Have you become a prisoner to money? We need money, it’s great to plan for your money, to save it, invest it, grow it and spend it. It is good to have money. It is good to aspire to have even more. However do we sometimes get confused and become a hostage to the very thing we use day to day, want and desire? Sometimes we become a prisoner to what it has given us. Kiwanuka is the CEO of a manufacturing company. He earns a pretty decent income and gets fantastic bonuses. He has the lifestyle that goes with his status. His friends have however noticed something amiss about Kiwanuka. It has nothing to do with his good lifestyle. There is actually never anything wrong with that. However Kiwanuka always feels the need to bring up how much money he makes, what bonus he has earned, what he intends to buy etc. This can be at very weird times. They could be talking about the heat wave, but he always manages to throw his financial situation in somehow. This is now happening to the extent that they sometimes avoid inviting him when they meet up.
Jacinta runs an investment advisory business that is doing reasonably well. She has built the business from scratch and has seen it grow to the level where it is now well known, profitable and pays her a reasonable salary on a monthly basis. She has ingrained a good culture in her company and people generally enjoy working there. She is now however considering dipping her fingers in another source of revenue. She figures apart from simply advising people on investments she can make money by directing them to certain investment providers for a commission. This commission will be banked directly in her personal account and will not form part of the company’s financial reports. However a year later things have noticeably changed in the company. According to her clients, things are just not the same. They could tell the advice they were receiving was no longer unbiased. Some of her employees said the energy in the company had just changed and Jacinta had suddenly become very money focused to the detriment of the business. Tony is 26 years old and lives in his parents’ house. He believes life has simply been unfair to him. He didn’t go to college like many people because he did not make the grades required and his parents could not afford private university. He works as a administration assistant in a software company and earns Kshs 15, 000 per month. He talks a lot about how the government has let the country down and how he was not born privileged like others. If he manages to get some money e.g. from well-wishers, lottery, advanced inheritance, rich relatives etc. he would move to another country where opportunities for people like him are better. Tony is a good artist. He can paint but he believes that is not a good career or way to make money so he hasn’t tried to do anything with it.
Kiwanuka is the identity hostage. His identity has been stolen by money. The reason he feel the urge to always talk about what he has, is making or will make is because that is how he affirms himself. That’s his way of propping himself up and he thinks he adds value or becomes important to the people around him based on his money. The more money he earns the more important he believes he is. The problem with this is that it will never be enough. He will never arrive because money is a moving target. Kiwanuka will always aspire to have more because there is always more money to be made and therefore he will always have something to prove about himself. Jacinta is the vision hostage. Greed for money today has blocked her sight. She had a perfectly good business, which was going somewhere but got distracted with the opportunity to make some quick money for herself. She then lost focus on the real value she was providing and her stakeholders i.e. her staff and clients could tell the difference. She is now at risk at losing a business that could have given her sustainable income for the long term. Money made Jacinta short sighted. It stole her goals and her focus. Money has victimized Tony. His self-confidence has been taken hostage. He believes unless he gets more money today he does not have the power to change the trajectory of his own life. Whilst we can see that Tony is talented and if he put his mind to it (and stopped complaining) he can possibly generate additional income using his art, he doesn’t see that. He wants to play victim and let the money, from people who feel sorry for him, find him where he is. Money (or perceived lack of it) has stolen his ability to see and appreciate what he has e.g. a guaranteed roof over his head for now and raw talent.
Money is a good servant but a terrible master. If you make it a master it will take you hostage because it simply has a way of ensuring the conditions for your release are never met. They will ever be enough money for Kiwanuka to feel secure in himself. The greed trap that Jacinta has walked into will never be fulfilled. If Tony has decided to be a victim of life, there is always another reason why things won’t work out. Even if he does jump ship and migrate, he will find reasons to complain and not to use what he has. Make money a resource that works for you not the other way round. Kiwanuka needs to get security in his value as a person without the money. Jacinta needs to keep her eyes on her long-term vision and forget the distractions. Tony needs to just start painting ad see where that goes. Master money, don’t let it master you.
Centonomy runs programs on Personal Finance and Entrepreneurship. Contact Waceke on waceken@centonomy.com| twitter @cekenduati| facebook.com/cekenduati