Wealth File #14 - Manage Your Money Well

Rich people "manage their money well."
Poor people "mismanage their money well."

Top secrets of the millionaire mind are not limited to managing your money with excellence, although this is the secret that, by far, provides the quickest results.

The Millionaire Next Door, a best-selling book by Thomas Stanley, reviewed millionaires from across North America and showed who they are and in what way they gained their tremendous wealth.

The results can be summed up in one short sentence: “Rich people are good at managing their money.” Rich people handle their money well. Poor people, on the other hand, mishandle their money.

Wealthy people are not smarter than poor people in any way.

They just have different and more supportive ways of handling money.

As we have talked about in the first part of this book, the habits we have today are mainly due to the conditioning we had in the past.

So first, if you’re not handling your money well, perhaps you are not programmed to handle money.

Then, there’s also a better than good possibility that you don’t know how to manage your money easily and effectively.

I’m not sure if Money Management 101 is offered in your school, but where I went, it wasn’t.

But, we had the opportunity to learn War of 1812 instead and of course, I make use of that knowledge every day.

It may not be a very glamorous topic, but it leads to this: how well you manage your money is the only difference between financial success and financial failure. It’s easy: to be able to master money, you must learn to manage it properly.

Poor people don’t manage their money well and they often times just don’t want to talk about money at all.

Most people don’t want to manage their money because, first, they believe that it limits their freedom, and second, they claim they don’t have ample amount of money to manage.

As for the first excuse, managing money does not limit your freedom—as a matter of fact, it even promotes it.

Managing your money permits you to create financial freedom so that you no longer have to work again. I, personally consider that as real freedom.

As for those who believe in the basis “I don’t have enough money to manage,” they’re seeing it the wrong way.

Rather than say “when I have plenty of money, I’ll begin to manage it,” the reality is “when I begin to manage it, I’ll have plenty of money.”

Saying “I’ll start managing my money as soon as I get caught up” is comparable to an overweight person saying “I’ll start exercising and dieting as soon as I lose twenty pounds.”

It’s more like putting the cart before the horse, with no clear destination…or may even go backward!

Start managing the money that you have in a good way, then you’ll have more money to manage.

There is a story that I tell in the Millionaire Mind Intensive Seminar which strikes many listeners between the eyes.

Think of yourself walking along the street with a five-year-old boy. You pass by an ice cream store and go inside.

You treat the child to a single scoop of ice cream which you place on a cone because they no longer have cups.

As both of you walk outside, you observe the cone wobbling in the child’s hands, and eventually, plop.

The ice cream drops out of the cone and onto the pavement.

The child starts to cry. So, back you go into the store to order another ice cream on a cone when the child sees a sign with a picture on it showing a “triple scooper” cone.

The child points to the picture and eagerly screams, “I want that one!”

Now the question is this, would you let the child get what he wants and give him a triple scooper considering you are a kind, loving, and generous person?

Your first response would probably be “sure.”

But, by deeply analyzing the question, many of the people who attended our seminar responded, “No.”

Because why would you rather want the child to fail?

The single scoop was already too much for the child to handle, how could he possibly handle a triple scoop?

This idea also applies to the universe and you.

We exist in a kind and loving universe, and it has a rule saying “Until you show you can handle what you’ve got, you won’t get any more!”

Source: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind T. Harv Eker © 2003