MONEY IS A CRUEL MISTRESS

If you struggle in any dimension of your life; it is normally down to two things. A) There is something you don’t know or and there is something you are doing wrong. It is a painful and sad reality that we don’t know much about money yet it holds a very important and critical role in everybody’s life. In my 16 years in school with a shining university degree to show for it, I have never learnt anything directly about money. Financial literacy is not covered in our education and we then wonder how we are so bad with money.

Relationship with money

Recapping from the last column on relationships, we learnt that a relationship is a two-way street, a beneficial arrangement. You want money to fulfil your living obligations and all money wants is a relationship with you. We all have a toxic relationship with money, no one can stay in a relationship if they were treated the way we treat money. No wonder money doesn’t stay much with us. Money is a living entity it yearns for a meaningful, long-lasting relationship with us, not a fling, not a one-night stand. We have this stop-start relationship with money. Payday we don’t even give her ‘yekuta, siyamlandza’, 5 days later we bid her farewell until next payday.

We casually say money goes to those with money and that is very true because money has eyes it can see. It goes where it is treated as a diva, a queen it is. Money wants to stay with you and settle down,get pregnant and have children with you. This queen knows her worth, she doesn’t stay and build where she is not valued. If you can’t keep unassigned money in your account until the next payday you are so far from mastering the money game. Money also doesn’t want to be in a relationship with individuals who can be changed by money, who can do anything to earn a buck…...no one wants to date a simp. If you are still emotionally entangled with money,you are losing this game. Money doesn’t want to be worshiped,she wants a partner

Money blueprint

If you are to have a healthy, long-lasting relationship with money you will at least have to understand money in relation to you. Money blueprint is a phrase I first encountered about 12 years ago from Harv Eker’s wonderful book ‘The secrets of the millionaire mind’. I can define it in simple terms as your subconscious  perspective of money. We have learnt from a  previous column that the subconscious mind is the sum total of all our education, and experiences it has recorded from our early development years. It manifests the genuine picture of us all. The conscious mind can lie even to us,it can even scramble memories and events but not the subconscious mind; it is always true.

Money blueprint threshold

Let me share a secret with you. Money is a burden to the soul, it is heavy and it weighs the soul down. Have you ever wondered why as soon as you receive money there is an itch that makes you want to touch the money. You become uncomfortable and restless until you scratch that itch by withdrawing and spending the money. Dr Malinga sings that ‘akulaleki mawunemali’ and he is right because we are trying to unburden our souls from the weight. Other people are comfortable when they have no money at all, they can focus, study, work and be on their best behaviour.

Money blueprint threshold is the amount of money your soul is comfortable carrying. It differs from person to person. To some, it is in two digits and yet to some in billions. When my first business loan got approved and E100k hit my account I had multiple illnesses all at once, a headache, my stomach acted up and my whole body was hot and cold at the same time. I literally had to take painkillers for temporary relief. My soul was not used to carrying such an amount, the most money I had in my account was 23k before that day. I would like to tell myself that I have since increased my money blueprint capacity.

Defining terms

Financial independency
This is measured in time other than affordability. It is the amount of time you can take to live without affecting your social life, financial life and otherwise if you stopped going to work. If you have to continue going to work to sustain your affordability you are not yet financially independent.

Asset vs liabilities

A liability in short is what takes money from you (cars, houses etc.) while an asset is what brings money to you (income generating machinery, investments, stocks etc.)

Broke vs poor

Being broke simply put is the state of one’s wallet, having less money that the money they require to satisfy their basic needs while being poor on the other hand is the state of mind. Having no mental capacity of making and keeping money. There are poor people who have money in other wallets but the state of their minds renders them poor, it’s only a matter of time before they squander it all. How many lotto winners died broke and even in debt? There are also broke people who are not poor since their state of mind is not stinking, these are one breakthrough/opportunities away from changing their destiny.

You can see poor people a mile away, they are hard to miss. When they have some money they are loud, they host non-end parties. They buy liabilities before they buy assets in the name of flexing. . Poor people gather liabilities to show off that they are loaded. Poor Swati men when they come into money they add wives, girlfriends and illegitimate children; you have seen it yourself many times. The goal is to have an attitude and perspective on money that is not sabotaging your financial condition and that is accomplished through educating yourself about money so that your character and behaviour won’t let you and your finances down. You may be broke right now but if you don’t have a poor man’s mentality you won’t be broke for long.

The nature of money

It is an accessory to help get things. Those who understand the true value of money buy the most expensive commodities this world has to offer: Time, freedom, independence, privacy and power. Those who haven’t figured out the value of money priorities buying items and paying bills; these are the lowest forms of money use. Money is a spirit and also a river

Money as a Spirit

Money is a spirit and like all spirits it exhibits the virtues and behaviour of spirits. Spirits don’t have emotions and feelings, only principles work with them. When you break those principles you are in trouble. Spirits for instance, don’t understand the concept of forgiveness, if you err against a spirit there will be judgement/punishment or you can mitigate your transgression with a sacrifice. You will hear Christians say God (Spirit) forgave my sins but He didn’t, only a sacrifice can redeem our transgressions against Spirit. The Bible in Isaiah 53 says God punished Jesus for all our sins and iniquities. Jesus Himself (Matt 12:32)said you can sin(speak a word) against the Father and the Son you will be forgiven but if you sin against the Holy Spirit you will never be forgiven in this world and the next.

Money also does not forgive those who violate her principles, she punishes mostly with poverty. When money punishes you for your crimes even God Himself cannot help you, you have nowhere to run or hide . If you don’t believe me, ask the ancient church of Jerusalem how poor it got after it violated the money principle. This was the church you would have thought had much favour from God, it was the headquarters of the Christian movement after Christ left.

It was headed by the apostle John, but it was so poor that the other branches had to make offerings for it. So what was its crime against money that it committed to get so punished? After the church was so convicted in the heart about kindness, generosity and giving alms; they started giving away their possessions to the church, their mistake was they were even selling their real estates. Remember Ananias and Sapphira who sold their farm to give to the church? You don’t touch investments when spending, you spend proceeds from investments otherwise you will not be pardoned, money will mercilessly punish you . It doesn’t matter if your heart was in the right place as it was with this church of Jerusalem.  

River

The language around money and how it is described shows that indeed money is a river. ‘cash flow’ means movement of money. ‘Income streams’ meaning channels at which money flows. A ‘liquid’ asset is cash on hand or an asset other than cash that can be quickly converted into cash at a reasonable price. ‘Solvent’ having enough assets to meet your financial obligation long term. ‘Currency’ is a standardisation of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange. Also Jesus pulled money out of the water when he sent Peter to go fish and the first fish he catches will have a shekel in its mouth.

The money game

There are rules of engagement that all must adhere to, to have access to the money river. Whatever level you are engaging in you are given a licence of earning of which, if you violate the terms you suffer penalties. If you work and in your license there is a clause of salary as your compensation, you are not allowed to access the money river outside that parameter. If you do, take a loan and the penalty is interest. To simplify, let me take a leaf from my idol, Jesus and use a parable.

Employees      

If you are employed and paid in salary, you are given a bucket to fetch the water in the money river only once a month. The size of the bucket you are given is determined by your employer according to the value they think you bring. What you earn is not determined by what you or  how much effort you put in; a teacher or a lawyer or a journalist or any other white collar profession is paid barely by the value the employer deems his contribution is worth.

You may do the same job but your pay is different from what you would get from a different company.  In the long run your effort you put in can affect promotions or retrenchments which then change the size of your bucket but on a monthly basis your bucket, is fixed. As an employee you are paid for your time and effort. A consultant can do the same white collar job as you but they would be compensated far higher than you having worked less time than you. Their compensation clause in their money river engagement licence is different.

Consultants and service men

These don’t have  a clock of going to the money river to fetch water, they only partake in the money game through an invite/demand of their service by a client and the size of their bucket is determined by the service they offer. They really don’t have a fixed time frame to do their jobs, they are called in for a task and compensated in kind. Good examples of the players in this class (servicemen) are your plumbers, electricians, contractors etc. This class can be lucrative but also not reliable for cash flow since there can be dry spells on the demand of the service. To some extent they determine within reason how big their bucket will be (charge for the service)

Salespeople

We have already looked into selling in detail in a past episode entitled ‘the art of marketing’, there is no point in repeating what was said. Vendors are directly involved in the money game, they literally camp in the money river bank. They fetch the water to give others (stocking) for commodities which will then attract money from others. Most white collar jobs are not involved in money making at least for themselves but vendors are. How much they take home can be determined by them; by the place they patched their stalls, their skill of selling and the value of the goods they sell. Changing some of these can significantly change their fortunes

Businesspeople

This class hires others to fetch them water from the money river and fortnightly or monthly reimburse the employees with a fitting compensation. They do all the planning, finding the opportunities and bearing all the risks.

Investors

This class is at the top of the food chain in the money game. They have devised systems that channel the water from the money river through canals that pour into reservoirs they have created. They enlist businesses instead of people to work for them. The wealthiest in the world fall into this class either they are straight up investors like  Warren Buffet or they are founders of businesses listed in the stock market having share holdings in their own companies like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma etc.
Proving money worthiness

To achieve financial independence, you have to choose the right class to join. People who are truly financially independent are found in the last 2 classes: Business people and investors. The million-dollar secret is earning money with your money rather than your time because time is an exhaustible resource. You can never be financially independent without partaking in the stock market; either directly or through brokers/investment(houses) institutions such as African Alliance here in Eswatini. Try to buy time with your money, get other people do for you what was supposed to be done by you, use that time you bought to live.

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