Would making more money make you happier?
Would making more money make you happier? When women are asked what would most improve the quality of their lives, the most common answer they give is more money.
What’s going on here?
Money, instead of making us more independent, fulfilled women, has entangled us into a web of financial dependencies. From birth to death we have become financially dependent — on our parents, on the economy for our survival, on unemployment for handouts to keep us going while we are looking for jobs, on husbands we sometimes don't love or like, and on our pension to pay our way in old age and before we die. The material things that were meant to to free us have left us more enslaved.
Today, when we are not getting our identity from our jobs, we are identified as consumers. We believe with everything in us that it is our right to consume. If we have the money, we can buy whatever we want, whether or not we use it, need it or even enjoy it. And if we don’t have the money … hell, what are credit cards for? We have taken our right to consume to heart and we believe it's the only way we will have freedom in our lives.
We also consider shopping to be therapeutic. We want a good future for our kids, so we work harder or become a two income family and delegate raising the kids to day care centers or nannies. We buy them the newest toys to prove our love. We are spending so much of our time earning in order to spend that we don’t even have the time to examine our real priorities.
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Introspection
Getting women, whose lives often revolve around work, family and relatives, to examine what gives their lives meaning is not always easy. But in order to make the most of your life and your money you have explore what you really want in life and how to use your money to achieve that.
Women are extraordinarily comfortable with taking charge but find it more difficult to let go because giving up control is hard for them. Having conversations that get at the heart of what money means to woman e is key to successful financial planning.
And thanks to our busy lives, it is so easy to operate in autopilot and just run through the motions of the day. Life becomes a rut, where the only excitement comes from putting out a big fire here and there on a given day.
Suze Orman, financial expert, once said that fear, shame and anger are the most common emotions surrounding money.
So how do you find a new road map for your life?
It requires a new way of thinking.
Taking time for yourself, especially for the purposes of self-awareness, is a choice that takes courage, so if you are already doing this, I applaud you. It takes a lot of guts to introspect and be honest with self.
What does this have to do with your finances? EVERYTHING!
Your finances requires practical knowledge about finance and an AWARENESS of the emotional attitudes that drive your financial decisions.
Most of us go to financial planners for advice on how to manage our finances and save for retirement. But sadly so many go without any knowledge of who we are and what we truly want in life.
So let me ask you this, when was the last time you had a date with yourself and be one with the inner depth of your soul? If it’s been a while, it may be time to take a deep dive into who you truly are.
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Whatever your earnest answers are will tell you about what's important to you and what you really value in life. Until you truly know where you want to go, no person, including your financial advisers can help you get there.
If you want to create a new, reality-based relationship with money, you have to learn from your past, determine your present reality and let go of assumptions and myths that don’t work for you.
So would making more money make you happier? What actually does make you happy?
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