Your Attitude Toward Money

What is your attitude toward money? Is it something you obsess about, thinking you don’t have enough? How much is enough?

Billy Graham said, “If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area of his life.”

Sometimes I’ve felt that the only people who say “money isn’t everything” have always had plenty. I have known times of destitution in my life. When your basic needs are not being met, it’s easy to become obsessed with the idea that if only you had more money, everything would be okay.

I remember when my older daughter was in junior high, I was a single parent struggling to make ends meet and she came home insisting she needed a pair of name brand sneakers. For me to buy her a pair of name brand sneakers would have probably cost the same as half a week’s worth of groceries. It was then that I learned there’s a big difference between the things we need and the things we want. Did my child experience social ostracism for being the “only” child without name brand items? She certainly thought so. It broke my heart.

But I think what hurt me the most was not the fact that I could not deliver what she wanted, it was my own attitude toward money. It was my belief that more money was the answer. A friend of mine (who was very well off financially) reminded me to be grateful for what I had, that there were people starving in third world countries that would look on me as a very wealthy person, with my clunker that had no heat and leaked oil. At least I had a car. Easy for him to say, I muttered to myself. He is not living like a poor person in a wealthy country.

As Norman Vincent Peale said, “Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”

I recently read a phenomenal book: Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki. In it the author points out that money is not real. What passes between people is agreements. Nothing more, nothing less.

I have never reached a point of being well off financially. Some periods in my life have been more comfortable than others. The most comfortable periods of all are the times when I can accept that I have enough, no matter how little it seems in comparison to other people. As the serenity prayer says, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” The courage to change the things I can may mean finding ways to make more money, finding ways to spend less money – or simply changing my own attitude toward money.

I have learned to be grateful that I have plenty of money – for the next twenty-four hours. And that is all I can ask for. I have learned that there is only one thing I can change: my own attitude toward money. I have caused myself a lot of stress by thinking I should have more than I have. If I make more money, I spend more money. As long as my needs are being met (not my wants), I really and truly have enough.

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