The most valuable thing money gives you is the ability to stop thinking about it. Financial literacy gradually lowers that stress.
The most valuable thing money gives you is the ability to stop thinking about it.
I’m talking about a basic standard of living here. Once you’re financially literate and have learned to earn money, the stress tied to this part of life gradually starts to fade.
You start having time and attention to look around, and you can start asking yourself different questions:
- What do I actually want from life?
- How would I want my loved ones and family to live?
- Who else can I take care of? Who can I help?
- What charity or volunteer project could I be useful to?
- Whose lives could I have a positive impact on?
- What creative ideas would I like to bring to life?
And so on down the list. These questions aren’t available to people in the active phase of fighting for financial survival. When your fridge is empty (metaphorically), all you can think about is how to fill it.
Once that problem is solved, you get the chance to start looking further and wider. You start looking for the things you love and building the kind of life you actually want.
In that sense, money buys you a higher level of personal freedom. Learn to handle it properly, and you can significantly improve your whole life.
After finishing school, at 17, my own development started precisely with financial literacy. I read and watched everything I could find on the topic.
I quickly realised that 80% of the content about earning, saving, and investing repeats itself across different sources. The basic principles of financial literacy aren’t complicated.
Over time I realised that most people already know perfectly well what they need to do to get their finances moving upward. But they can end up stuck, spinning their wheels, for psychological reasons rather than a lack of knowledge or capital.
I’ve helped a huge number of people get their financial life in order. In 99% of cases, the problem isn’t knowledge — it’s that the person is subconsciously sabotaging their own growth and progress in this area.
For example, in childhood, if an uncle gave a kid a decent amount of money for their birthday, the mum might say: “Give it here! You’ll just waste it. Dad and I will buy you winter boots instead!”
Sometimes one phrase like that is enough for a child to subconsciously form the belief that they handle money foolishly, and that someone else should be in charge of finances in their life.
There can be a whole range of these beliefs, and they vary widely. No matter how much new knowledge about money and success a person stuffs into their head, if there’s even one belief like that sitting in their subconscious, it’s enough to keep nothing from changing.
Our subconscious can quietly stop any process in our lives.
On September 23rd, our school is launching the “Financial Literacy 2.0” course. It’s a concentrate of everything most useful that I’ve learned on this topic over the last 16 years. If you want to join, check the info in my saved Instagram stories — that’s where I dig deep into the psychological reasons behind why we behave the way we do with money.
Do you see people around you spinning their wheels on this, even though they could be growing faster? Maybe you’re one of those people yourself?