 |
Manage
Your Money:
Sufficiency and Spiritual Practice
by Dan Millman |
Money is neither god nor devil,
but a form of energy.
Like love or fear,
it can serve you or bind you,
depending upon how you manage it.
By clarifying your goals
and using your gifts,
you can make good money,
doing what you enjoy,
while serving
the highest calling of your soul.
Using money wisely, and well,
you share your material
and spiritual wealth
with the world.
Road Map: The Flow of Money
In the context of personal growth, money is more than
a means of exchange or ready cash. Although most of us
have experienced periods of financial scarcity, our
relationship to money reflects our relationship to
energy and service and spirit, our ability to function
in society, our openness to pleasure and abundance, our
reality check. Money mirrors the quality of our
interactions with other people, our ability to receive
and to give. Money represents survival, security,
safety, shelter, food, family, livelihood.
More complex, it turns out, than balancing your
checkbook.
If spiritual life begins on the ground, money forms a
foundation on which to build. Shivapuri Baba, an Indian
Saint and yogi who walked around the world on a
pilgrimage when he was nearly 120 years old, was once
asked about the best way to begin a spiritual life. He
advised, "first build a foundation—manage your
money." (He had acquired a small bag of gems in his
younger years, through hard work and simple living; he
drew upon these gems as needed.)
Money in Everyday Life
Pam, a friend who read an early version of this
manuscript, said, "I don't think that the chapter
[in Everyday Enlightenment], Manage Your
Money, is as important as the chapters about taming
our mind or facing our fears—" Abruptly, she
looked at her watch. "Oh, my gosh, look what time
it is! The bank’s closing in ten minutes!"
Wondering about why money was so important, Pam had to
run to the bank.
On the way to the bank, Pam later told me that she
realized how much of her time, thoughts, and attention
revolved around money—paying the bills, balancing
checkbooks, discussing costs of the room addition for
their growing family. After the bank, she went food
shopping, then stopped by the furniture store to check
prices on a new bed for one of her children. All
activities dealing with money. Like Pam, most of us have
money concerns of one kind or another—striving to make
more, or make do with less—learning to live simply,
comfortably, spiritually.
Poor people may be forced to think about money a lot
of the time, related to food, shelter, subsistence, and
survival. Rich people may also think about money a lot
of the time, related to status, travel, freedom,
influence, and options. But managing your money does not
depend upon becoming wealthy or declaring vows of
poverty. Rather, it is about creating stability
and sufficiency—a balanced flow of monetary
energy through your life. This kind of management
liberates you from survival issues, so that money
concerns no longer occupy your mind or monopolize your
attention. When money flows in, you spend it in a
matter-of-fact way where it needs to go, where it will
do the most good. You pay bills gladly, knowing that
your money helps to support other people who in turn
provide services for you. If something breaks, you write
a check and get it fixed without further concern. Free
from cycles of scarcity, your attention can ascend to
higher levels of awareness and experience.
Money is like sex;
you think a lot about it
when you don’t have it,
and think of other things
when you do.
—James Baldwin
Spiritual Stereotypes
You can probably conjure up images of pure and holy
people quite easily—monks with begging bowls, Indian
ascetics, priests and nuns from every tradition who have
renounced money in order to live a more spiritual life
free of worldly distractions. Images of Jesus expelling
money changers from the temple and quotations about
money being the root of all evil and rich men having a
tough time entering heaven and the meek inheriting the
earth are quite familiar. Such images and ideas help
create stereotypes that equate poverty and spirituality
in the minds of many.
I don’t like money
but it calms my nerves.
—Joe Louis
Managing your money begins by acknowledging any mixed
feelings, guilt, or negativity you may have about money
and about those who possess it in abundance. If you
associate voluntary poverty with humility, goodness, and
spirituality, then with what do you associate wealth? It
is worth pondering, because what you believe about money
will determine, in large part, your effectiveness in
acquiring it.
What Money Cannot Buy
Money cannot buy security, because security is a
psychological state. To some, it means having enough
food to eat, clothing on your back, a shelter over your
head, or someone who loves you. To others, security
requires millions of dollars in tax-free accounts around
the world.
Money can’t buy love and happiness either. In one
telephone survey, 275 people in the San Francisco Bay
area were asked if they believed that they would be
significantly happier and more loving if they had a
million dollars. Seventy-six percent of the respondents
replied, "Yes. Absolutely." Then the research
company contacted ten millionaires, and asked them,
"Did making your first million dollars make you a
happier or more loving person?" The response was
unanimous: "No."
The best things in life—the sun in the morning and
the moon at night—are free. And money doesn’t
guarantee happiness. But financial abundance does offer
a number of practical benefits. Sleep, for one thing—very
few affluent people stay up late worrying about having
too much money. Money also buys privacy, space, and
silence.
Three things help me
get through life successfully:
an understanding husband,
an extremely good analyst,
and millions and millions of dollars.
—Mary Tyler Moore
Wealthy people do have problems, but they have less
to do with survival. There may be some forlorn rich
people and some delighted poor people, but on the whole,
managing your money certainly gives you a leg up.
Simple Principles for Sufficiency
In Walden Henry David Thoreau described how by
living frugally, growing his own food, building a hut
with scrap lumber he’d found on some land near Walden
Pond, he would only have to work for six weeks a year to
earn enough to live a quiet, contemplative life. There
is much to admire about his experiment (which lasted a
season or two), but such a life is not for everyone. You
may not want to follow Thoreau to Walden Pond, but here
are some simple principles that you can follow:
Live Below Your Means
Many of us believe our main money problem is how to
make more of it, but how we spend it is in fact more
important. Because as our income increases, so do
desires and expenses. It’s all a matter of scale. Many
wealthy people end up in debt.
No matter how much money you make,
if you spend more than you earn
you shall be eternally poor.
—Noah Webster
Money is so easy to spend that an alarming number of
us have put away little or nothing toward our later
years. Applying fiscal discipline is a central part of
managing your money. Most affluent people become and
stay that way due not to extraordinary incomes, but to
an unassuming lifestyle and the self-discipline to spend
less than they earn, while investing the rest.
Pay Yourself First
Make it an ironclad rule to pay yourself by putting
away ten cents of every dollar you ever earn until you
are seventy years old, and teach your children to do the
same. Before you pay the bills, before you pay the IRS,
before you give to charity, put that money away as if it
never existed and learn to live on the rest, no matter
what. Put that ten percent aside in a safe nest-egg
account or very conservative investment and let compound
interest work for you all day and all night over the
years. Never mind the fancy investment strategies,
schemes, and experts. If you do have money to experiment
with, that’s icing on the cake. In a true emergency,
give yourself a few days to decide if you really need to
draw out any of the principal to spend. Never draw out
more than half of the principal. At the age of
sixty-five or seventy, it is yours to do with as you
wish.
Earmark Your Money
Whether your income is derived from a salary with
taxes withheld, or whether you are self-employed, one of
the most practical steps you can take in managing your
money is to create a budget, clearly earmarking your
money for distinct categories. Once you’ve created the
budget, then stick with it. While this is not a radical
idea, few of us put it into practice, given the level of
credit card debt in this country. Unless you already
have tax withholding at your work, divide any income as
follows: For every $1,000 you make—
-
Immediately put away $100 (10%) in your savings.
-
If you are self-employed, put aside whatever
percentage of your gross income that goes to state and
federal taxes.
-
If you are committed to donating a share of your
income to charities, earmark that fund next; don’t
wait until the end of the year to see if there’s
anything left. If you decide to donate five percent of
your gross income to charities, that would be $50 out of
each thousand.
-
Put $50 into a rainy-day fund.
-
Put $50 into an account for Christmas, Hanukkah, or
other holidays.
-
Put $50 into a vacation account.
That’s a total of $450, leaving $550 (out of every
$1,000 you make) for household expenses: the mortgage or
rent, food, utilities, medical care, etc. The exact
percentages may vary from household to household,
depending upon the makeup and age range of its members,
but the principle is the same —earmark and budget your
money. Exerting this financial discipline will eliminate
a great deal of pre-tax as well as post-retirement
stress. You gain self-reliance and self-respect by
taking responsibility for managing your money in this
way.
The Two Essentials of Business Success
In order to succeed in nearly any business
enterprise, whether you work for a large corporation or
are self-employed, you must operate on these two
principles:
-
First, be good at what you do . That means
ongoing study, practice, innovation, and refinement.
Treat your work as a form of skill training. Never
believe that you are as good as you can get. Each day,
each year, strive to master your work. No matter what
you do, if you become one of the best in your field, you
will do well (if you also pay attention to the following
principle).
-
Second, be good at promoting what you do . There
is no telling how many exceptional, gifted people exist
in every field who are not successful because they were
unwilling to promote themselves. I know extraordinary
musicians whose songs will never be heard by more than a
few people, while the top forty charts include many
forgettable but well-promoted clichés. It’s a sad
irony that those most dedicated to their art or craft,
who most love what they do, understandably want to spend
their time getting better at what they do but fail to
grasp the need to promote themselves.
Ask yourself: Am I good at what I do? Do I provide a
valuable service? If the answer is no, then stay out of
sight and work at improving what you do. But if your
answer is yes, then blow your horn! You can’t help
anyone if they don’t know you exist. Whether or not
you have any innate interest in promotion and marketing—whether
or not you enjoy it—it has to become at least half of
your job, your energy, and your attention at the
beginning stages of a new venture. Promoting your
business helps you to help others and provide a valuable
service in the world as only you can do it.
The service you render others
is the rent you pay for your room on earth.
—Wilfred Grenfell
The Soul of Money
It is easy to get lost in the practical details of
managing money and forget the higher purpose of this
gateway: to provide a foundation for spiritual practice
and to free your attention from the task of survival.
Lynne Twist, co-founder of The Hunger Project, put it
this way to Michael Toms on New Dimensions Radio:
Money is an inanimate object [but] we can assign to
it a spiritual meaning and voice and power if we choose
to, and give it some soul. Money doesn’t have any
soul, but we do, and we’re the people through
whom money flows and with which money speaks . . . And
when our spirit is unleashed, what’s unleashed is the
prosperity of the soul, of the heart. . . and in that
truth, the whole world belongs to you.
When I became committed to teaching whatever I
learned, more information poured in. In the same way, as
you contact the joy of sharing your abundant spirit,
more spiritual wealth pours down from the heavens,
bathing you in its light. Managing your money is
provides another arena of practicing everyday
enlightenment.
From that point of awareness, we turn now to the
source of all beliefs—to the mind. It serves as a
prison for some, but for you can also hold the key to
freedom.
© Copyright 1998 by Dan
Millman. From the book "EVERYDAY ENLIGHTENMENT: The Twelve
Gateways to Personal Growth" (Warner Books, 1998).
Reprinted by permission.
Dan Millman is a former world trampoline champion, Stanford gymnastics coach, and Oberlin college professor. His eleven
books, including Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Everyday Enlightenment, The Life You Were Born to Live, The Laws of Spirit,
and Living on Purpose have inspired millions of readers in 20 languages worldwide.
His website: www.danmillman.com
BACK
TO "FEATURES" PAGE
|
