Imagine a scenario where you check your bank account balance before bed and see you have $1, 545, 763.32.” You smile peacefully then head off to dreamland, quite proud of your decades of hard work and financial success. The next morning you see your account balance is zero dollars and zero cents. A jolt darts through your body. You remain calm only because it’s the optimistic thing to do; you assume that it must be some simple mistake.
Soon after you take a cool stroll to the bank. You stop dead in your tracks when you encounter a huge “out of business” sign posted on the front door. An angry mob is marching outside the former monetary institution. Very frightening, isn’t it? But what’s more frightening is that it’s indeed possible for you to go bankrupt overnight. This is why you need to know the true value of money.
The dreaded rat race
What if no matter how many different steps you take right now to safeguard your financial future there’s a good chance that you can still end up bankrupt sooner than you might expect?
Almost from the day we first learn to walk and talk we are gradually encouraged to save for the future; we’re told it would safeguard our futures. Thus, it is constantly (though indirectly) promoted that we spend half our lives in school; we enter the workforce, typically to toil for some big company and rake in the big bucks. And then we feel the urge to work towards obtaining a bank account that’s a small fraction of Jeff Bezos’.
They know the true value of money
But there are usually pieces missing from that puzzle. Lack of knowledge would ensure that no matter how hard you work, you will never attain great riches … unless you benefit from either a great deal luck or help from some very extraordinary forces. For the average Joe, that help is usually most easily available in the form of financial institutions. E.g. banks and credit unions. They offer incentives, interests rates, and investment packages, often offered on a plateau; few would pass up these up.
Hence, the reality of being able to multiply one’s money hits the potential saver like a cartoon character whose eyes impulsively bare the reflection of sparkly dollar signs. In essence, every financial institution will try to convince you to bank more money with them; after all, you will get higher rewards and more benefits. The offer then becomes a “must accept” in the eyes of the saver; theirs and their family’s future is really all they typically think about.
When you don’t know the true value of money
It’s a funny world we live in these days. The emphasis on living life almost always seems to be placed on who has the most money, power, fame and drives the most expensive car. This is generally all in exchange for a sense of self, peace of mind, good health and comfort. And it’s at this point where things become serious.
The biggest dream of the typical saver is to eventually be able to purchase a house and raise a well-rounded and healthy family. This subliminally translates within almost every human mind to mean one thing. “Do whatever it takes while using the shortest period of time to most easily bring all my dreams to reality.” The decision to invest with a reputable financial institution then instantly becomes mandatory within their heads. And so too does the trap that some people quickly fall into.
Faith in financial institutions
The trap is placing all of their faith and dreams into the hands of a single financial institution. They believe this will help speed up the rewards they deserve for all their hard work. The saver then invests with the institution; they hardly consider there will always be the possibility that the establishment could unexpectedly succumb to a financial crisis. And they could lose all the money they invested.
But this is old news here; many people know it’s not wise to place all one’s eggs into one basket. The thinking here is that this doing this would ensure that they never instantaneously go bankrupt. After all, it’s highly unlikely that all institutions could simultaneously crash on the spur of the moment … or so they think.
The history and true value of money
How much do you really value money? Here’s a real fact that might surprise some people. Only via the terminology, “Interactive Symbolism” (which means that people place value on objects based on what their minds have been conditioned to think they are worth) does money have any value. Outside this system of things, every dollar regardless of its color, numerical value and which country it originates from, has as much value as the sheets on a roll of toilet paper.
Actually, toilet paper has more actual value than even the most valuable hundred dollar note. Through careful and accurate research one could quickly come to realize something they may not have yet known. Money was never supposed to permanently come into existence in the first place. This is because the primary means of obtaining goods and services whatever century ago was either through bartering and the exchange of pure gold and silver.
Constant demands for goods eventually exceeded the supply of gold and silver. And financial institutions back then came up with the idea to use pieces of paper (aka: money) instead. The numbers on the money represented the value of the real gold and silver the bearer was supposed to own. In other word these pieces of paper called money were supposed to be temporary; they were supposed to be like checks you were required to trade in for your deserved gold and silver.
Truly, money is worthless
Quintessentially the money we use today is worth zilch; the only value it possesses is what some higher authority has placed on what would otherwise be paper that’s worthless. So that paycheck you collect each month simple means that you are being paid in “trust.” Your real monetary reward is supposed to be gold or silver, which has real value.
Yes, the money you receive puts food on the table. But the truth is that it’s still nothing more than a promise of value. Gold will always be a safer form of “saving.” Unfortunately many will pay or be forced to pay more for gold to obtain what’s rightfully theirs to begin with. This is simply because the paper is wrongfully deemed more valuable than the product itself.
“Time is money, people!”
Many claim that time is money. But few have ever considered that when it comes to time vs money, which of the two is irreplaceable? That house you might spend your entire life saving for can easily be destroyed by a natural disaster. The fancy car you purchased for big bucks to make people envious can mysteriously ignite into flames. And the prestige and power possessing excess money brings, can all be taken away should the numerical pieces of paper lose their present value when you least expect.
But, TIME, what exactly does it do? It’s the one thing that’s free yet most people invest almost all of it chasing after money. Man has been trained to contemplate that if you lose time you lose money. However, when you lose money you can’t ever reclaim the time you invested in pursuing it. But it’s not until the moment someone loses enough money that they eventually come to terms with the truth. A fair portion of time is better spent comprehending the true value of life.
Time vs. Money
If only our minds hadn’t been trained from the beginning to accept that money is needed for almost everything. Only then would it have been so much easier for more people who read to the end of this article to not just say at this point, “Ok, I’ve already wasted enough time. Gotta make some more money.”
And then TIME will secretly say, “You poor fool. When you are finally dead and all the money you used me to obtain is reabsorbed into the world’s system, I’ll remain timeless, priceless and special for the ones who discern the true value of using me.”
