistence, or a sense of purpose.
Financially wealthy people are not more valuable than those who struggle financially.
All people are inherently valuable. Success in life has little to do with how much money you accumulate. A truly successful life is one filled with loving relationships, deeply satisfying activities, and meaningful endeavors.
A real sense of security comes not from the size of your investment portfolio, but when you believe in yourself. Now that I do, if concerns arise about an uncertain future, I remember to consider not just my money, but also take into account my wisdom, talents, relationships, resilience, and persistence.
Once I had enough money to satisfy my needs and wants, it made sense for me to shift my attention to building more loving relationships, engaging in activities that captured my passion, helping to make a positive difference in the world, and allowing myself to enjoy life in the moment.
In the second half of my career, I started to realize money is a tool, nothing more and nothing less. My new money mindset gave me a more balanced view of life. I realized money matters, sometimes a lot, but it is not all that matters and it rarely matters the most.
Until our next conversation,
David
Small Steps & Worthy Questions
What is your money mindset? What does money mean to you?
How does your money mindset help make your life better? What is holding you back from living a more fulfilling life?
Are you earning and saving enough to live comfortably both today and during retirement? If you don’t know the answer to that question, maybe it’s time to hire a financial advisor.
I’m curious whether your money mindset has shifted over the years, and why. Consider posting something about that and/or talking it over with a friend.