The truth about money is that we all want more of it. We’ve been taught from the beginning that the more money you have the better off you’ll be. Though having money is great and it gives us the ability to have the things that bring us joy, getting money fast can be the biggest gamble. One of the most powerful things about money is how you can count on it to grow over time.
Of course everyone would love to be a millionaire overnight, but in reality, that’s unrealistic. We are always searching for ways to make money fast. There’s constantly new trends to make money that sound too good to be true, and they probably are. These tricks are extremely risky and you’re not investing, you’re gambling.
In most cases, time is more valuable than taking the risk with these money-making fads. Maybe sometimes they pay off, but the real lesson is how beneficial time can be when you take advantage of it. It may not sound as exciting, but if you just invest that money now rather than buying into the latest fad, you’ll have made more money back from the boring investment ten years from now.
I love to talk about the 10% return and how your money can double every 7 years. When this is the case, your big purchases can pay for themselves. If you have a big ticket trip planned, postponing it for 7 years would make it essentially free.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t go, you should wait 7 years, or you should plan to postpone everything. I believe in living your life and enjoying the things that make you happy when you can. But I encourage you to use this as an illustration of how valuable money can be when it’s invested with time on your side.
So much of the time we see people wasting money on things that don’t even matter to them. Whether they’re buying things for status, hoping to impress others, or just wasting their money on things they won’t care about in the future, it is a horrible habit to get into. It’s great to spend money on good food, drinks, or entertainment, but only if you consider how much those things mean to you.
Here’s where it all comes back to The Awesome Stuff™. If you’re not buying things that excite you, you probably shouldn’t be buying them at all. Even if it does excite you, is it truly worth it to have it today when you consider how much the money you’d put into it could be worth 7 years from now? Or would you rather let the money grow and be in that positive financial place in less than a decade? That’s the power of delaying a purchase.
Rather than thinking about how much something costs you today, consider how much money you could have in the future if you invested that money instead of spending it. This mindset will change your perspective on everything related to money.
