Investing & Debt

Is Money the Root of all Evil?

I have been told that money is the root of all evil for most of my life. Is it really the root of all evil or a source that can provide us with the life we want?

With out realizing it, I in fact believed this ‘truth’, until I started to analyze my spending habits. For the most part, I am one of the lucky people who have a middle class income coming through the door. There is really nothing that I should not be able to afford or have. In recent years, I have often looked at my income and thought that it was shrinking even though the money that was coming in the house each year was increasing by 3 to 5%.

What was happening to the money that was coming in? I had a conversation with a friend of a tender age a few decades above myself.  once again repeated what my grandmother had said to me often. “Money is the root of all evil.” I thought wow, maybe there is something to that saying. “Money is the root of all evil.”

Over the course of the next 90 days I started to look at my spending. He was right. Money was the root of all evil but not in the way that he meant it to be. Money was the root of all evil because I believe it was so therefore I was getting rid of it as quickly as it was coming in. So I needed to believe that the money that I had coming in was not evil. It was my friend, my companion; it allowed me to have things that I would not normally have such a nice house to live in, vacations, and private school for my child, a nice car, a cell phone, food to eat, and even the clothing that I was wearing on my back. So I need to reassess the way that I thought about money.

Some of you will look at this and thinks that lack of money is the root of all evil. I will say that not having enough money is definitely a problem but in order to be successful and be prosperous, one cannot associate evil and money at all. Sometimes, our mouths will say one thing and our minds will believe something else

I am recently changed the way that I think about money. I am not thankful for the money that is coming in to my household. I am grateful that I can pay for the basic needs and afford a few luxuries. And not that I am decided that money is not evil, I am also more protective over the money that I have. Something that is not evil should not be given away, unless you have analyzed who and why you are giving away your precious gift. So the next time, you decide to take someone to lunch that you use to regular take when you thought money was evil, or you drop in for your 20th Coach bag, remind yourself money is not evil and you need to keep some of it around.