“A wise person should have money
in their head, but not in their heart.” Jonathan Swift
In the world we live in everybody needs money. We need money to ensure our very survival. We need money to fulfill our most basic needs such as food, water, accommodation or clothing. Without money, none of these very basic needs can be met. But we also need money to fulfill all of our other needs, such as healthcare, education, transportation or even leisure. We live in a society where virtually nothing can be accomplished without money and this is why no one can ignore money after reaching a certain age. It's always there in one way or another. Let's just say it now and be done with it: money is important. Money is very, very, important...
I know that what I just said is painfully obvious. However, even that being the case, I must confess
that, until relatively recently, I hadn't been able to fully grasp this simple
and obvious truth. In fact, for most of my life, I regarded money with disdain. I truly
believed I was above such a thing as money. I was more concerned with the
higher things in life, such as metaphysics, ethics, history, politics
literature or cinema. Money did not seem worthy of my attention. It lacked the
nobility, the elegance, of other, more important, matters.
It wasn't until about five years ago,
when I graduated from university, that I started to fully understand the
pivotal role of money in society. In other words, it wasn't until I stopped
being financially supported by my family that I realized how important money is. In fact, I quickly realized that, unless you can make enough money to
support yourself every month, everything else quickly becomes unimportant,
since you start having trouble meeting your fundamental needs such as food or
accommodation.
The truth is that either we like
it or not we live in a capitalist society where money is at the very base of
the social structure. Every adult who wishes to lead an independent life needs
to make money somehow. This is the harsh reality people face when they finish their
studies and stop being supported by their families. In fact, a consequence of
this reality is that the vast majority of adults in the world today are forced
to structure their lives in such a way as to produce enough income to cover
their monthly expenses. In other words, most adults exchange most of their time
for money. We call this process "working" or "having a
job". In fact, the normal status for an adult these days is precisely to
be an active worker, that is, to have a job. This usually means working for
another person or for a corporation, which ends up being almost the same.
My case is strange
since I'm thirty-years-old and I've never had a job. Yet, in spite of never having had a job, I
have been able to support myself for almost five years without asking
anyone for money. I've done this by investing my money, which has allowed me to
produce enough income to cover my expenses in these past years.
I got into the investing world by
chance, since the only thing I did was run into an investor who showed me the world of financial investments. If it hadn't
been for him chances are I still wouldn't know anything about investing, just
like most people that are my age and even older. I decided to start this blog
in order to share what I've learned so far with those very people. I hope that,
through this initiative, I can contribute to improve people's financial
knowledge and their prospects in life as a result. I also hope to refine my own
knowledge through writing about these subjects on a regular basis.
I must state that, in spite of
having been an investor for almost five years now, my knowledge is still
extremely limited and I'm sure there are millions of investors out there who
are more knowledgeable and much more successful. Therefore, my contribution can
only be a small one, yet I believe that it can be valuable to the extent that I
can raise some awareness to the often overlooked fact that there is a world of
financial knowledge and prosperity out there waiting to be discovered. If money
is so important, as we have seen in the beginning of this essay, shouldn't
people dedicate some time to learn about how to make more money with less effort and
less time?
No comments:
Post a Comment