And how much is enough?
Ever since I had my first book published I always like to pop into bookstores to see what other authors are writing in the subjects of money and financial planning. In my last visit I picked up a book from Felix Martin,Money: The Unauthorized Biography and the very first chapter intrigued me as it asks the question: What is money?
Whether we were brought up knowing much about money or not, we learned from an early age that money buys things. It has always been interesting talking about money with my kids, especially my young 5 year old daughter as she is always saying things like ‘one hundred billion million hundred dollars’. They are sure going to miss out not having to know about ‘pennies’. Christmas money this past year has been a great teaching tool as my 8 year old son spent his money right away and is now trying every trick in his book to get his sister to get something for her that ‘they’ can play with. It is just that he knows that a Mario Brother’s figure will be more useful than a Barbie.
Before money meant paper
In his book, Martin talks about the Pacific island of Yap, at the beginning of the twentieth century, and how it had a simple monetary system with fish, coconuts and sea cucumber. But after looking further it was discovered that Yap had a developed monetary system. The coins were not what you would expect today as they would have been a little difficult to carry around in your purse or wallet.
The coins were ‘fei ‘, ‘large, solid, thick stone wheels ranging in diameter from a foot to twelve feet, having in the centre a hole varying in size with the diameter of the stone, wherein a pole may be inserted sufficiently large and strong to bear the weight and facilitate transportation (Martin, pg 5).
I am sure robberies were limited. This ‘fei’ were tokens where the accounts of credit and clearing of the daily business was tracked for the people (Martin, pg 14).
I will discuss the history of money and your ‘money story’ in future blogs.
How do you define your money?
Money can be earned by you, borrowed by you and gifted to you amongst other sources of money. Money can also be spent and invested but the definition of what money means to you can be very different to the next person. So the question today is, What is Money to you? I am not talking about the money that you hold in your hand, have in the bank or the balance on your credit card. But on the other hand those numbers can define in part what money means to you.
To most people financial planning is all about money. Often goals that you want to have (buy a car, home, retire) all have a monetary figure attached. But until you dig deep down and discover what money really means to you completing that financial plan may often have to be delayed. Your definition of what money means will affect every decision that you make that has a ‘loonie’ attached to it. How much money is enough? Only you can answer that question.
An exercise I read about in The Energy of Money by Maria Nemeth was to take a bill and imagine the journey that it has taken from being printed to the time of you holding it in your hand. The stories that you think of will show you that money means different things to different people.
Take a moment and answer these two questions:
What does money mean to you? (retirement, stability, something bad, something good)
How much money is enough? (to live a comfortable life, to live until you are 107, to give my family the lifestyle they deserve or that you didn’t get to have).
Talking about money was not something that I heard much about when I was growing up. Due to the lack of money conversations, I have made every effort to educate my kids about money from an early age. I wanted to add my contribution to building financial literacy and that’s why I wrote my book ‘Financial Fotographs, How to talk to you family about money’.
Finding passion from personal finance
Over the past year I have found a passion for cooking so I wanted to combine the passion of helping people with money and cooking chicken. Therefore, my blog ‘Don’t be Chicken With Your Money – Be Smart’ was born. I encourage you to connect with me and give me your thoughts and opinions on the information I present. I have to admit that I am more ‘money’ expert than ‘cooking’ expert.
My recent chicken dish that I prepared I will call ‘Carrots in the River’. It consists of garden carrots boiled in water on high heat until they are soft enough to mash if you were to try to. Another option I will try next time is steaming the carrots to keep all the juices. I also made a side dish of simple mashed potatoes out of a Betty Crocker ready-to-make box (I know… not the healthiest). The main chicken entrée was boneless chicken breasts, cubed and cooked in a frying pan on high heat. I added ‘Classico Alfredo’ sauce to the chicken to add flavour and keep the chicken moist. I also cut up a red pepper and fried the pieces for a minute or so. Then I took a couple carrots that were boiled and cut them up to very small pieces. The chicken, red peppers, carrots and cheese were put into pre-boiled Catelli Manicotti noodles. The only trick here is to cook the noodles just enough so they are still easy to fill and don’t break in your hands. I ended off by putting some of the same alfredo sauce over the noodles along with a bit of ‘Classico basil Pesto’. Not necessarily an effort to write home about but a good tasting meal within the family budget.