In case you haven’t noticed, change is a constant.

And it’s either happening to you or you’re making it happen.

When change is happening to you, having your (money) shit together is like insurance.

And knowing you’ll be ok if things go south is a sedative if you’re looking for a good nights sleep.

But being on top of your finances is not just insurance…

It’s also an ace up your sleeve. Here’s why…

Change is opportunity for the flexible, and crisis for the confined.

Money is optionality, and when things change the odds of being lucky soar for those with options.

This is how property gets purchased at a deep discount.

This is how careers change course for the better.

This is how businesses get built (or bought) in record time.

Now, getting yourself into a position where you have options doesn’t come without commitment and consistency.

But you already know that…

Most people do, it’s just that for too many of us it just seems like too big a task.

You might want to get your financial house in order, but if you don’t feel like you’re capable of actually doing that you won’t even get out of neutral.

See having a desire to change things is critical

But it is not enough…

You need to match your desire to change things with the belief that you CAN change things.

So the question is, how can you build the belief that you can change things, when you have no actual evidence that this is the case?

You might want to get out of debt, but if you’ve never managed to get back in the black — then how do you summon the strength to dig yourself out of the hole one more time?

You might want to buy your own home, but if you’ve never been able to stack more than a few hundred dollars of savings then how do you start climbing that mountain if you’ve only ever walked the perimeter?

You might want to get your money invested, but you’ve never put your money in the hands of others. How do you navigate the jungle of jargon and options without making a big mistake?

If you have the desire to change your money life, but you lack the belief then use the flanking strategy…

The flanking strategy is a military technique for defeating a stronger opponent.

The basic idea is that instead of confronting the enemy directly, you come in from the side.

The reason being that more often than not an opposing forces strength is most concentrated at the ‘front’.

That means it’s points of weakness are at the side.

So how does this idea apply to what we’ve been discussing?

Think of your self doubt as your enemy…

This opponent is well drilled on the art of obstruction.

It’s force is so big and so strong that it literally blocks your view of future you.

This is how self doubt wages war on your aspirations. It clouds your vision of who you could be.

And if you don’t kill it, it will rob you of your desire and cripple your confidence.

Eventually you’ll surrender and stop trying.

Use the flanking strategy…

Don’t confront your self doubt directly.

Come at it from the side.

Build the belief that you can change in an arena that is adjacent to finance.

Find a pursuit that teaches you you can, and also builds the intuition for personal finance at the same time.

Now I know what you’re thinking…

Where can I find such an arena?

Well, there’s one domain that does this almost perfectly…

If you make this one part of your life a focus before or at the same time you tackle your finances, your self belief will eventually defeat your self doubt.

And, you’ll indirectly build the mindsets and skillsets that spill over into your money life.

As a result, you’ll find it much easier to generate momentum and get results.

Do you want to know what it is?

Fitness.

When you invest time to improve your health and fitness, you’ll automatically set yourself up for success with your finances in two important ways…

First, you’ll realise that overconsumption moves you further away from your ideal. And the way to curtail overconsumption is not to ‘cut it out’ but to crowd it out.

That means doing more of what’s good for you (like eating more nutritious food and moving often) instead of trying to stop doing what’s bad for you.

Yoda said it best: do or do not do. There is no try.

Second, you’ll see that doing the little things well and often is what kick starts the law of compounding.

And this is when you’ll realise that beyond a certain point, progress and success becomes almost automatic.

There’s a simple equation that explains how this works…

Habits x Time = Results

Look around your life and tell me I’m wrong.

Seriously, assess your results.

Look at where you’re winning.

Then look at where you’re losing.

Either way, If you’re honest with yourself I’m betting you’ll be able to draw a straight line from a handful of repeated behaviours to the reality you see right now.

When you do the right things for long enough, you almost cannot help but make massive changes.

It’s like pushing a car down a hill, there’s some effort required to get it going but if you persist for just long enough you’ll get to the point where gravity takes over.

Then you can jump in the car and enjoy the ride to the promised land.

It’s the same with money.

When you get a handle on how money is moving through your life, and pay attention to what’s happening you’ll eventually optimise everything.

You cant help it, because you’re human.

A quick warning…

To everyone else your ‘transformation’ will seem like magic.

They’ll discount the deliberate and consistent approach. And they’ll ask you to reveal some kind of magic bullet, seductive shortcut or formula.

And when you share the Habits x Time formula, they’ll roll their eyes and hate you for it.

Then they’ll start coming up with reasons why you’re a ‘special case’ and things are just so much harder for them..

But you’ll recognise their self doubt.

And that’s when you’ll tell them to use the flanking strategy.

Most people don’t consider themselves investors, and this is probably why most people don’t invest.

But what if we are wrong?

What if we are all investors of sorts, yet we just don’t know it?

The truth is, all of us make investment decisions every day, in numerous areas of our lives.

Some of these are wise and work out in our favour.

Others are less measured and wind up costing us dearly.

In this post, we’ll look at how the patterns people display in relationships can predict the approaches they take to investing.

Along the way we’ll learn about how the battle between two internal identities impacts our financial future. Understanding this battle, is the key to understanding yourself.

Understanding yourself is the key to success in love, and wealth.

Are Love and Money Linked?

It is often said that how you do anything is how you do everything.

As with most clever maxims, there are always exceptions to the rule. However, most also contain kernels of truth.

Most lawyers who deal with the breakdown of a marriages assert that financial stress is one of the leading causes of divorce. Research validates their experience.

If we accept this evidence and the assertions of experts, then the inverse must also be true.

This would mean that those who have less financial stress might generally experience less relationship problems, and therefore be less likely to split.

These couples are likely to enjoy a much richer existence than their counterparts.

Would it not be reasonable then to conclude that the qualities that make someone a good partner, could also give them an edge when it comes to investing?

When I think about those I wish to emulate in relationships, three keystone patterns stand out:

1. They carefully consider their decision

2. They commit for the long haul

3. They continually invest for better or worse

Ironically, the qualities that characterise the successful lover map quite well to those that of the successful investor. In contrast, the ‘player’ displays many parallels with the speculator.

Investors win in the game of wealth.

Speculators ultimately lose.

We are all equal part investor and speculator. Every interaction and transaction is a tug of war between which of these two identities we identify with. The winner determines our economic outcomes.

By analysing the patterns of those who build profitable relationships, we can learn much about profitable investing.

Successful Investors Carefully Consider their Decisions

‘Wise Men say, only fools rush in’ — Elvis Presley

The speculator in each of us is like the desperate romantic caught up in the throes of desire and led by emotion. When the speculator is taking charge, we frequently overlook or ignore the downsides.

Then, when inevitably things get a little more rocky and real, we play the victim.

When we are identifying with the speculator, we are much like the lovesick seeker, forever searching for ‘the one’ (deal, guru, method) which will magically complete us, and make all our dreams come true.

We sacrifice due diligence for intuition, and rarely reflect on our own role in the dramas we create.

Inevitably this means we often fail to learn from our mistakes.

When we choose to empower the investor in each of us, we act very differently.

The investor in all of us makes sure we only commit to a decision after careful deliberation. Like the good lover, we explore our options, and learn about our needs and preferences before doing anything rash.

The investor knows that we don’t need anyone or anything to complete us, we are already whole. This ensures we never make decisions for fear of missing out.

If the investor in us does make a mistake, we don’t internalise the problem.

Instead, we will take time to get some emotional distance. This helps us to look dispassionately at our actions and the outcomes, in order to decide what we might do differently next time.

This helps us to avoid the emotional scarring that can make others hesitant.

Successful Investors Commit for the long haul.

‘If you want to take the island, burn the boats.’ — Julius Caesar

The speculator shares many similarities with the insecure individual who ‘plays the field’ in search of the perfect partner. Despite outward appearances, the ‘player’ doesn’t play to win — they play not to lose.

When we identify with the speculator, we become like the ‘player’ and allow historical heartache to colour our current view.

Doubt prevents commitment, and clouds reasoning, causing us to jump erratically from one option to another. This only ensures we learn little while lining the pockets of the various middlemen who do our bidding.

Ultimately, in both love and money — a string of shallow affairs enriches no one.

In relationships and investing, it’s the transaction costs that kill you. Every time you make a move you it cost you money. These costs add up, and the effect is very often a net loss over time.

Like good lovers, the good investor in all of us is no longer burdened by our baggage. In fact, we are liberated by it.

When listening to our inner investor, we leverage the learning from past oversights, and acquire wisdom to inform our future. This wisdom allows us to move forward in the conviction that we are unlikely to make the same mistakes.

Because of this honest, humble approach, we see every new option as another opportunity to evolve. The more we evolve the more rewarding our life becomes.

Successful Investors Continually Invest for Better or Worse.

‘And I always find — yeah I always find something wrong’ — Kanye West

The perpetual player, like the speculator is always on the lookout for ‘deal breakers’ or ‘red flags’. These clues quickly become catalysts for a rush to the exit in anticipation of a loss.

For the player, an argument is not an argument — its an omen.

For the speculator, repeated quarterly losses signals a severing of ties.

Like the player, the speculator in us overreacts to short-term volatility. When this happens, we make a predictable and critical mental miscalculation.

We conflate the way things are now with the way they will be.

This causes us to overlook a long-term truth the investor never forgets: the market is ultimately only a reflection of human sentiment and endeavour.

While sentiment vacillates violently in response to events and emotions, endeavour remains consistent.

This means that long term, and despite fluctuations — the market only ever goes up.

The successful investor, like our ultimate lover accepts the ups and downs and continues to invest regardless. When we are one with the investor, we are long on faith and short on fear.

This allows us to ride out the storms in the knowledge that although humans are not perfect — we are in some ways predictable. In that sense we are also dependable.

Over time, and with every challenge and crisis faced, the investor in us builds confidence and conviction. This allows us to avoid the one mistake that costs speculators dearly: selling down off assets in response to short term downturn and -in the process — locking in losses.

Ignore the Minutia and Master Your Emotions

Understanding the duality of our psychology is key to overcoming

If you want to become a good investor, focus on cultivating the part of yourself that is a good lover.

The successful investor, like the good lover does three thing very well.

1. Make considered decisions about whom you get into bed with.

2. Deal with your baggage and don’t look over your shoulder.

3. Don’t panic when things get rocky, keep investing for the long term.

If you can manage to master these skills, you will build strong long-lasting relationships, as well as profitable portfolio.

I was sick of feeling like a helpless child around money.

Even though I was doing well in most areas of my life, money was my kryptonite.

It didn’t matter that I was crushing it career wise, I was clueless with money — and I began to notice the impact of my ignorance.

I would struggle to negotiate or renegotiate things like phone contracts, my salary, bills, or rent.

I would put off doing my taxes, until the pain of penalties exceeded the pain of having it done.

I would avoid planning how to spend and save my money, and so spend most and save little.

In the end I was underpaid, yet I always overpaid, and endlessly worried about money. I was sick of having money on my mind, dictating my time and attention.

So, I decided to fix it.

I read countless books, attended talks, and took various courses. In the end I realised something about building wealth that few people will tell you.

Intelligence, know-how, and willpower have very little to do with it.

I knew others whose experience were very different to mine. They earned what they were worth, made smart money decisions, and always seemed to have enough for now and the future.

The thing is though, few of these people knew what I knew. Clearly learning about money was not enough. I realised I needed to learn more about the other half of the equation: me.

I was a bit like the rower whose rudder is stuck to one side: I could try as hard as I wanted but I would forever go in circles until I addressed the problem beneath the surface.

My relationship with money.

What I learned both shocked and intrigued me. Money was not my problem. I was. The way I identified with money had a huge impact on my financial fortunes. Once I understood this, I realised something even more important.

I had learned how to ‘be’ around money, so I could unlearn it.

In the six months after I made this discovery, I did three things that previously were impossibilities in my mind.

I saved 50k.

I engaged a professional adviser.

I finally invested my cash and built a passive income stream.

To do all those things, I had to break the patterns of the past. To do this I literally rewired my brain and upgraded my thinking.

How did I do it?

First, I figured out what was driving the destructive behaviours that destroyed my wealth. Once I had uncovered these, I was actually able to put my accumulated know how to work. Before this, there had been plenty of learning, but not much doing.

My wife is a therapist, and she tells her clients: ‘once you can name the game you can stop playing it’. My experience taught me this is as true for money as it is for therapy. By uncovering and understanding the ‘game’ you are unconsciously playing around money, you can speed up your progress and change your financial future.

To Discover Your Destiny, Uncover Your Conditioning

‘Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate’ — Carl Jung

A good friend of mine recently returned from an extended working holiday in the US. She is a teacher and was posted in a small town in the far north west.

She told me a story of a confrontation she had with a boy, not twelve years of age.

This boy was trumpeting all manner of prejudices and targeting minorities in the classroom. At first, she thought he was just a spoiled brat, but eventually she challenged him directly.

She said, ‘look, you’re twelve years old, have seen nothing, and met no one. All you know is this small town and what your parents have told you. You’re wrong and you need to know it’.

The boy remains a bigot.

The first years of our lives are incredibly formative. As the brain builds itself, our worldview comes into focus, and our personality and preferences begin to take shape.

All of this happens as a result of what we see and hear, as well as how these things make us feel. Our brains encode the stimuli as memories and our body stores the associated response.

A blend of all these elements conditions us to see things through a very particular lens. This conditioning can either help or hinder us later in life.

Our young bigot was obviously conditioned to believe that minorities are less worthy, not to be trusted, and even dangerous.

This will probably make it hard for him to get along with many different types of people.

As he reaches working age, his behaviour will no doubt reduce his effectiveness in the workplace, and connectedness in his community. Consequently, his access to opportunities and experiences is likely to be limited. In the end the boy — and the world — will be all the poorer for it.

The same thing happens with money.

Our conditioning informs our response and dictates our relationship with money. This relationship then dictates our financial destiny.

You can think of it like a kind of map for money.

If our conditioning is destructive, the money map will lead us into problems and pitfalls that impoverish and imprison us.

If our conditioning is constructive, our money map will direct us past dangerous obstacles and toward opportunities and experiences that enrich us.

Although we each have distinct money maps, most are printed on the same material. Society and culture relentlessly reinforce pervasive, destructive ideas that create a toxic relationship with money.

By better understanding these foundational scripts, we can begin to modify our money map.

The Three Most Common Money Scripts — And How They Ruin our Relationship with Money

As we grow up, we are exposed to three prevalent ideas about money, and these ideas shape our response to it. The first step to rewriting your money map is understanding it’s origins.

Script 1: Money is scary

For many of us, most of our early experiences with money are coloured by conflict.

This conflict is often the consequence of clashing money maps. It is natural and inevitable as our parents struggle to solve the problem of how to allocate joint resources effectively.

Do our kids really need brand name clothing?

Should we send the kids to a private school or is the public system sufficient?

Can we afford to go on holidays? Or is the money better spent on weekly activities?

In any situation concerning the use money, one person’s money map often specifies a wildly different approach to the others. In most cases, these skirmishes are eventually resolved and couples do get better at managing money together — but for children these experiences leave a lasting impression.

Evolution has wired us to seek survival at all costs. As children, our chances of survival are much greater where there is harmony and cooperation between our two primary carers — our parents.

To a child, disharmony equals danger. Over time, money is conflated with menace. Gradually, unconsciously, we come to view money as monster.

As a result, any time we come into contact with money, or even just the idea of money — it triggers a cascade of physiological responses common to one powerful emotion.

Fear.

Fear hijacks our nervous system and robs us of our reason. The executive function of the brain is crippled as the blood rushes to the body — ready to fight or flight.

This physiological state is perfect for getting us out of situations that threaten our existence, but pitiful when it comes to educating ourselves about money. Which leads us to our second script.

Script 2: Money is Hard

In the bestselling book ‘Brain Rules’, developmental molecular biologist John Medina outlines twelve rules that can help us maximise our cognitive function.

The fourth rule has to do with stress and learning. It states: ‘a stressed brain doesn’t learn the same way’.

Medina goes on to explain that cortisol (the hormone released by the body in times of stress) actually damages cells in the brain related to learning and remembering.

When the concept of money triggers a feeling of fear, this stress response takes over and our brain suddenly turns to mush. No matter how smart, talented or capable we are, we may as well be braindead.

Simple concepts feel difficult to grasp, and we struggle to retain the information and build our intelligence. No doubt this is a big part of the reason many people lack financial literacy.

This perpetual problem leads us to the conclusion that money is a complex topic. We slowly tell ourselves money is much to too abstract for someone like us to understand.

The finance industry loves this, why?

Because there’s plenty of money to be made from ignorance.

They invent all kinds of weird and wacky words like ‘collateralised debt obligation’ to cloak simple ideas in mystery. Then they make it even more exclusive by only ever talking in acronyms (like ‘CDO’).

Remember, your uncertainty is their opportunity.

The more we convince ourselves money is hard, the more we put it in the ‘too hard basket’. It’s easy to tell when we are doing this, we use language like ‘I just don’t have the time’. Or ‘I just can’t think about it right now’. Or ‘money is just not my thing’.

Our deep disdain for money makes it difficult to build real wealth. Think about it, if you deeply fear and resent someone, it is unlikely the relationship will be a fruitful one. It’s the same with money.

Script 3: Money is Scarce

As we grow up and learn to express ourselves, we learn to put to words to our wants. Walk through any shopping mall and you’ll see what I mean.

‘Mommy I want this dollhouse’

‘Daddy, can I have that train set’

Some of these requests are reasonable and are met with a reasonable response. Others are more outlandish and require tempering. The problem is, all too often our parents are too time poor to explain that although money is everywhere, we don’t own all of it.

Instead, many resort to using the fastest, most effective way to change a child’s behaviour: guilt and shame.

‘What do you think, I’m made of money? ‘

‘Money doesn’t just grow on trees you know!’

These short, sarcastic rebuffs are usually accompanied by the appropriate pitch, tone and body language to ensure the child is in no doubt whatsoever that somehow, they’ve done wrong.

Over time, the message sinks in: money is hard to come by and it’s bad to want more of it, or more of what it can buy.

As we grow up, we learn more ‘appropriate behaviour’ around money. We hoard and hide what we have from others. If we seek more, we try to be as covert about it as possible lest we be seen and scorned.

Of course, none of this actually helps us with our relationships with money.

We treat money as a dirty necessity, and swing from loving it to loathing it as our financial fortunes rise and fall.

We ride the rollercoaster of emotions toward the destination dictated by our distorted money map.

To Conquer Your Conditioning, Question Your Narratives.

When we can’t predict or expect stable outcomes from our efforts, eventually we do the only thing that will offer us the certainty we crave.

Nothing.

Psychologists call this learned helplessness.

Here’s how it works: when we can’t make sense of the way our actions impact our outcomes, we tell ourselves three destructive stories. These stories corrode our sense of confidence and immobilise us in a prison of our own construction.

First, we tell ourselves that the problem we can’t seem to solve is personal. There must be something fundamentally broken about us, and us alone.

Next, we convince ourselves that because (despite our efforts) the situation has not changed, it will not change. We tell ourselves that it’s permanent.

Then, we begin to imagine how the issue bleeds into others aspects of our lives. This story persuades us that the problem is not only personal and permanent, it is also pervasive.

These stories slowly seep into in our psyche and poison our minds against money. This only serves to keep us trapped in the same cycle, repeating the same patterns.

Here’s the thing though. It’s all bullshit.

Like the child terrified of monsters in their room at night, we are fooled by an illusion of our own creation. The stories we tell ourselves about money and relationship to it are just that: stories.

When we have the courage to challenge these stories, we can change them.

There are plenty of others like me, who have rewritten their money maps, and changed their financial future.

Most of the time though, it happens because life throws up some challenging situation that becomes the catalyst for change.

A teen witnesses their parents go bankrupt.

A child gets sick and the families costs skyrocket.

A parent loses their job, and the family home is in jeopardy.

When the pain of staying the same exceeds the pain of change people spring into action.

But you don’t need to wait or will life to make you change, you can simply make a choice. And herein lies the secret of those who rewrite their money maps to change their financial future.

If you choose to lean into the fear caused by the monster of your making, you can call its bluff. If you do this, you can largely avoid the crisis that usually precedes significant change.

How do you do that?

You need to reach deep within yourself to question the narratives you’ve accepted about money and your relationship to it. These narratives are like vines growing in and around your potential, restricting your movement and stifling your growth and abundance.

To do this, you need to meditate on some serious questions. These are the questions I start with when coaching others to rewrite their money maps. If asked and answered honestly, they can be powerful catalysts for personal change.

• Am I really broken? Is it not possible that I can evolve? Have I not already done so in other areas of my life?
• Does this really need to be permanent? Could this situation not change if I do?
• If I stay the same, where is my money map likely to take me? What impact could this have on those I care about? How would that feel?
• Given all of this, what are the costs of doing nothing?

To Move forward Go Inward

When it comes to mastering money to get ahead, effort and intellect are not enough. Instead it’s your conditioning that determines your relationship to money, and this relationship dictates your financial destiny.

To improve your results, first rehabilitate your relationship with money.

This requires curiosity and courage. Curiosity, to understand the narratives that underpin your relationship to money. Courage, to question these narratives and their validity.

If you have the humility to own side of equation, you can resolve the unconscious motives that drive your destructive behaviours with money. Once you’ve taken your foot off the brakes, you will be astounded at how quickly you can achieve things that previously felt like impossibilities.

Making a significant financial decision can be a stressful experience.

Maybe you’re thinking about buying a new car, or a home. Or maybe you’ve just inherited a chunk of money, and want to be smart about what you do with it.

If you’re like most people, you might ask a few people you know, who you think are good with money. Often this is where things get confusing.

People will willingly tell you what they think, and most will be convinced their approach is best.

The problem is, people’s views can be wildly different, even conflicting.

Knowing who to listen to, and consult is super important when it comes to making financial decisions. In fact, I would argue this is one skill that can make a huge difference to the trajectory of your life.

Smart financial decisions can pave the way for a life well lived, without regret.

Silly financial decisions can destroy your dreams and compound your problems.

In this post, we’re going to answer that age-old question: who should I take money advice from when it comes to making financial decisions?

To answer this question, we’ll learn how your body hijacks your brain and its abilities, and what separates opinion from advice.

To Think Clearly, First Tame the Lizard.

There’s an old dude who generally makes very smart decisions with money, his name is Warren Buffett (google him). Warren turned a $6000 capital base into 85 BILLION over the last 70 years.

You don’t amass a fortune that size without mastering money decisions.

Warren says: ‘don’t expect to manage your money if you can’t manage your emotions’.

So let’s start there.

We all act a little weird around money. Most of us tend to swing between two extremes’. Extreme independence (“I know what I’m doing”) and extreme dependence (“what should I do”).

Understanding why we do this is crucial to choosing well.

Deep down, it’s about fear. A deep biological fear to do with belonging.

Our lizard brain tells us: ‘the worst thing you can do is look stupid or isolate yourself from others like you, it’s not safe’. The lizard brain doesn’t care about your goal, it cares about the endurance of the species.

So, when the lizard brain is driving the bus, we make decisions that we think will keep us safe and forget about what we actually want.

We think that, by ignoring input from others, we’ll avoid being taken for a ride (looking stupid).

Or, we only listen to those we already know and trust, that way we won’t have to worry (feel isolated).

The problem is, none of this processing is done using the more evolved part of our brain. We completely circumvent reason and let emotion drive the bus.

It’s ok though, because we give it a fancy name. We call it ‘intuition’😊

In the end, most of us do what our parents did when it comes to money. Why? Because these are the people we trust most, and whom we least want to feel isolated from.

Is this a bad thing?

Well that all depends on whether what they are offering you an opinion or advice.

To Filter Information, Know the Difference between Opinion and Advice

Ok, opinion is not the same as advice. This is an important distinction.

If you don’t learn to recognise the difference between opinion and advice, you are destined to live with the consequences of poor decisions about money — as well as many other things.

To see what can go wrong when we base judgement on opinion, behold Trumps Whitehouse. Unlike almost any other leader, the orange man seems much more interested in checking twitter than checking in with his advisors.

Opinion is what someone thinks based on their experience.

Advice is what you should do based on others expertise.

Did you catch it?

Opinion is about others, advice is about you.

Opinion is about one person’s experience projected on the world.

Advice is about one person’s many different experiences in one realm, the nuanced understanding that results, and is applied to your context and objectives.

Amateurs offer opinions, professionals give advice.

Because few of us recognise the difference, when it comes to decisions — we collect opinions instead of seeking advice.

This rarely helps, because people are often overconfidence of their opinions. It is at this stage, where things can go horribly wrong.

If you haven’t tamed the lizard brain, you will seek comfort and assurance. This will cause you to latch onto the overconfident opinion of an amateur. This happens because you will seek safety (which you associate with certainty) over clarity.

Smart decision makers know that overconfidence (as alluring as it may be) is very often sign something is wrong. If you observe it in someone whom you have consulted, you should stop and think.

Why?

The overconfident person can often be covering for a lack of surety in their own approach, and this is precisely why they need you to agree. If you adopt their perspective, their own decision is validated. What’s really happening is their lizard brain is searching for belonging just like yours.

This is why religious fanatics try to recruit others. Deep down they are unsure, so seek safety in numbers.

This is why ‘crypto investors’ clogged up my Facebook feed for months before the price crashed.

Remember this, two Lizards together rarely make good money decisions.

To Make Good Decisions, Trust but Verify

Ok, so let’s get to the question. Should you take financial advice from friends and family?

The short answer is, in most cases probably not.

Firstly, because your lizard brain will want you to belong, and will hijack your executive function. This will force you to sacrifice your desired outcome for the feeling of belonging.

Secondly, because you are not thinking clearly you are less likely to discern the difference between opinion and advice. This could see you adopt an approach that has less to do with your objective than bolstering others identities.

But I’m a realist. I know that blood is thicker than water. At some point you’re probably going to ask someone close to you what you should do. It’s instinct.

If you do, at least try to consider their believability. Weird word I know, I’ll explain.

Ray Dalio is another old dude who is pretty good at making good money decisions.

He invests money for super rich people, and his approach saw him make a 10% return in 2008 when everyone else on the planet was losing money hand over fist. His hedge fund is one of the most successful in history. Like our mate Warren, Ray is a Rockstar among the rich.

He did it by building an organisation that optimised for high quality decisions.

At the core of his approach was this concept of believability. Basically, it’s just about constantly assessing how valid someone’s perspective is. That means the Dalio himself is often challenged and overruled on different decisions within his own company.

The idea is simple, trust people — but always verify their perspectives.

This philosophy installs a healthy amount of scepticism that helps combat the tempting certainty of the overconfident. Every person is constantly evaluated, and assessed, and every view is stress tested.

If you choose to take financial advice from the people closest to you, you would do well to emulate Dalio’s approach. Assume people are guilty (offering opinion) until proven innocent (giving advice).

How do you do this?

When you consult others use these three questions:

1. Ask yourself, what does their track record demonstrate?

Observing historical outcomes does not predict the future, but it does give you a pretty good indication of whether someone is worth listening to.

2. Ask yourself how their approach fits your context?

As conditions change, so do outcomes. Twenty years ago interest rates, salaries, house prices and inflation were very different. It was a golden time for purchasing real estate for capital gain. Today, not necessarily.

3. Ask them to argue take the opposing side of their opinion?

Anyone who cannot argue both sides of an argument, does not understand it well enough. This is a great way to quickly test for experience. If someone cannot see both sides, they’re probably inexperienced or an amateur.

Overcome Your Instincts, and Choose Well

Managing money well requires mastering your emotions.

Consulting friends and family, makes it much harder to do that because your body will block your brains higher functions. This will make it muddy your thinking and cause you to mistake opinion for advice.

If you want to make smart decisions with your money, the best thing to do is seek out smart people whom you can use as advisors. More often than not, these will be professionals with domain specific expertise.

If you choose to consult others, consider how believable they are by asking three simple questions.

1. What does their track record tell you?

2. How does their view fit your context?

3. Can they argue both sides?

Ok fair warning, I’m about to hit you with a hard truth. But I promise it’s for good reason.

One day, your heart is going to stop pumping.

Then, your blood will stop transporting oxygen to your cells.

Moments later, you’ll take your last breath.

Then you’re done. That’s it, there’s no second chance. No phone a friend. No reroll of the dice.

If you’re reading this and you are in your twenties, you have about 480 000 hours to live.

If you are in your mid-thirties, it’s 411 000 hours.

Mid-forties and it’s 324 000 hours.

Gets you thinking doesn’t it?

Yes, I am being morbid I know. It’s not fun to think about this stuff, I get it.

But thinking about death is one of the most clarifying things you can do. Most of us are sleepwalking through our lives, and death is the antidote to our apathy. Why?

Death shows us what really matters, and how to be successful.

In this post, we’re going to look at what death can teach us about winning the game of life. Along the way, we’ll figure out exactly how we get stuck living lives that don’t fulfil us. Uncovering this incredibly common mistake can help us learn to live life by our own design, rather than default.

The Only Thing Worth Dying For

Death is the demon we run from our entire lives. Deep down we know the harsh reality, but we often live our lives like scared toddlers. We cover our eyes and pretend it doesn’t exist, as if the act of denial actually makes it go away. The problem is, by denying death, we deny ourselves life.

We stay in toxic relationships.

We put up with bad bosses.

We quit our hobbies, and shelve our dreams.

Because we want to believe we will live forever, we let life push us around. We think, ‘well there’s plenty more (life) where that came from, I guess it doesn’t matter right now’. But deep down, we know there isn’t, and it does.

If you force yourself to acknowledge the inevitability of death, you also have to acknowledge that the only thing worth striving and fighting for in life is time.

The good news is, when it comes to time everyone is equal. No one gets more than twenty-four hours in a day. No matter how rich, powerful or popular.

Where time is the most precious resource, the definition of ‘success’ changes dramatically. Those who are winning the game of life spend their time very differently than those who are losing.

The winners know that wealth is time, and success is choice.

This means that the aim of the game is gaining (and defending) control of your time. You’ve won when you own every moment of your day.

So, the artisan furniture maker who crafts custom furniture and makes a good living doing it is winning.

The high-flying executive scrapping to climb a corporate ladder they despise in pursuit of the next promotion is losing — no matter how much money they make.

The furniture maker carves their own path, walks it their way, and owns the day.

The corporate climber is a rat in someone else’s maze, scurrying about in the hope of one day finding some cheese.

Does this mean anyone who works in the corporate world is losing? Absolutely not.

I have coached plenty of executives who enjoy incredibly complex and challenging work, with people they respect and whom respect them.

The artisan furniture maker isn’t better off just because they are self-employed either. It doesn’t matter how much autonomy you have over your work if you struggle to get by, stress about money and work endlessly.

The important difference between the winner and the loser is how we relate to the way we are spending our time.

If your career offers you learning opportunities, community, and a career path that makes work meaningful for you, you’re winning.

The key to understanding what separates the winners and the losers is one word; obligation.

How Cash Can Confine Us

If you use the words ‘have to’ alot, you’re probably playing someone else’s game. To illustrate this point, let’s delve deeper into our two examples.

The executive who frequently says things like “I have to go to another pointless meeting, with people I don’t like, and who don’t listen to me”- is wasting their time.

The furniture maker who frequently says things like “I have to drop off this custom piece of furniture on the weekend for a rude, demanding client who always underpays”- is also wasting their time.

When you waste your time, you are whittling away your most precious asset, and accumulating a particular type of debt. It’s called regret.

Regret is much that same as other forms of debt in that you can put off repaying the principal, but at some point, the bill comes due.

On the day the inevitability of death dawns on you, you start paying back the principle, and the less time you have the more painful the experience.

This means that the older you get, the heavier the burden will become.

What’s the solution?

The self-help gurus will argue a simple change of attitude is in order. Changing your perspective from ‘have to’ to ‘get to’ will instantly make it all better. Right?

Not quite.

Don’t get me wrong, its always good to check your attitude, but in these instances it probably ain’t getting to the root of the problem.

The real problem is how we use (and abuse) money.

The world wants you to believe that money is success, and those things associated with money (like notoriety or ‘influence’ or power) are symbols you can use to demonstrate your worth to the world.

So, we spend our money, time, and energy tirelessly trying to craft an image that fits the world’s definition of success.

We buy wardrobes full of clothes we barely wear, not because we need them but because nothing says ‘stylish’ or ‘sophisticated’ like never being seen wearing the same combinations.

We buy a new car, not because we need it but because nothing says ‘I’m killing it’ like the newest model Merc.

We buy a new home, not because we need it, but because nothing says ‘I’m wealthy’ like a three-car garage stacked with toys.

Of course, we justify these purchases as needs when in reality they are wants.

To clarify, buying new clothes, a new car or home is not a sin. It’s living outside your means that’s silly. When we live outside our means, these types of purchases imprison us.

Possessions, when used as a means to craft an identity (or keep up with others) create additional obligation, and we waste more and more of our time. Gradually we accumulate the debt of regret. Soon enough, we can be heard using those two words..

“I have to make this quarters bonus, I need to pay down that credit card debt I accumulated shopping.”

“I have to stick with this job, otherwise how will I earn enough money to pay for my car.”

“I have to take this job and work Sunday, I need to sell more furniture to pay the mortgage.”

In the words of the great Tyler Durden:

“the things you own, end up owning you.”

How to Escape The Rat Race — Without Moving to the Mountains

Most of us don’t know how to feel about money, we swing from one end of the pendulum to another.

When the use of money enables us to signal worldly ‘success’ we love it.

When the same transaction obliges us to waste our time. we loathe it.

It’s a bit like blaming the whip in your hand as you lash yourself. The whip can work for or against you, how you are using it determines your result.

This is how we get stuck in the ‘rat race’ and feeling stuck is why we dream of ‘escaping cubicle nation’. It’s not the cubicle that’s choking us, it’s us.

Here’s the big secret the world doesn’t want you to know: If you use money to buy time, you’ll win. If you use money to buy things, you’ll lose.

How do you buy time? Let’s take a look.

The unhappy exec could save 12 months of pay, this would buy them enough time to find another job, or even change careers.

Better yet, the exec can invest it and put their money to work. This would create a new income stream that can supplement the one they work for. They now have the option to work part time as they make their transition.

Instead of upgrading their house, the overworked furniture maker could employ a delivery service. This would free up their time to make more furniture or make better furniture. Both ways mean more revenue.

More revenue would allow the furniture maker to put more money aside. The self-employed artisan who is earning a tidy return on their effort at work as well as their savings does not need to accept work from crappy customers.

This is how you use money to wrestle back control of your time.

Can you see how it works?

Primarily its just about asking yourself, is this purchase going to lead to obligation, or appreciation?

When we use money in a manner that wastes our time, we create obligation. This is spending.

When we use money in a manner that buys back time, we create appreciation. This is investing.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. ‘This is great and all, but isn’t your way much slower? I would have to wait much longer to have the things I want if I do as you say, wouldn’t I?’

Yes you will.

If you live your life in this way, you probably won’t have the newest clothes, car or home. Others will appear more ‘successful’ in the worlds eyes, and some might even look down on you at times. Believe me, this is great news. Why?

Because the people around you who don’t seem to care or notice, and whom treat you with respect genuinely like you. Everyone else is not your friend.

Life’s too short to spend with people who do not love you.

Here’s a rule of thumb that works mostly all of the time. The harder someone is working to project a certain image, the more you can be sure reality is the opposite.

Even if I haven’t convinced you that money is not success, you should know that the majority of those self made millionaires got that way by spending less than they earn.

It’s just simple maths.

When you have a surplus, you earn interest. Your money works for you and that money can buy your time.

When you have debt, you pay interest. Your work for your money, and others control your time.

To Win, Ignore the Rules

The world wants you to think that money is the end, but it’s not. Money is only a means to the end.

If you want to win the game of life, you need escape the rat race. You escape the race not by winning it, you escape it by transcending it.

The way to do that is to learn to use money instead of being used by it. See it for what it is, a tool to buy your time and enable a life lived on purpose.

If you learn make conscious decisions about how spending your money impacts your time, and how spending your time impacts your money, you will eventually own every moment of your day.

When that happens, you need not answer to anyone. When you own your day, you can live your way, and spend your limited time on earth doing things you appreciate. If you can do this, you’ll win.

Author: Terry Condon

Have you ever felt like you’re killing yourself just to get by?

You might be working hard, even doing a good job, and quite conscious of money, but still struggling to get ahead.

Well, you’re probably not alone. Research by Perpetual Funds Management shows that only 28% of Aussies manage to save outside of their super.

That means about 72% of us are living day to day.

Most of us think the solution is simple, earn more. The pluckiest ask for a pay rise, others look for a higher paying job, a few even invest the time to upgrade their skills.

But what if none of these approaches guarantees the problem will go away?

What if earning more might actually make things worse?

As with most money-orientated issues, things aren’t what they seem. The truth is that your ability to get ahead has very little to do with your income, and everything to do with how you use it.

That might sound a little cliché, but that’s the curse of cliché’s — they are too often ignored.

Today I want to dig a little deeper, and get to the revealing truth.

Specifically, we’ll look at three simple psychological concepts the 28% who save know and use, that the rest don’t. The first is flow, the second is friction, and the third is abstraction.

In this podcast, we’ll see how the right configuration of these three switches enables these people to get ahead while enjoying spending their money more, and thinking about it less.

Let’s take a look at the first concept; ‘flow’.

Flow: The Way to Win Your Freedom

Imagine you had a bucket which was constantly catching a stream of water from a hose. This bucket has a number of holes in the bottom and the sides.

It follows that the more holes, and the bigger they are, the more water you will need to keep the bucket full, right?

Ok, so what would happen when the volume of water pouring into the bucket at any one time, exceeds the volume being leaked through the holes?

Obviously, it would mean that you now had a surplus of water spilling over the sides, wouldn’t it? Stay with me.

Let’s say water was a precious resource, what would you do? You’d probably create some kind of secondary catchment mechanism to collect the surplus, wouldn’t you?

Saving money works in much the same way as the flow of water in this example.

The way water moves from the hose to your bucket is much the same as the way money flows from your source, or sources of income (your career) to your bank account (your bucket).

The holes in your bucket are the things you spend money on. Some of those things are necessities (such as food, rent, bills, utilities etc), these holes can’t really be plugged, but they can be reinforced or reduced.

Other things (such as subscriptions, fashion items, and entertainment) are luxuries. Many of these holes can be plugged completely, and others can be reduced without any impact on wellbeing.

Your efforts to control the outflow, will dictate whether or not you end up with a surplus you can save.

The amount you can save dictates your level of security, and influences how focused you can be on your work.

Your security level dictates your appetite for risk in pursuit of your long term goals.

Think about it, if you had a healthy cash cushion that could sustain you for at least six to twelve months, would you continue to tolerate a bad boss just to make money? I doubt it.

When you save money, you buy time.

When you buy time, you gain freedom.

Despite the amazing impact good money management can have on our lives, most people still don’t understand it. One of the major reasons for this is that they fail to grasp the concept of flow.

As a result, most people associate money with feelings of helplessness and control, instead of agency and freedom.

Many work harder to earn more, but inevitably shoot themselves in the foot through a fundamental failing to manage money’s flow.

If inflow (income) increases, outflow (spending) eventually matches it. This means they don’t get ahead, and continue to be controlled by circumstance.

Worse, when we earn more; we are also able to access more credit.

This just exacerbates the flow problem because now we are able to spend progressively bigger sums of money we don’t actually have. This leads many to ruin.

Just take a tour around Bondi in Sydney or Toorak in Melbourne to understand what I mean. Believe it or not, many if not most of those with the big houses, the boats, and the beamers are just higher paid versions of the 72%. They’re not getting ahead, they’re treading water.

Remember, this is just another slice of the population. This means the majority of them aren’t saving. In fact, thanks to their spending and lending, more than a few are drowning.

It’s a little like dealing with the debilitating effects of heart disease for years, receiving miracle surgery that restores your function, and then paying less attention to your health and nutrition.

Despite your new lease on life, your unhealthy habits remain, and deep down you know it’s going to come back to bite you — in a big way.

This is why many who earn high incomes and appear to have all the trappings to prove it, are actually way more stressed about money than most.

The key to successful saving is to understand and control of the flow of your money, and this done by overcoming our instincts.

This is where our next concept; ‘friction’ comes into play.

Friction: A Tool to Automate Success

Friction is anything that makes something more difficult.

To understand friction, think about how much easier it is to purchase something with your card using pay pass than it used to be.

In the past, we had to remember which account was linked to the card we were using, and then remember a pin number. Then we had to key it in hoping no one would see, and move fast while others waited.

That’s friction.

When Pay pass came along, it obliterated most of the friction involved in using cards to make everyday purchases. Now we just ‘tap and go’.

The difference between the 28% who save, and everyone else, has a lot to do with how they use friction to control the flow of money.

See friction can be good, if it makes it harder for me to engage in acts of self-sabotage.

For example, maybe it’s better for me not write down or memorise the passcode for a savings account, since that would make it harder to access. I’d have to call my bank and wait on hold listening to crappy music or worse; some repeated commitment to ‘service excellence’.

That’s friction working for me.

Maybe I could go one step further and ensure my savings account is not linked to a card at all. This means I am almost unable to use that money on an impulse purchase.

That’s friction working for me.

But, friction can also be bad, if it makes it harder to do the things that will lead to my success.

For example, it’s much less likely I’ll save if I rely on my memory and willpower to login and transfer money each month to a separate account for savings. In this case, friction is preventing the right behaviour.

It would be much better to reduce friction by setting up an automatic transfer to my savings account. Better again to ensure it happens right after I get payed.

Better still, I could ask my employer to split my pay before it even gets to me.

This is how the 28% overcome their instincts and control the flow of money. They make friction work for them. They use it to consciously design a decision architecture that surrounds the way they interact with money.

It’s a bit like building a mental maze that continually nudges you toward the right options, and away from the wrong ones.

High friction makes us slow down, stop or turn around when about to run into danger.

Low friction allows us to think less, and put good decisions on autopilot.

Controlling the flow of money is just about understanding which holes you can plug, which you can reinforce, and which you can reduce to ensure you always have a surplus of savings. Friction is the most effective tool for controlling flow.

Sure, it might take a little work to set this stuff up at first. However, the net effort you’ll spend in one afternoon to do so is minute when compared to a lifetime of having to scrutinise every purchase.

This is one reason why the 28% enjoy spending much more than most, they set things up in way that ensures the money they can access most readily, is money marked for spending. Everything else is either automated, or regulated.

This means they never have to think about whether spending their money is the ‘right thing’, they know in advance, and at every turn. Ultimately these efforts actually resolve guilt associated with spending.

Don’t get the wrong idea thought, this doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t think about their spending at all. Actually, in some ways they pay more attention to the way they transact, and how it impacts their money flow.

This brings us to our final concept; abstraction.

Abstraction: A Trend to Watch Closely

Abstraction is anything that distances you from what is really going on.

To understand how abstraction influences us in the realm of money, think about how much more readily you’ll spend money using Apple Pay than your debit card.

We still associate cards with money, but we don’t associate phones with money. So, when we spend money using our phones, it doesn’t seem as real.

For the most part, abstraction is dangerous, because it puts you on autopilot and enables you to do things you wouldn’t normally dream of.

The more abstracted you are from the reality of what you’re doing, the more likely you’ll lie, cheat, steal, kill, and spend.

Abstraction is how white-collar criminals commit fraud, and steal huge sums of money.

Abstraction is how millions of Jews were killed using gas chambers in Nazi Germany.

Abstraction is how people spend 250 million each quarter playing candy crush saga.

As dangerous as abstraction is, it is also extremely alluring. Why? Because usually it makes our life easier in some way. How? By decreasing friction and increasing distance at the same time.

This allows us to completely delude ourselves and do things we regret.

As the world becomes more and more digital and technological, things tend toward abstraction. This can be a good thing for speed and efficiency, but also creates new dangers when it comes to managing money.

Love that new song so much it hurts? Just click here to buy on iTunes.

Really want that new guitar but haven’t got the money? Just swipe your credit card.

Can’t access any credit, but still really want that guitar? No probs, just sign up for after pay.

The less concrete things seem, the easier it is to overlook their real-world impact. In order to counteract the tempting aspects of abstraction, we need to be hyper vigilant.

This is where the 28% have a built-in advantage/defence mechanism against abstraction.

Because they have understood flow and used friction to automate and regulate their spending, the 28% have something most people don’t — bandwidth.

Their early efforts allow them to retain an extra level of awareness around their spending. Because they’re not having to consider what to spend their money on, they are more likely to consider the impact of how they’re spending money.

While most people automatically assume that the latest, newest payment method will make their life better, the 28% are more cautious and conscious.

Ultimately this may mean they adopt new tech more slowly, however it also means they leak less money because they avoid making more trivial transactions using new tech.

This might not seem that important, but think about how a more considered approach to this aspect of managing money over the course of a lifetime can change the ultimate outcome.

It’s like comparing a bucket with ever changing number of holes, to one that rarely changes at all. It might be a little rustier, but you can guarantee it always provides a predictable surplus.

Stop Spending and Start Saving.

Getting ahead is more about insight than it is income.

Understanding the triumvirate of flow, friction and abstraction is ultimately what separates the saver from the spender. To become one of the 28%, reload and re-listen this podcast, and put these ideas into practice.

Of course, this will require a little effort and concentration in the beginning, but think of like pushing a train down a slope that leads you to the promised land. You just need to overcome the initial inertia, and soon enough you’ll be sailing effortlessly toward success.

Ok, so you probably clicked because you had some visceral reaction to the title right?

Well hear me out.

I’m not saying that anyone who ever said this is a bad person, I’ve actually said this myself plenty of times without really thinking about it.

I’m not saying the intent behind this message is bad either, I believe that the core of this message is a good one.

What I am saying is that the way this message is interpreted often does more to undermine people’s efforts than it does underline them.

What do I mean?

I mean that the meaning people make from this message rarely serves them. In fact, I will argue it often works against their long-term success in their chosen field.

To understand why and how, we need to first understand the difference between good and bad advice.

Good advice cannot be misconstrued or manipulated.

Here is a good filter for assessing advice. Ask yourself three questions;

Is it clear?

Is it concrete?

Does it work for my context?

Here’s an excellent example of good advice; ‘Treat others as you would be treated’ — see what I mean? It’s hard to see how that could cause any harm.

Bad advice is pretty much the exact opposite.

It is not clear or qualified.

It’s a little too abstract.

It poses as universal.

This is why ‘focus on the work and money will come is bad advice’. Because what is said is not often what is heard.

What is said is a valuable message; ‘do great work’

However, bringing money into the message is where things get messy.

It’s easy to understand why money was included, In the beginning of any career, it’s hard to earn decent money. No one without rare and valuable skills earns much money.

So directing someone’s attention toward developing those rare and valuable skills makes sense. HGHowever, as with so many well-intentioned ideas, there are often unintended consequences.

Though what is really being said is do great work, the implicit message many hear is a little different.

This is what most people hear; ‘money and work are opposite’s, you can’t have both at the same time, so just focus on your work and forget everything else.

This has the effect of pitting mastery against each other, and creates a kind of cognitive clanger that trips many people up.

The thought that arises from this messaging is, ‘if I focus on money at all, my career will suffer’.

The ensuing behaviour then results in its owner always scraping by, while obsessing about their work.

This messaging is one reason why many young people work their tails off, then one day look up at thirty and realise they don’t have a dime to show for it.

It’s not because they don’t deserve it, it’s not because they don’t need it either. It’s because messages like ‘focus on your work and the money will come’, can create an unhealthy relationship with money.

Now here’s the truth,

Money and work are not opposites. In fact, money can enable mastery.

Think about it, how can you put all of yourself into your work if you are living day to day, worried about whether you can pay the rent and afford the bills?

When you’re struggling with money, survival is the focus, not your work.

When your focus is on survival, you think short term and pursue immediate gratification.

When you think short term, you’re more likely to take shortcuts, and short change others. Why? Because fragility makes your focus is myopic and self-centred.

Hardly a recipe for mastery is it?

Compare this with the person who manages their money in a manner which ensure they always have enough. The person who builds a cash cushion for emergencies, and investing.

Investing wholeheartedly in the work, and being better every day.

Investing in further education, which improves the work and broadens networks.

Investing in relationships, which expands influence and leads to more opportunities.

If you do use money the right way you can do all of the above. Then one day something very cool will happen. Instead of turning around and wondering why you have no money, you’ll turn around and wonder what to do with your money.

That’s when things start to get fun, because now you’ve got opportunity, you’ve got choice.

There’s a line from Matthew 13:12; ‘to those who have, more will be given?’ It’s just a fancy religious way of saying, when you’re not desperate you do better. This is how it works:

The person with plenty of suiters is more charismatic because they don’t fear failure.

The person with multiple job offers gets a better salary because they have more bargaining power.

In the same way, the person that learns to manage their money soon gets more money to manage.

Here’s what it all boils down to; when you learn to manage your money, you build a buffer between yourself and insecurity.

Remember this; insecurity is the enemy of mastery and the seed of mediocrity.

Ok, are you still with me?

Good because I want to make sure I’m giving you good advice, so I want to clarify.

I’m definitely not saying you should go out and pursue any opportunity you can to make more money. This could become a distraction and work against your success.

I’m definitely not saying you should go out and just ask for a pay rise either. A pay rise won’t help you if your relationship with money remains unhealthy.

What I am saying is that to do great work, it definitively helps to be in place of safety and security — and to get to this place it’s important to learn to manage money.

Just learn some basic budgeting skills and build the discipline to save your money. See it as an investment in your work, because it is. The more you save, the better your work will be. The better your work becomes the more you will earn over time.

If you’re looking for a good place to start, here’s three excellent books that will change the way you think about money to move you closer to mastery.

The Richest Man in Babylon

The Science of Getting Rich

The Barefoot Investor

Don’t mind the titles, just trust me. If you read these three books your relationship with money will improve, and this will benefit your career and life immensely.

They’re easy reads, and very contain very actionable advice that will immediately help you manage your money and career more effectively.

If your first reaction to this advice is ‘drag, who want to learn about money’, ask yourself why that thought popped into your head, and where it might have come from.