I Don’t Want To Be Rich

I don’t want to be rich.
I’m not interested in money.
It’s not my department, my wife’s in charge of managing the finances. I just bring home the dough.
It’s not my department. My husband’s in charge of the money matters cos he earns the money.
I like my job.
I have to keep working because I’m afraid I won’t have enough money.
I’m too busy working and running a household to have time to bother with money matters.
These courses on how to make money are just scams.
The courses are too expensive.
Money doesn’t buy you happiness.
Money doesn’t buy you friends.
Money doesn’t buy you health.

This are just a few samples of some of the comments I’ve received since starting my blog. And it’s a free blog ! I’ve put up information I’ve learned from reading books, and attending courses. I’ve even summarized them for busy people. And I have no plans to charge anyone (except maybe if anyone clicks on a google ad, or buys one of the advertised products, I can earn a little bit) because I really do want to share what I’ve learned. So that started me thinking. I always thought people want to be rich. After all, there’s this little saying ” I’ve been poor, and I’ve been rich. I’d rather be rich.” And people are always complaining about how there’s never enough money to do everything or buy everything they want. There are plenty of get-rich-quick books around. And the internet’s full of get-rich-quick ideas. So why all the responses that came back to me ?

Let’s tackle the last few reasons first. I’ve heard that often enough. Especially when I try to start a discussion about money. It’s true. Money can’t buy happiness. And having a lot of money certainly doesn’t guarantee it. But I wouldn’t say the lack of money has made everyone a whole lot happier! There probably is some relation between money and happiness, but it isn’t direct. Michael Masterson put it very nicely in his book Automatic Wealth. He pointed out that people spend a lot of time thinking about how to become rich, or how nice it would be to be rich. But they don’t do anything about it. And people also spend a lot of time doing things to make themselves happy. They buy nice cars and houses, and go on holidays, spend time at the movies, hang out at shopping malls, eat out with friends… But they aren’t happy. In fact, they’re kind of broke. And the money issue raises its ugly head again. His point was: it’s not what you think that makes you rich. It’s what you do. And it’s not what you do that makes you happy. It’s how you think!

What about money and friends or money and health? I’ve heard feel-good stories about how people find their true friends only when they become poor. Does that make being poor better? The true friends would still be there even if you were rich! You just have to learn to tell you true friends from those who hang out with you for your money. But these same people who claim that money can’t buy friendship and hence choose not to be rich spend their time busy working for more pay or a promotion, leaving them with precious little time to spend with their friends and families. The argument holds true for health as well. Sure, it can’t buy you health once you’ve lost it. But it can buy you better health care, medicines for treatment , if necessary. And what money can buy you is TIME. We all have 24 hours a day, rich or poor. Do we want to spend it slogging away at jobs we don’t really like, stealing time away from our loved ones, time away from exercising and resting, the very things that will preserve our health ?

Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, advocates financial education. I’m just wondering whether maybe many of us just don’t want to take the slow and slightly more difficult path of learning . It would be much nicer to win a lottery, or receive an unexpected inheritance. But the sad truth is, if you don’t know how to handle the money, it will soon be gone anyway.

So what are some of the obstacles ?

1. Fear.
We all fear losing money. I do. This fear makes it much easier to put the money in a bank, or a fixed deposit, where the capital is 100% protected. But we face the risk that our money will be eroded by inflation. This method works if you have a long time to retirement - say 20-30 years. But by the time most of us think about retirement, we don’t have 20 or 30 years more, and that’s the time the expenses are building up as the children start to go to college. The difference is what we do with that fear. Do we bury it and hope the problem will go away ? Or do we face it and learn to handle it ? Are we willing to learn from our mistakes ? Or too fearful to make a mistake, and so we never start at all ?

2. Cynicism.
The idea that the stock market will crash as soon as I buy a stock or that housing prices will go south once I’ve bought a property. The assumption that all “seminars” on making money are scams, just there to put money into the organizers pockets. Sometimes, we actually see a good deal, but the more we think about it, the more we doubt its such a good deal. Why didn’t someone else see it ? What if I fail ? And then we are paralyzed. There’s a joke about 2 efficient market theorists who came across a $100 on the ground. They walked on, reasoning that if it was real, someone would have picked it up by now.

3. Laziness.
Robert Kiyosaki calls, perhaps somewhat harshly, busy people lazy people. He points out, today, people are too busy to take care of their wealth. And their health. Why work so hard for your money, only to hand it over to a complete stranger, who charges you to manage it, and is not accountable at all if he loses it ? Robert Kiyosaki feels staying busy is a way of avoiding something else. Maybe. I know some of us are genuinely busy. Kids, jobs. But if something is truely important to us, we will make time for it.

4. Habits.
Say you want a really good body, like Arnold Schwarzeneggar. He probably has to work out everyday in the gym to get that. Are you prepared to get off the couch, stop eating the potato chips and get to the gym ?

5. Arrogance.
Robert Kiyosaki says that’s ego plus ignorance. He says people use arrogance to hide their own ignorance. I’m not sure if that’s what the readers of my blog are doing, but in general, I think he may have a point.

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So that’s it. A whole article on how not to be rich ! A little blog promotion here. Come visit me at whymoneymatters.blogspot.com. whymoneymatters.blogspot.com. And add you comments !