The Freedom Money Brings: How I Changed My Money Mindset

I do not come from a wealthy family; we were neither poor nor rich.

We were of average middle class.

My parents were really good at setting priorities, so when we did not have much money, they managed to deal with it in such a way that my two older brothers and I did not notice.

Both my parents did not grow up in wealthy families.

My mother even comes from a poor family.

Among my older brothers and me, I am the only one with the ambition to become wealthy as the youngest of three.

It's not weird that I am adopting a different mindset towards money and my relationship with it.

Growing up, I always heard the sentence, "Money won't make you happy." They were right, but they were also wrong.

We're going to dive into it in this article.

Why?

Well, because a lot of the general perspectives about money won't serve you in the end.

What I want in my life are perspectives that serve me well.

Why would you have perspectives that don't?

Money is more important than most people think.

The topics we're going to dive into are:

• Why money is important

• Your relationship with money

• How to use money

After this article, you will at least have some new perspectives to think about.

How you think about them and what you do with them is up to you.

Why Money is Important

To put it simply, everything revolves around money.

The taxes that you need to pay, your rent, education costs money, politics is about the way a country spends their money, buying food or goods is about money.

If you say money is not important, you're wrong; the world revolves around it.

Money is the worldwide trading good.

The first type of money emerged nearly 5,000 years ago.

If something was not important, why would it survive so long?

So, saying money is not important seems nonsensical to me, due to the world we live in.

"Money can’t buy time" is also such a nonsensical saying.

If you hire someone to do things for you, like editing a video or cleaning your house, you're literally buying time.

You buy someone else's time so you don’t have to spend your time on it.

Money gives you the possibility to choose how you spend your 24 hours by buying someone else's time.

If your own valuable time is not important to you, then what is in this world?

Of course, money isn’t everything.

It cannot buy love or good relations, but it can be an addition to those things. If you can go on a vacation or want to do certain things like diving or bungee jumping, it will cost you money.

Relations are built on memories, and you can create more extraordinary memories when you have a wider budget.

When you can buy a vacation for your family or loved ones, it gives you the feeling of giving, well, that is something money can’t buy.

Oh wait, it can by buying something and giving it.

Money is a tool, and tools are important.

A craftsman without tools is worthless.

You are a craftsman and money is your tool to build up your life.

I think you get the point.

Your Relationship With Money

Many people have a poor relationship with money.

Think of it this way, if you have a bad relationship with a person, would you want that person to be close to you?

I definitely would not.

Well, it's the same with money; if you hate money, money will not be close to you.

I love money, I love to spend it and I love to earn it, I love to keep it.

What you don’t love, you don’t bother to know about.

I want to know where money is, so I will be able to attract it, so I will be able to play with it.

If I don’t care about money, I will not have it and I cannot play with it.

And why wouldn’t I want to have money?

I just stated that money is an important tool for life, to build your life.

If you hate money, what are you going to build?

Of course, you can have other priorities, you don’t want to be obsessed with it.

Look at the fundamentals of a healthy relationship:

• You need to trust your partner

• You need to listen to your partner

• You need to grow with your partner and help each other up

• You need to care for and protect your partner

• You need to be clear to your partner based on your priorities and values

These fundamentals are important in a relationship, now let's transfer those fundamentals to money:

• I trust in the value of money

• I listen to money by looking at where it’s going and where it’s coming from

• I grow my money by investing in myself and assets, thereby creating opportunities for more money to come in. It's a give and take relationship.

• I care about my money, so what I have, I protect in a way to take as little debt as possible and store it in assets that keep it safe from inflation

• Based on my values and priorities, I manage my money in a way that is divided into streams and accounts that fit my values and priorities

If you have a healthy relationship and maintain a healthy relationship with money, it creates a wealthy position over time.

I personally work on this a lot and the better my relationship with money gets, the more I keep.

How To Use Money

Money is important.

It is your tool, as a craftsman, to build your life.

It is your support in times of crisis and your best friend in good times, making life a bit better when it is around.

How should you use this important friend?

Personally, I allocate at least 25% to assets every month consistently.

This is money that I keep in my account and only withdraw when I really need it.

Then, about 50% is for all of my living costs like rent, groceries, subscriptions, paying off debts (it’s better to avoid debt at all costs, but I have a little) and insurance.

I aim to keep this 50% as low as possible, so sometimes it could be less, but sadly most of the time it is 50%.

I invest 15% in myself, in books, courses, coaches, software, or I put it aside for future investments in myself.

Then, around 10% I put aside for fun things like presents, vacations or doing fun things.

This also accumulates when I don’t use it.

The things I increase when I have more income are the self-investment and asset allocations.

It sounds perfectly balanced but, to be honest, this is the ideal situation.

There have been many cases where it was out of proportion, but also many cases when it was not.

To give you an honest look at my income at the moment, it is between 2000 and 3500 euros a month, not consistently the same.

This is what I do, and within those so-called wallets, you can also have different structures of money management.

It is different for everyone, try things and see what suits you the best.

Over time, I believe this is what will bring me closer to my goals and vision in the stage that I am in right now.

Put your money where your mouth is

To sum up everything we discussed about the right money mindset, it's important to note that everyone views money differently, and many money mindsets are not in your favor.

Money is crucial because it is the tool you use to build your life.

It's a tool to buy back time and create more freedom of choice when you have enough.

Just as important as money itself is the relationship you have with it.

If you have a good relationship with money, based on the right values and priorities, money will make your life a bit better, just like a good and healthy relationship would.

Use your money in a way that suits your life and goals.

Categorize it in different wallets in such a way that over time you won't work for money, but money will work for you.

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That's it for now.

I wish you a good day - Job Baltes.