Chasing Money? Try This Instead...

Cold hard cash

We all love something about it

But it will not solve any of your long-term problems...

"Money can buy a starving man food, but it does not teach him to grow his own food"

This is what you all must understand. It's a tool, and not a magic wand that cures

I've been around extremely wealthy individuals who were clearly unhappy

And I've been around median wage earners who smile ear to ear

This tells me one thing...money does not buy happiness

The happiness is a by-product of a fulfilling life

Which money can help one to achieve

But it looks different to all of us

There's no template...

The Prisoner

I grew up middle class

And both of my parents worked

We always had money, but never in excess

That being said, my father managed his money very well

And this rubbed off on me from a very young age, but it was too much

I became obsessed with money, and my life began to revolve around making it

All of my decisions were influenced by money, and it took over control

I started saving money to buy the cool things my friends had

Not because I needed them, but so that I could fit in

And as I became older, it only got worse for me

But now, I was making life decisions

Still driven by money...

The Pursuit

I had no idea

You know, what I wanted to be

But I did know one thing, it would pay well

And that is why I decided to study finance in college

I had heard about Wall Street in the movies, and was hooked

But there was a huge problem here my friends, and it took years to notice

I was not taking anything else into consideration when making these big decisions

I never stopped to ask myself what I want to do in life, or what impact I wanted to have

Again, it was only about how much money I was going to make by doing it

Do you understand how dangerous this is? If not, I will explain...

I spent well over half a decade chasing the wrong career

That's like 5 years of driving in the wrong direction

Imagine what it takes to reverse all of that

And remove the monetary influence

Well, it has not been easy...

The Awakening

I've talked about it before

But a bad heartbreak really woke me up

And at the time, my financial situation was solid AF

I was making 6 figures, had a new car, a nice apartment, and savings

On paper, I was the perfect example of what society wanted you to become

It was also the life I chose to pursue, but then the breakup didn't let me hid anymore

At that moment, I realized all of the monetary things I had were worthless

It was the relationships and connections I had that were important

And without those, the money held no real value anymore

This is where my mindset began to totally change

And I started to see things differently

It was now me over money...

The Reversal

I hate to admit it

But this has not been easy for me

I still allow money to control a lot of my decisions today

But I am more aware of it than ever, and it's one reason I'm writing about it

Unfortunately, I don't have all the answers for you yet, but I can save you some time

And what you will find is that time is more valuable than money will ever be

How do you save time? By not letting money influence your decisions

Remember, money is a tool you can use, but won't solve problems

It also won't make you happy, if you hate what you're doing

It will just be a bandaid you cover by purchasing things

Which only pro-longs your existing bad situation

But I don't want to leave you all with nothing

So here is what has helped me...

The Lesson

Saving not spending

Sounds simple enough, but it's not

Especially with all the pressure to consume today

But it's saving money that has given me the time I needed to reset

It is what allowed me to step away, and start rebuilding my relationship with money

It is what allowed me to resign from my job, and move to Portugal back in 2017

It is what allowed me to resign again in 2021, and start my own business

It is what gave me the time to think about what I want to achieve

And it gave me time to focus on the impact I could have

That being said, I still have a lot of work to do

But saving money got me back on track

And it's given me another chance

To build the life that I want

That's aligned with me

Not with money...

With Love,

Steven Arthur George aka CannaBeMe