Do You Obsess About Making Money?

I read a fantastic post Don’t Get Money Worshiper Syndrome by Tony at The ScholarPreneur where he was basically talking about what it means to be an entrepreneur, and the point of having money. He wrote about creativity being one of the driving forces of entrepreneurship which I agree with 100%. If you are able to come up with an innovative idea and turn it into a money making venture you are bound to succeed. In the rest of the post he went on to talk about what money really is – a tool to obtain something we want. Just like everything else, it is something that can be used in a good or bad way. People have different uses for money and varying reasons for wanting to have money. The way in which we use it will eventually determine our financial success. As Tony put it, ‘if you throw money at perceived problems you will only create more problems’.

This got me to thinking about the way people can very easily obsess about making money. An obsession of any kind is not good and things can go wrong when you are obsessed. If you are out to make money you should be having fun whilst you are at it.

You could wake up one day and decide that you want to start making some real money and go out and try anything and everything without having a think about how and what you are going to do. In a lot of cases you end up wasting a lot of time, effort and maybe even money trying out all sorts of things that won’t work for you. What I am trying to get at, is not to obsess about making money, to at least have a plan on how you are going to go about doing it. Setting up a few rules to follow wouldn’t be a bad idea either. Steve Jobs is someone who has made a lot of money over the years. These are his 12 Rules of Success:

1. Do what you love to do.
2. Be different.
3. Do your best.
4. Make a SWOT analysis.
5. Be entrepreneurial.
6. Start small, think big.
7. Strive to become a market leader.
8. Focus on the outcome.
9. Ask for feedback.
10. Innovate.
11. Learn from failures.
12. Learn continually.

One thing that I don’t see too often on sites/blogs that go on about ways of making money is a mention on savings. Putting aside a certain percentage of what you earn is a very good idea. There is no point in making money, spending it all on whatever you may spend it on and at the end of the day have nothing to show for it. You will need money for your retirement and if you haven’t already started putting some aside there is no time better than the present to start doing just that. A really good read on this and other topics is The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. If you haven’t already read it, I would really recommend it to anyone who wants to live and finish rich.