Financial Tip of the Day: Have A Positive Money Mindset
When it comes to achieving financial goals and building wealth, the conversation usually focuses around earning more money and investing, but little time is spent discussing the mindset you need to succeed financially.
While income does play an important factor in wealth building, the way you think about money and how you manage it is arguably more important. For example, someone making $50,000 a year, who saves and invest 10% to 20% of their income, will build wealth faster than someone making $100,000 a year and spending everything they earn — it all comes down to your money mindset.
Your money mindset is made up of the set of beliefs and attitudes you have about money. It first begins to develop when you’re a child and you observe the way your parents and caregivers talk about, and handle money in the household. Those could’ve been positive or negative conversations depending on your family and the community you grew up in.
When you became a bit older, the media and social influences begin to target you and try to get you to spend your *cough* parents *cough* money, while also grooming you to become the next generation of consumers.
By the time you reach your teenage years, your peers are the most influential people in your life and possessing the right brands plays an integral part in socializing. This problematic because it is also the most critical time in developing your money mindset. This is usually the first time you’re earning your own money and you begin practicing and developing the spending habits and relationship you’ll have with money that carries over into adulthood.
So, unless you had someone in your life teaching you positive personal finance habits along the way, the first 18 years of your life — the years where your adulthood habits are formed — were spent developing a money mindset that was influenced by outside forces that didn’t always have your best interest at heart.
If you didn’t grow up receiving positive money messages, chances are you probably picked up some negative messages along the way such as viewing being in debt as a normal part of life, or believing that you have to be rich in order to invest.
Don’t let negative money messages you received in the past hold you back from the future you want to achieve. If you’re willing to do today what others won’t, you’ll be able to live tomorrow like others can’t. Stay focus. Stay positive. You got this!
