My Relationship with Money | Fear and Scarcity

Allow me to start with mum’s favorite quote on money and its relationship with us.  “Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them too”. This formed a better part of my life guided how I lived but then some experiences in life taught me to evaluate the second bit that says it’s not enough and can be got. For a long time, I have viewed my relationships and evaluated them based on the time value each relationship has offered me and today, I decide to dig deeper to the most influential thing I have pursued ever since I was a teenager. Money! My discoveries cannot be published on one post so this opens a series of relationship issues to be shared over 3 posts.

I sat down and defined my relationship with money and I must say that my financial journey is rough and with patches. So rough that am on a journey of self-discovery and I am tackling so much negative thoughts that shaped my relationship with cash. In a nutshell, allow me to say that this year, money has stayed safe from me. It has social distanced itself. And overtime I realized that there are specific areas in this relationship that I need to change.

Fear and Scarcity.

For over decades, my relationship with money has been that of fear and scarcity. Watching mum struggle to pay fees for my college education, she was always paying bills, paying debt and negotiating debts. This made me realize that its always scarce, there isn’t enough and I shifted to the place in my life where I constantly worry about things like inability to pay debts. At every opportunity that I have money, I until now think on paying debts and whatever bills I feel would be needed by end of months.  Money Possession has been engulfed in fear that at some point in my life I was better off not having anything just.

In this journey, I am discovering that feeding fear is like a getting on a rather bigger treadmill in life where its cycle never ends. You will keep running until you drop dead. In collage while guys invested into shares, I had the cash but kept fearing on what if’s, right now some of the companies they invested in like Bamburi Cement have multiplies ten folds and they are getting on average 6000 in dividend every 6 months from the shares they purchased over time. Fear made me loose opportunities at my youthful stage that I feel is should have taken the risk.

Every business is a risk and with risk comes calculated gains or losses. Davies, a friend worked with IEBC in 2006 and was paid 50K but saved up only 36000 and an additional 3000 monthly contributions for 15 years in a locked saving account that earned 7% interest then. Simple interest, while we all feared that he would lose his money he was of the idea that the risk was worth a weight. Last year during Covid, Davies lost his Job but later that week got a message from his bank that the can now access his finances. A cool 570K to start a hustle with so I thought but then when I calculated the amount of compound interest he would have gathered from the initial investments, I was shocked. This made me engage Zimele Asset management to understand how I can better myself, these are the best asset management firm in Kenya right now, check them out you won’t be disappointed. Now I know better! I learned that money is a moving target but fear and scarcity should not be a thing to bother our relationship. Outliving my fears mean, I make more risks and venture into meeting needs rather than making money, money will come eventually if needs are met.  The idea that I had of paying school fees for my nieces once rather than hold onto some to expand a business and pay off later is an idea I am currently flirting with. Money can make you emotional if you live by the fears of it and with emotions we make erratic decisions that can make the same units of trade scarce!  Keep it locked here next weekend for the second relationship ties with money! I hope this helps you to overcome Fear and Scarcity in your own relationship with Money.

© JMS 2022

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