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
