It’s Just Money – The Phrase That Liberates Or Restrains

Published on 31. Aug, 2010 by Thomas Herold in Money

Throwing Money Away

There are so many overused cliches on the subject of money. Most of them may be tired, but they generally turn out to be true for the majority of people in many cases. The following paragraphs look at the validity of living you life by these axioms of wisdom, such as “It’s Just Money.”

Famous Money Axioms
How often have you heard the phrase, “Money does not buy you happiness?” Perhaps you know this famous one, “Money does not grow on trees.” No doubt when your finances were temporarily down and out, a friend has given you this comforting one liner before, “Don’t take it so hard, it’s only money.” These often quoted sayings are all true at one time or another, even though they may make good preaching, but hard living, as the phrase goes. Even though you can learn valuable truths from lines such as these, these adages can be not only empowering, but also dangerous.

Take the phrase “Money does not buy you happiness,” and analyze this for a moment. Clearly there are many wealthy people in the world, as well as rich and famous Hollywood types, whose lives appear to be a fully chaotic and unhappy mess. While money may not buy happiness or love though, it does buy practically everything else. Good health, dreams, security, a nice home, possessions, and a car can all be purchased with enough money.

And as for happiness and purpose, if you give enough money to help people in need who are suffering, then you will find that the act of giving away money does bring happiness and also a rewarding sense of purpose. If you have any doubts as to this resulting effect from being generous with money and feeling happiness, then just ask Angelina Jolie, the Hollywood actress who regularly gives away half of her money she makes in a year.

The Liberating Power of the Phrase “It’s Just Money”
The wise saying that “it is just money” can be liberating and freeing, especially after you have suffered a financial catastrophe or terrible economic loss. You have seen plenty of reasons for this phrase to be used to comfort people in the last three years. First the global economy fell apart. Then the United States’ financial system, and subsequently that of the whole Western world, practically burned to the ground.

Your friends, family, and neighbors, if not you personally, began losing their jobs, their homes, and much of their retirement savings and investment values. There was a sad story of a family in Hong Kong where the husband had become terminally ill and disabled. The wife had put all of their savings, literally everything they had in the world, into some guaranteed Lehman Brothers’ structured investments. By now you know the end of that story, along with that poor woman and everyone else. When Lehman Brothers collapsed with little warning, she and all other Lehman investment holders were totally wiped out. These are people who need the comfort of the phrase “It’s only money.”

Misery of Being Obsessed with Money
You should know that is it also true that obsession with money can bring misery not only to yourself, but also to your family, and everyone else unfortunate enough to be around you when you are so obsessed. When you pursue money with single minded purpose, you miss out on meaningful relationships, the subtle and daily joys of life, and finding your ultimate higher purpose in this world. Being obsessed with money is a terrible thing that can wreck your entire existence in the end. Hearing the phrase “it’s only money” if you are in this dark place can help you to regain your lost perspective on all the important parts of life.

Acknowledging the Proper Role of Money
Although falling back on the “It’s only money” adage has its purposes and times and places, it can also serve to falsely distract you from your financial situation that needs careful management, work, and frequent improvement. You definitely need to countenance the reality at some point that money really does play a critical and meaningful role in your everyday and ongoing life. This is to say that you can not be slack in the proper management of your finances.

The amount of money that you have actually does impact your quality of life in various important ways. The possession of it, or lack thereof, will influence your near, medium, and long term choices, your lifestyle, and even the quality of your health, to name just a few things. If you wish to experience a terrific and full life, then you will have to begin by acting intelligently in the handling of your money and assets.

Tangible Advice for Managing Your Money
It is easy to suffer a serious, or even catastrophic, investment setback and then fall back on the “It’s Only Money” argument. But maybe the more useful thing to take away from the tragic and heart breaking experience is not comfort and solace, but an important lesson. Perhaps that investment that you participated in simply entailed way too much risk, even given a potentially impressive return if it worked out in the end.

Maybe the better reaction would be to understand and learn that you should watch very carefully where you put your money. Although you, along with most everyone else out there, may not have realized this before the climactic and traumatic economic events a few years ago, the maximum that you can lose in most investments is everything, one hundred percent. This is true of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and even guaranteed structured investments of the kind formerly peddled by the likes of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.

“It’s only money” as a phrase may bring you comfort in a earth shattering situation like this, but one thing that it will certainly not bring back is the lost money. But, if you can walk away from such a negative experience as a catastrophic loss in investments and ultimately money having learned an important and valuable lesson for your future money management plans, then maybe the experience will not prove to be in vain, even though you did not escape from the unfortunate consequences that resulted.

Ultimately, you will find that it comes down to this personal reality. You must take your money and financial condition seriously if you are ever going to get anywhere in life. This can be effectively accomplished through learning to be financially savvy about the most efficient ways of managing and even increasing your money.

Learning anything in life comes with a learning curve. Sometimes the curve is minor, and sometimes it turns out to be extremely steep. So when you do run into the inevitable financial and monetary setbacks, be sure to learn a valuable lesson from the hard gained experience. Then you will be able to pick yourself back up off of the ground, dust yourself off, and remind yourself that “It’s just money, and I can always make some more.”