The Language of Money

Besides from your native tongue, there is one other language everybody should learn and that is the language of money. Money will be part of your life, all your life and not being able to speak nor understand this language significantly increases the odds of you and your family living under financial stress.

Do you know any millionaires who know nothing about money? No? Maybe there is a reason why they are the millionaires… They understand the language of money and use it to their advantage instead of being taken advantage off!

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Money really does have a language of if its own.

What do you say, should we have a discussion about your pension and your 401k and your investments, right now?

Freaking out?

You are not alone, this seems to be the reaction from most people when I ask this question but it should not be like that. You know that money is an important part of your life and that it would be hard to live with no money at all. Throughout our upbringing, money has been part of our lives either in a good and encouraging way or in a bad and discouraging way. As kids we see and hear almost everything and since we are like a blank sheet of paper, we absorb everything.

Our money mindset or our financial blueprint is being created when we are very young and easily influenced. If most of what we heard during this time in relation to money was negative, then it is very, very likely that we have a negative relationship with money as grownups (financial issues and feeling stressed about money).

I am guessing you are a bit older than 7 years BUT it is never too late to learn new things, change our behavior and relationship with money and how we relate to subjects related to money. If you feel that the above rings true and you handle money the way your parents did, good for you, that is awareness. Once we are aware, we can make changes. I guess that if you have a negative relationship you would like to change it, both for your own sake but also for your family’s and for your kids’ sake.

Your kids will inherit the same money mindset as you do. The best thing about that is that you can choose how you behave, react and think about money. Yes, it is a choice.

You want proof?

If I ask you to think about a great, amazing moment in your life and focus on that moment for 30 seconds, I know you will feel great and not angry or upset. You actually just decided on how you were going to feel which is pretty awesome.

All your life you will have to deal with money in one way or another and my experience is that the less you know about it, the more difficult the “subject” of money becomes. Unfortunately it is also true that those who knows the least, tend to get taken advantage of and pay the most, for everything!

It goes for big things as well as small things but if we never start to learn the language of money, the risk is very high that we always will have financial struggle. Though it doesn’t have to be like this at all. I am sure you have something you are interested in and at first when you found that interest of yours, you didn’t know much about it. Maybe it was even hard for you. What tends to happen is that the more we learn and understand, the easier things become.

If you want to learn to speak Spanish for example. Initially you don’t understand anything and it might feel overwhelming but once you learn some basics, you know the “tourist Spanish”. When you do, it is easier to add even more words, speaking full sentences and then improve on your grammar as well.

The same goes for the language of money. I want you to have as much money as you want so that you can live the life of your dreams. However, if you never take the time to learn this language, that scenario is very unlikely. Do you know (or have you heard of) any millionaires who know nothing about money? There might be the odd exception but most of them do because that is how they became millionaires in the first place!

Why not take this point to heart and commit to start taking the first steps towards learning and appreciating the language of money?

Why you need to understand the language of money

I hope it is pretty obvious by now, as most importantly you would never have any financial stress or worry. You would know that money is a servant and that is the way it should be used. One should not be a slave to money. I want you to be the one dictating the terms of your life, not the one who pays your salary!

Some common examples of why you have to understand the language of money:

It leaves a BIG gap between your current lifestyle and a life on your terms.
Your kids will have the same relationship to money as you do.
You do not want to be like 60% of the US population who live under financial stress.
Every time you buy something, you most likely pay more than you should have if you had compared the prices (car repairs, handyman services etc).
The fees of your investments and your retirement savings are most likely very high if you “hate” talking about pensions. Possibly HALF of you pension might be taken away in FEES, just because you can’t be bothered to learn a few key things about money (see link below for post on this topic).
Your automatic thoughts about money are most likely negative ( I don’t have money, I can’t afford that, I don’t understand it, You would have to be a genius to have that etc..).
You might be using credit cards as you don’t understand the concept of interest on your card. Money is not free.
You might pay substantially higher interest on your mortgage which can lead to massive amounts over time as most mortgages do. A one percentage point higher interest on a mortgage averaging 300,000 USD could mean an alternative cost of 800,000 USD over 40 years!! I have assumed the one percentage point was invested instead over that same (standard) mortgage period of 40 years and that the yearly return on those investments are similar to the historical returns of 8% per year. This is not a joke, have a look at the graph below…

I could go on an on about this as there are so many situations in our daily life where we will miss out if we don’t understand this language. Not only will we feel bad because we don’t understand it, but we will become more stressed out and there will be loads of things we won’t be able to do as we don’t have the money to do it!

Hopefully I have given you a few good reasons why it would be good to know the language of money so that you too can make money your servant!

How to learn this “new” language

Become a sponge for wisdom! Initially I would recommend you starting to reprogram your brain by reading and implementing How to change your money mindset! and also download our free book Money Mindset “Hacks”. This is a great starting point as we here focus on the automatic and ingrained responses you might have adopted so far. By starting off with changing these and then creating some new great financial ways of thinking and habits to implement, you are creating a great foundation to stand on.

I want you to feel good or actually great around and with the topic of money. If you incorporate the above suggestions into your daily life, your automatic and emotional response to anything related to money will change. When we have changed that response, it is time to actually learn more. It is so much easier to learn stuff when we want to learn because we realize all the benefits it will bring to us and our families.

The following step is to decide you will take control over your own financial future. To do this I would suggest you go through the recommendations in this post How to always have enough money. By following these steps and creating these habits, you will for sure make clear progress both financially and emotionally.

By taking small steps and becoming more and more comfortable around the topic of money, things will start to shift, especially if you have a clear enough reason (your WHY) you must make these changes. By going through all the content I recommend here and in particular on the the Wealth Section of this platform, including all our financial sessions as well as The Money Language area, I am pretty confident you will become financially literate if not an expert! Remember that all the content we make available here is based on decades of experience which means you don’t have to spend decades yourself. If you just understand the most important things of money and finances you will for sure be able to live a life far away from financial stress.

If you are finding it tough to get started, maybe this post on why you are potentially giving away HALF your pension in FEES will wake you up and get you going… I would also suggest you to check out our section Visions & Goals as this structure we have created will help you reach any goal you might have.

You can always sign up to a financial course to learn more and ideally a good but pricey one so that you have skin in the game! Learning and developing is always worth it if you use what you learn. Just think about the example I gave earlier on saving one percentage point on your mortgage rate and how that could potentially be worth almost one million USD… An expensive course all of a sudden becomes a relative term!

My key point is, start learning and start learning now even if it is hard at the beginning. The more you learn, the easier it will become. Why not ask a friend who is good with money to spend a day with you in a nice place to teach you how to and to actually help you implement certain changes. In the end it all comes down to how you want to live your life, in financial scarcity or financial freedom. I can’t make you do anything but I sincerely hope I have painted a clear picture of the different lives you have to choose between.

The language of money can become your servant for life, or you can remain a slave to money. I can only hope and pray you make a wise decision as the impact on your’s and your family’s life will be tremendous.

All I wish for is for you to live your life on your terms.