Your Money Story (Intro)

Over the course of the next 12 months, my aim is to talk and connect with more people, understand why they do what they do, but most importantly, how they behave with their money.

To break the stigma surrounding money, I will tell you a bit about my own money story in the next few weeks, but for now, lets delve into what a money story is.

Life is full of stories, myths and legends!

We grow up listening to childhood fairy tales and stories that left us full of imagination and wonder, even now I still love a good story, whether it is a movie, book or listening to someone about their own story.

A few psychologists and avid academics have even created a process that we keep coming back to, Joseph Campbell wrote about it in one of his many stories, called the “Hero’s Journey.” Simply put, any great story comes down to following the process and if you think about it, truly think about almost every super hero movie, every Disney movie, hell even every fiction novel, generally follows this same process.

Essentially the hero’s journey follows a certain arc, and truly your money story also follows a certain arc in life.

Much like the hero’s journey, you get called on an adventure, now our adventure these days are no where near as fun or dangerous compared to going out to fight a dragon. However, I would say setting a goal to buy your first home can be just as exciting and fulfilling.

Unfortunately, when you want to buy your first home, you have no idea where to start, so you ask family and try to ask them how they did it. Most of the time, they bought their house 10-20, even 30 years ago, as your parents are the first people you would talk to, but they can’t give you the details you really need to know.

Hence you search for a guardian/mentor, such as a mortgage broker or financial planner, someone who can send you on the first steps of your journey and teach you how to overcome certain obstacles. In the end though, this is your story and the mentor/guardian can only take you part of the way.

Therefore, once the guardian/mentor has completed their task of showing you a way, you have to take it on board and enter the abyss.

The abyss is a dark place, a place where you have to reflect and dig deep with regards to your strategy. Involving a little/lot of sacrifice, discipline and effort to make sure that you follow the strategy. The abyss is where you learn what you are made of and you start to learn more about yourself, who you are, whether you have what it takes and once you get through all the trials, you can leave transformed.

The abyss is where all the saving needs to be done to get you to where you want to go, it is the staying in to eat dinner, instead of eat out. The abyss is saying no to friends when they want to do things, it is the point where you need to decide what is worth sacrificing for the end goal/product.

Once you have learnt more about who you are and have been able to find a rhythm in your discipline towards your savings/finances, you can now leave the abyss and embark upon the transformation phase, where you can use your new learnings/discipline to excel even further than you thought you ever could.

From the transformation stage, you go and fight the big bad banks for that home loan and in the end, you get them to hand you over money to buy your first new home, which becomes the gift/reward of the story.

Once you move in, you are now in your brand new residence and living in your own space, which apart from getting married, has to be one of my biggest life moments I have ever had.

Of course, every story is different, everyone has different trials and problems that arise, some have more go wrong than go right. Some people, without the calling to adventure will be stuck at their parent’s until they meet a partner, or until they decide enough is enough.

Others will get a bad mentor/guardian that is unfortunately only in it to make ends meet on their own terms, whilst others will have great mentors/guardians, but get stuck in their shadow, where the mentor does not die or move on.

The greatest part about the hero’s journey, even though there is a process to it, it is still YOUR story!

It is your own and I wish to hear it, I wish to tell it if you would allow me and I would love to learn from your story and wish to teach others about your trials, your learnings, your ability to meet the darkest of evils and triumph over it.

If you are willing to spend about 30-40 minutes having a chat about your story over zoom, please complete the form below:

Next week, we begin a new month and we will be focusing on health a little bit more, working towards taking back control of your health which is probably even more important than money.

But, my story will also be released next month, as they first of hopefully many Your Money stories.

Until next time,

Take Back Control

Your Money Story: Linking Money, Philosophy and Psychology

From an early age, I have always been interested in what other people do, just observing their behaviour and trying to understand why people do what they do. The curiosity about human behaviour has not waned over the years, in fact, the older I get the more I want to be able to learn more about why people behave.

My curiosity and innate drive to continually learn from others has led me to wanting to create a series, to talk about money and to peel back the reason why people either spend or save, why people think of the future or think in the now.

Money is linked to every aspect of our lives, from our health, to our ego, to our education, careers and even families/relationship!

However, money is not nearly talked about enough, we seem to have a shame around it, a guilt, as if you bring it up and you will either be shut down because you just shouldn’t talk about money, or people get awkward, as if they don’t want you to see who they really are deep down…

But I have come to learn from previous experience and from watching others, that without it, you cannot do anything. You will start losing everything you ever had, relationships, your house, the ability to buy the bare essentials to keep you healthy and sometimes your own sanity.

Therefore, I want to talk about money, I want to do a Your Money Series every month as a part of the blog, where I interview people from all walks of life, to talk about money, their current happiness and just their own philosophy on what they think about money.

Are you a spender or saver? A risk taker or conservatist? Do you buy for the sake of buying? Do you get nervous when you see how much debt you are in when you take out a mortgage?

The money series is not going to delve into numbers, not really, but it is going to delve into how you feel around money, how you feel when you buy things you need vs. what you want. The series is going to portray a deeper part about why we do what we do and hopefully shine some light on why some people feel guilty about money and why some don’t.

Money is nothing to feel ashamed about, if there is one thing I have learnt, Money is just an object, a tool, a piece of paper, or better yet a number in your bank account. The history of money can tell us that it is just a mechanism to trade goods and services for, nothing more, nothing less. Of course, I can understand why a stigma around money and talking about money has taken hold of society, probably since the onset of the great depression, passed down generation to generation.

Which is why, I am going to be doing my own interview first, writing to you about my own Money Story, so that I can hopefully break down the barriers surrounding the stigma that is Money and get to the heart of what truly makes us feel attached to this tool we use in our everyday to day lives.

The series is going to evolve as I evolve and as the barrier people have around talking money gets let down, but the aim is going to remain the same, no matter what.

The aim of the series is to give people a platform to talk money, learn a bit more about themselves and to just discuss what that may entail for their lives, their relationships, their education, their career, and hopefully will be able to shine a light on how our lives, our philosophy and our behaviours affects how we use money.

If we can do this, if we can start opening up about money, learn from each other and truly start to understand that money is nothing more than a means to get what we need and what we want, maybe we can all lead a life that offers more fulfilment, more purpose and less stress.

According to the Houston Hospital, the three top causes of stress are money, work and our health, and money is inter-linked with work and health, therefore we can safely assume that the increase in mental/stress related disorders originate from money. [1]

Hence why I truly want to start this Your Money series- TBC, because deep down I truly want to help build a better society and get to the crux of problems that we see in everyday to day life. Of course, I am not a professional psychologist, so don’t expect a session where you are lying down on the couch telling me all of your problems. No, it is going to be a conversation where hopefully we can learn from each other, I can offer some small money hacks where I can that have helped my life significantly, and maybe I can learn some from you.

If this is something you may be interested in, if you feel brave enough to talk about money and want to spend about 45 minutes talking to me about money, life and your view on the world, please email me or send me a message.

You can email me at: jp2901.jp@gmail.com

or

Connect with me via LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram and just send me a message.

The series will be released on the first weekend of every month, and if we can start to tear down the guilt, stigma and shame we may have around money, my hope is that people will then start talking to each other more openly about one of the biggest stressors on our lives.

Until next time,

Take Back Control

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[1] - https://www.houstonbehavioralhealth.com/blog/top-3-causes-of-stress