Friday AM December 18th, 2009

A lot of how we perceive money is emotional.  We use money to soothe our feelings and buy respect, to show how much we care, and reward ourselves with it.  Houston author David Krueger says we often sacrifice health, freedom, relationships and happiness in the process of playing out what he calls “our money story.”

“Money determines so much of our interaction and even our life stories, so it’s important in terms of how we write our money story that we really get it right.  One way of thinking about it is that it is simply a unit of exchange.  When we look at it that way all the various attributions we have and the meanings we give are all determined by us.”

Rich men just want to get richer.

“I’ve done this with hundreds of people now.  I’ve done a presentation and asked them to put a couple of numbers on a page — what their current annual income is, and secondly, what their current annual income would need to be in order for them to be happy and worry-free about money.  Over 90 per cent of people, if they make $50,000, they think it would take $100,000.  If they make $500,000, they think it would take close to a million.”

Krueger urges people to assess their “money story” to determine their purpose, then to decide what to systematically change for creating the money story they desire.