What we do with money

The tax accountant had just read the story of Cinderella to his four-year-old daughter for the first time. The little girl was fascinated by the story, especially the part where the pumpkin turns into a golden coach.

The four-year-old daughter suddenly piped up, thought deeply and then lovingly looked at her dad and asked: “Daddy, when the pumpkin turned into a golden coach, would that be classed as income or a long-term capital gain?”

What we are or what we do is probably what we teach our children.

I spent many years in the garments industry. Maybe this is the reason why my kids are in it too. My son Bryan knows what’s in and what’s out in fashion, my daughter Hannah works as a part time fashion stylist even as she is completing her formal education in Fashion Merchandising and my youngest is beginning to enjoy the hand-me-downs from her stylish sister. Fashion was what I did en and so this is what they do now.

So what about money?

I have never taught my children that money is the root of all evil. First of all, it is not true and secondly, it is not practical. I teach my kids that the Bible never said that money is the root of all evil. What Scripture says is “THE LOVE of money is the root of all evil.”

But one businessman insists that “The lack of money is the root of all evil.”

Money is really an attitude issue. Just like guns, food and sex…money itself is amoral. But how we use it, abuse it or how we allow it to use us is what determines right and wrong.

This is why my children find no guilt in making an honest living no matter how little or how much money they get from it. They all have a very healthy attitude towards money and money issues.

I smiled a little when I heard an HR practitioner complaining about seminar speakers. She says “You hear speakers say “Money is not everything’ yet you could hardly get them to speak without paying them much.”

Well, here is my take on this. When you hear speakers say “Money is not important.” Well, let me warn you. Maybe it’s your money they are talking about. I rather like what motivational speaker Zig Ziglar has to say about money. He says: “Money is not everything. But it’s reasonably close to oxygen.”

Former heavyweight boxing champion of the world Joe Louis once said, “Money is not everything but it sure can calm my nerves.”

Disdain for money is a common theme among moralists and philosophers. But money’s not the problem. It’s what people do to get it and what they do with it when they get it.

There is a big difference between need and greed.

I have worked for people who saw the need to reward me with sales commissions for jobs well done. Yet when the commissions increased and my personal earnings grew, the same people who saw the need to reward me now see the greed in withholding it. So when the greed takes over the need, the cheating happens and pretty soon they lose their good people and they lose more than what they gained.

It’s one thing to make money a central goal to escape poverty and provide for basic necessities. It’s quite another when money becomes our primary motivation and measure of success or when we equate happiness or worthiness with wealth.

The love of money can have a powerful narcotic effect on our values.

It can push us toward or keep us in unhealthy relationships and unsatisfying careers. It can attract us to parasites who prey on people with money. One experienced person says: “You can lose a lot of money chasing women, but you will never lose a lot of women chasing money.”

The desire for money can make us into workaholics who neglect family and friends. And it can spawn dishonorable conduct that pollutes our souls and makes us unworthy despite our net worth.

According to an old Hasidic saying, “One who thinks money can do everything is likely to do anything to get it.”

Perhaps the French philosopher Rousseau said it best: “The money you have can give you freedom, but the money you pursue enslaves you.”

The challenge is to put the value of money in perspective. How much are you willing to pay to have money? Yet the value of who you really are is how much will you be worth when you lose all of it?

(Send me your feedback and write me: franciskong @businessmatters.org. You can also listen to my radio program “Business Matters” aired 8:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. daily over 98.7 dzFE-FM ‘The Master’s Touch’, the classical music station.)