Financial

Money.

Men need to have a positive relationship with money and it’s not sufficient to say that the more money a man has the more positive the relationship. No, the entire history of mankind is replete with stories of the highs and lows of this complex relationship. Obviously the concept of money is soaked in positive and negative overtones and implications. The world is constantly in a money chase with tremendous good and unspeakable evil as result. Insofar as I sell money for a living, I have thought long and hard about money. I’m in the mortgage business and help people buy homes. Except for maybe sex, money is typically the top driver in most people’s lives. While my perspective might not move the needle for you much, I have come to a few insights I think are worth sharing. Men need to understand themselves relative to money.

​To Make More, Learn to Be Worth More

Money and value are highly correlated. Not perfectly 1:1, but very closely aligned. The best place to start when trying to gather money to yourself is through value. The more valuable you are, the more money you can make. (Sidebar: We’re talking economic value and not spiritual value or human value. A teacher may be more valuable to the human race than a second baseman, but has to work his/her entire life to generate the kind of income that a professional second baseman earns in one year.That is due to the economic value of rarity, supply and demand, in entertainment. Many people will pay a few dollars to watch a talented player catch a line drive whereas there are many people willing and able to teach in elementary school.)

The takeaway here is that you should align your desires with your value. I just talked with a bank employee this week and he asked my opinion on whether he should become a mortgage lender for a builder. He’ll make a lot more money in commission sales than he’ll earn as a bank manager. But…he’ll work different hours, longer hours, different challenges, and the risk of dry spells. I said that if he were to make the change, he should do it while he’s young rather than after he’s worked himself up the rung and become accustomed to slightly more money and a “more secure” situation where the choice will be harder. (For you young guys, The Defining Decade is a well-written and timely book that illuminates this dilemma.) If economic success is something you want, learn to make the decisions that will increase your value to the marketplace and potentially accrue you more wealth.

Time is Money

Oxygen, blood, electricity, water, and money are all currencies that flow through life to positive effect. You can store each of them to some degree and for limited purposes. They each contain vital elements of power. But only money can store something you can’t capture – time. It takes time to build value and time to exchange that value for money. The more money you can earn and store, the more things you can buy that take time to create. Therefore, in the exchange of your time for money, you only have so much time you can exchange. The more valuable you are, the more your time is worth. When you’re young time seems bountiful, therefore, it’s critical you build value in yourself so that eventually someone will pay you for that value. I used to gauge my income as a multiple of my age. At 24, I made $24,000 = $1000 x age.  At 28, I made $39,000 = $1392. At 35, $6400 x my age. Once I owned my own business, it grew from there (but not always a positive number!). ​

Your Attitude Attracts Money or Repels It

The third thing I observed about money is that there is a reasonably high correlation between a person’s success quotient and their personal philosophy. A person’s philosophy is the collection of conscious and subconscious beliefs about money, their degree of self love, the influence of their parents and upbringing, their choices about job, marriage, their display of wealth, and thoughts about victimhood vs. ownership.  I think this statement is pretty obvious. What isn’t so obvious is how to identify one’s subconscious beliefs and change them to positive if they’re negative. It’s not readily clear or easy on how to do this. But it’s important that you try because otherwise your marriage, parenting, and happiness could hit a big snag if you decide one day your job sucks because you don’t make enough money, or there’s too much pressure, or your kids’ teeth need straightening and you don’t have that in the budget. In other words, life will happen and you want to be prepared. How do you work on your self-understanding about money? An Ironmen group provides you a forum to hear other’s upbringing and thoughts about success and money and learn from them. It allows you to describe your unique experiences and get feedback. The forum helps you to connect the dots.

Your Understanding is Always Evolving

​In summary, money and personal success is a long and complex discussion. No matter your age and maturity, the mountain goes high into the mists of understanding. There’s always more to learn because your needs change. My personal view is that life’s journey had better be valuable to you, that you enjoy becoming ever more valuable and enjoy pouring that value out to others because the pleasure that money brings (and there’s no fooling on this point, it does) doesn’t last.

To your journey towards monetary success,

Dave Marr