What does money mean to you? For every people, money means something. Some people think of money as the ultimate goal in life but for some it is important to reach their goal. The famous Finance Guru, Warren Buffett has once said “Money is not everything in life. You should say this only once you have enough money “. During my college days, I had asked a question to my dad “what does money mean to you and how much money is enough to live a good life”. After listening to my innocent question, my dad who had been consistently paying all my useful and non sense expanses was caught off guard definitely. He went into deep thought. After some time when he realized I am still waiting for the answer he replied, “Money is important. In fact, very important but never let the pursuit of money be your goal in life. Life is much more than that. “At that time, I could not understand depth behind all what he said. I was more worried about buying expansive gadgets to show off to my friends than to think about saving money. I used to feel jealous when my friends displayed IPhones in their hands and coming in expansive bikes to college. It is human mentality that we don’t like people around us moving so fast in life. It is similar like in class, we are happy if all fails in some test but we feel bad when someone passes that exam.
I think we only start realizing the importance of money only when we start getting our salaries. In the initial days, we just think about spending money on our own stupid ways, but slowly –slowly once the realities of life are being thrust on us, we take saving money very seriously. We understand the importance of money first when our first girlfriend starts showing too much tantrums by asking us to take her to big restaurants and big malls as if small shops only knows cheating people. Many relationships are created and destroyed based on money talks.
I have realized that in order to earn good money, we must be good in what we do. I have always been astonished by the people who had achieved stardom at a very young age. While reading one of the interviews of Taylor Swift, I was surprised when she told that at the age of 12 years, she knew how to achieve what she wanted in life. At this age when child thinks about doing some naughty things in order to annoy their parents, she was thinking about her career. I know definitely it may not so sound so easy but we must know properly what we are doing instead of doing something aimlessly.
So, basically my question still remains same “How much money is required to live a good life of our choice “.I would like my readers to answer this question in comments.
In the meanwhile, I have come up with some very interesting dos and don’ts which would definitely help us to build our wealth.
1. Procrastination: We should never postpone our initial investment. We suddenly wakes up during the end of financial term when the company’s finance guy asks us to submit the investment proofs in order to save taxes. In order to reduce taxes, we spent more than triple the money on some Investments (Mutual funds, Insurance, debts etc.) without completely understanding the Investments properly. We are ready to fight with the vegetable vendor if they ask little more for buying onion but we never show the same maturity in understanding the complete policy while buying investments. We just do what our friends do. Friends, don’t you think we should be smart in taking our financial decisions. I am sure most of you would be smart in taking decisions, but I have seen majority of my friends doing the wrong selection of investments.
2. Staying ignorant: We must be familiar with the new advancements coming up in financial world. We must listen to the Budget speech given by our Finance Minister. As we always update ourselves with the new trends in IT world, we must also be updated with the financial decisions taken by the Government and the regulatory bodies. See, we are working so hard in order to get money, so it is a logical thing to know where to put our hard earned money.
3. Tread with caution: As I explained before, we must be very careful in deciding our selection of investments. Every policy related to Insurance, debt, Mutual funds, Equity etc. has their merits and demerits. We must know first what we want, when we need more money and when to get bulk money. Based on our requirements, we should take our decisions. For example, Equities which is market based gives the highest and best return if it is left idle for 15-20 years. If, after 3 years, if we retrieve our money from equity by looking at the slump in market than we have not achieved the advantage of buying that equity. So, take your decisions judiciously.
4. Living a life others live: Sometimes, our decisions are based on neighbor’s decisions. Based on our requirements, we may have bought a small car, but looking at the neighbor’s big car can make us curse our decision to buy a small car. We suddenly take this as ego issue and sell our small car and buy a big car, sometimes even bigger than our neighbor’s car. Also, when we see our relative buying a big house, we also get tempted for big house without realizing our future goals and limitations.
Friends, we work very hard in order to lead a good life. We wait for our appraisal to get good hike in order to buy our dream car, dream house or saving money for world tour. During our college days, we also plan to meet our friends on a regular basis to cherish our golden days.
So, what I am trying to say is that we must live life to the fullest. We must do what we had wanted but we must plan little in advance if not completely.
My dad was definitely right when he said,” life is definitely more than the goal of earning big money”.
Remember, when we die, no one will remember how big posh house we had, But, everyone will remember how good or bad we were to them. So, we must learn to enjoy our life while earning money for our family.
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Live Your Life! 