Money – simply an enabler.

How many times have you heard the following statement: “The most important things in life you never learn while you are at school.” I whole heartedly agree with that statement because the two things I learnt very little about at school were people and money. As soon as I left school I quickly discovered there was very little I could do that did not directly or indirectly require input from people or money! And as I journeyed through life I wondered what the role of money really was. Many people seemed to desire it but often it was not the money itself but what it could do.
So I’ve come to a view that money is simply an enabler
We often think of money as the answer to our daily needs BUT it is simply a commodity that we use to trade with and it has very little intrinsic value. It is produced and fed into the monetary systems by government agencies and banks so that businesses and individuals can trade with one another.

Scrooge McDuck is the only person that I’m aware of that actually loved money. The comic strips show him having a swim in it. Most of us relate to what money can buy or allow us to do and we therefore look to money to enable things to happen in our lives.

A useful analogy to help understand the role of money is petrol in a motor car. Petrol to a car is very like money is to a family.
The primary purpose of a motor vehicle is to transport people or goods from place to place.
A motor car will not travel anywhere without petrol as the petrol gives the fuel to propel the car forward.
Without petrol, the car would not be able to fulfill its purpose and might look very nice but be useless as a means of transport.
Therefore the petrol is an enabler in the same way that money is an enabler to assist people to live their lives.

How we use things can determine the value that we gain from them and petrol must be put in the right place to get the desired result!
Imagine putting petrol in the boot of a car. It would not assist the car to move forward and might even destroy the car if ignited by mistake. Often this is the same with money. Used in the wrong way it is disastrous and yet we need it to get ahead in our lives.

It is interesting to note that the petrol has to be ignited to make the car move forward. A controlled explosion is required to get propulsion. Petrol ignited in the wrong way can cause immeasurable damage.

Money can be ignited to get a bigger affect. This is seen in the well known phrase ‘You have to spend money to make money.’ Igniting it in the spend phase can mean a whole lot more propulsion forward financially BUT if it is spent on the wrong items or in a frivolous manner then it can result in no propulsion at all.

So it is important HOW we use our money and WHAT we spend it on. Remember it can assist you greatly but also has the capacity to do great damage.

On a lighter note it is one of those things in your life which can almost appear illusionary. One minute it’s there and then you turn your back and it’s gone which is demonstrated in the well known proverb:
“Your money can be gone in a flash as if it had grown wings and flown away like an eagle.”

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