Carl Richards is a Certified Financial Planner™ and creator of the Sketch Guy column, appearing weekly in The New York Times since 2010. The following article is reproduced with permission from his weekly newsletter and his website can be found here.
Greetings, Carl here.
The secret to having a great relationship with money is knowing how to spend it. This is true no matter how much money you have.
Money is a tool – meant to be used. The primary way we use it is through spending. Long before we learn to save or invest, we learn to spend.
The problem is we are really bad at spending. We do it multiple times a day and each time we either do it unconsciously, or we feel bad about it after the fact. Neither of these outcomes is helpful.
Imagine you had a friend…
Imagine you had a long-time friend that you see multiple times a day. Every time you interact with them, you feel bad about yourself.
You try to ignore them but it’s impossible because you run into them every day.
This is how our relationship with money works.
The first thing we learned to do with money was…spend it.
The thing do most often with money is…spend it.
No wonder we have a dysfunctional relationship with money.
How we got here
Everything we are taught about spending money is negative.
- “Don’t be a spendthrift.”
- “Don’t blow the budget.”
- “You have so much you don’t need to think about it”
- “Don’t waste money on your morning coffee.”
- “Why do you spend so much?”
Negative. Ignore. Negative.
No wonder we feel shame, blame, or indifference about how we spend our money.
Developing a better relationship with money
Creating more alignment in our use of money starts with becoming the best spenders in the world. We should be GREAT at spending…and that takes practice!
For the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing what I’ve noticed about spending. There will be tips and tricks of course, but they do no good unless we get our mindset in the right place, so think of this as a series of meditations on spending.
Think of it as a Spending Practice!
Until next week,
-Carl
P.S. As always, if you want to use my sketches, you can buy them here
