Money matters came into topic during one of my lunch conversation with my ex-colleague Brenda (not her real name) during my days in KL. Our salary had increased since we first started working but still, it’s not enough to sustain our life style (boozing, partying, buy expensive toys, strip club etc). We always wish for more money but never realised that it was not the lack of money that is the problem. It’s our attitude towards money – that’s the problem.
Hypothetically, if I give any of you RM1 million now, what are you going to do about it? How are you going to spend it?
My imaginary friend Smeagol would most likely spend on some useless ring…
Someone told me that they are going to get the latest car model if they got the money. Others aspire to build a bigger house (so that he can organise as swinger party). But after you have spend that RM1 million, most likely you would whine about if you’ve got an additional RM10 million to spend with. And the problem would probably never end.
People read ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ (by Robert Kiyosaki) and generally misunderstood that jumping onto the property wagon or start their own business is the best way to make money. But they fail to realise that the essence of managing your money. I’ve got representatives from direct selling establishment taking ideas from ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ and talked about work on your own and start a business. Unfortunately, they fail to tell people that the new joiners would be ‘working for’ and feeding the people on the top – so much for work for yourselves. They encouraged people to spend money so that they could motivate or signal to potential new joiners how wealthy they are. At the end of the day, some people left the establishment as they were not able to achieve of what they were told of.
The essence of the ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ material goes to as simple as saving your money and utilising it for the best possible return, in the case of Robert Kiyosaki – property investment. With the property value in US declining, I wonder how is Mr Kiyosaki doing right now?
I would like to add; to manage your money, it all boils down to your attitude towards money. If you start spending on something which has no investment value, you would most likely end up poorer before you were given your RM1 million, so much so because you get too comfortable with spending money.
So, it’s not the issue of having RM1 million or RM10 million. It is the issue of how do you spend your money – even as little as RM100 starting now. It is more like prioritising your expenditure and spend on what is needed and invest in something which gives you a suitable return.
I am not saying I am rich nor am I signalling that I have done a good job in managing money. In fact, I had my fair share of spending money unnecessarily during my early working days. Now, I am still working on changing my spending ways because it’s easy to take up a bad habit and it takes a long time to get rid of it.
My fair share of worthless pursuits… toy soldiers
“So after all the ranting about managing money, what should I do with my savings now?" some of you may ask.
Good question – I have so far figure out ‘how not to spend money’. But I have not mastered the principal of ‘how to make money’. Maybe we can discuss this another time.
Note: Apologies to Brenda. The conversation where Brenda was moaning about being broke did not take place.As such, I have amended it accordingly in order to be factually accurate. However, I do note that the conversation regarding having RM1 million did took place.
Sorry Brenda....and hope you like the pen name.
1 comment:
Now, thats better!
And, by the way, RM1 million is never going to be enough. Reading the local newspapers nowadays on how the RM govt is awarding projects in the hundreds of millions if not billions, it is very easy to mistaken the RM for Rupiah. Sad but true.
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