Bob Proctor points out the following simple truth: People fall into three categories when it comes to money:
- Their monthly budget is slightly negative and they are spending a little more money every month then they are earning
- Their monthly budget matches their income and they have no money at the end of the month.
- Their monthly living cost is less than their revenue, they put away regular savings.
If you were to guess – what percentage of the population do you feel would fall into each of these three categories?
Recently a top respected Canadian newspaper, Global News, quotes that “Canadians are dreaming of retirement but they are not actually saving for it” and they point out the following facts:
According to Statistics Canada, in 2012 just 23.7 per cent of Canadian tax-filers contributed to a tax-sheltered Retirement Savings Plan.
From that, we can infer that 75% of Canadian fall into Bob Proctor’s first two categories – and it may be the same in other countries as well.
Does Money Solve Money Problems?
What if you gave more money to a person who has a habit of spending more each month than they have? What if you gave more money to a person who has the habit of spending all the money they have? Do you think more money solve their money problems?
What about the example of people who have won the lottery, and within a few years they are in far worse financial shape than they were before they won the lottery?
The truth is, more money just magnifies the habits that you already have with money.
More money highlights the tragic flaws we have with money,
or the virtues we have learned and nurtured about money.
If we trace back where your relationship with money began, it follows that the habits you have are a result of the actions you took. Your beliefs determine your actions, and your beliefs were generated when you learned something. If we learn something, the new knowledge may not become a belief that changes your actions.
Just because we ‘know’ we should do something, doesn’t mean we will do it.
There is a space between knowledge and action.
Where we feel good, enthusiasm, accomplishment, joy –
then action is easy.
Where we feel anxiety, doubt, fear –
action is difficult, at the wrong time, too much or too little.