Our society delivers two conflicting ideas about money, one by portraying the fortunes of having a lot of money and on the other hand they tend to inflict a notion about how the money can’t give happiness, which is totally ironic. Probably at some point in your life you must have heard someone say that “money doesn't matter”. However, this sentiment sounds nice in theory, the reality is that money has a lot more importance than you percieve. So you should’nt underestimate the importance of money.
We need food, shelter, clothes for our survival, most of the world could live without money if the above things were free, but they aren't. You can see around your house that every piece of equipment you own was bought with money, including the computer or lap on which you're reading this, the chairs, the bed, the house and so on.Money is not everything, but its is a basic necessity to survive in this world. If we point out the benefits of having money, it will be a very long list. First it gives you freedom and choices, Money enables you to live anywhere you want, to take care of your essential needs, and to indulge in to your hobbies. Money gives you the wings to your dreams and help in accomplishing it. Money standardizes our life style and many more.
Rather than relying on the answers of any rich preachers about the importance of money, if you are seeking for an authentic answer, Ask a father, who has got this notice,“Won't let your daughter sit for the exams, if you don't clear the fees”, Ask a daughter/son, Who is unable to buy medicines for her/his ailing parent. Ask a daughter, who doesn't want to marry, because she doesn't want her parents to waste their hard-earned money. Ask her Parents, who cannot afford to marry off his daughter. Ask a kid, who knows that his mother is lying, that she had enough food and doesn't feel like eating anymore.
In his latest episode of Conversations with Rakesh, SoME Education founder, Rakesh Godhwani addresses the misconceptions on the importance of money and acts as a guide to help the readers understand the concept of money by stating various examples.
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If you have its a problem, if you don’t have it’s a problem
There is this lovely song in a movie called ‘Karz’ one of the landmark movies of Indian cinema of Rishi Kapoor and this movie starts with this song which is called paisa paisa and the lyrics of the song are amazing, one of the most important line on money is “if you have it it's a problem if you don't have it it's a problem” that's all the more reason why we should talk about it and we should learn how to deal with it. Learners and even professionals all of us our single most important priority unfortunately is to earn a livelihood which is money, now if you're going to teach them money is not important it will only confuse them.
All of us have decided to live in cities or towns in seek of jobs which pays you good and you need good houses, good lifestyle, good education, good health care, none of this is cheap but it's getting horrendously expensive. The people who have lot of money are the people who will give the lecture that money is not important, which is ironic and I'm sure they must have worked hard, they must have toiled every minute of their life to earn it. Now when they have 20 room bungalow and a Mercedes and a private jet, they are giving lectures that money is not important, it is really absurd.
Look at the money all over again
Let's take a look at money all over again and there is a reason why we teach that money is not important because money messes up with our minds it changes our behavior and there are sociological experiments on it. A very good experiment that was done by a sociologist called Paul Piff was, he made people play a game of monopoly. Wherein the more wealth you create in the game the more you enjoy it, because others are losing you are winning and and they start paying rent for the possession you have won. The experiment says that the person who becomes richer and starts to become more and more arrogant. There are many rich people who are very bad at their behavior because they feel that their wealth is invincible, and nothing can harm them now that they have money. That’s the reason why we teach our children, don't let money go up in your mind. But that doesn't mean that money is not important, so please connect the dots it's very important for us to teach our children, professionals, executives, entrepreneurs everyone that money is the common factor that drives the world, if you are wealthy you can live a good life and if you have some left you can help someone else. But what we do is we just take these two things away and we confuse people.
Educate the mass
We should help our learners to respect money and get used to the concept of it, especially young children don't even have an idea, because they feel money comes from an ATM or probably it comes from trees. But, it's not their fault they live in that bubble that we have created for them, so please start investing time to teach your children about the importance of money and how to earn it with the right approach. An important research that was done on poverty talks about that how when people don't have money they take bad decisions because in need of money for health care, education, food, they might take loans of high interest rate and they get completely sucked into the spiral of poverty. So please remember that money helps us live a better life. If you have it, then enjoy it and pass it on so that it becomes a virtuous cycle for the world to enjoy and if you understand these principles you will have a better concept of money.
At School of Meaningful Experiences we are launching a new program focused only on money it's called ‘money matters’ and we are launching it for pre-teens and teens. Our idea is not to make them billionaires but is to help them understand the concept of money. We should talk about how to earn money how to invest money how to grow money how to deal with daily expenses and respect this whole concept and someday, i hope you all will learn that if you have the power of money so that you can not only use it for your good quality of life but can share with others which is where your quality of life will go up. The biggest focus of all of us should be to elevate people from poverty which is what all of us are trying to do, so money will help us do that . So that we can change the notion “Money is not important” to “Money is indeed important”
