Money Mindset Archives - Scott's Thinking

If I Had His Money

Posted on March 30, 2021

I would do things differently. Have you ever heard someone say this? Maybe you’ve even said it. If I had his money I would do x,y,z.

Now it could be his or hers, but the idea behind the phrase strikes me as the speaker thinks they would do better with it. In my experience, hearing people say this, it tends to involve the speaker spending more cash on luxury items. Holidays, clothes, better meals out and cars seem to high on the list of improvements.

The irony seems to be, once again, that those who develop good cash management habits have more cash to manage. And those that don’t put effort into good cash management habits, don’t tend to have much money to manage. Though they are not short of observational skills and have a fine knowledge of how to improve the millionaire’s suboptimal lifestyle.

With just a few flourishes of a debit or credit card, the speaker can resolve your unfortunate circumstances.

This may be one of the reasons why the speaker might not have enough money of their own to mess about with. With their unique money mindset and a propensity to spend rather than save, we can better understand why the speaker is in this predicament.

The good news is that great money management habits can be learned. Then you can turn, if I had his money, on its head.

Financial Observe Reframe your thoughts Think About It

Your Money Pays For Their Vacation

Posted on January 30, 2021

Make sure you only buy things that are essential to your life or for true happiness. Remember that when you spend, your money pays for their vacation, not yours.

Think about that for a minute. You buy two large pizzas for £25 and that is a fair exchange. You receive two large pizzas with toppings of your choice and they receive the payment they wanted. However, think one level deeper.

When you buy the pizzas, your bank account goes down and their bank account goes up. You have less cash for your vacation and they have more cash for theirs.

Quit giving your money to everyone else so they can have your vacation.

You could buy two large pizzas at the shops for £10. Then put the £15 of saved money into two other accounts. The first £7.50 could go into your vacation fund. The other £7.50 could go into your long term strategic investment fund.

You get to eat the pizzas and you build up your vacation and investment fund accounts. Sure the pizzas may not be quite as delicious from the fridge. And there would be some effort in cooking them. However, you would still have the nutrients and additional funds in your core accounts.

From one simple example, you would have almost £800 across your accounts in one year.

When you’re about to spend, remember, your money pays for their vacation.

Action Financial Observe Reframe your thoughts

Becoming A Billionaire

Posted on July 30, 2020

Now, you may be the type that is curious as to how to do it or seething that becoming a billionaire is even allowed. Either way, or somewhere in between, it seems everyone has a view on billionaires.

Your reaction to the idea of a billionaire will say a lot about you and your relationship with money. That may or may not be a good thing. You will have to think it through. Be brutally honest about how money makes you feel.

There are generally two roads you can take if you are intent on becoming a billionaire. The first is to have the money given to you. This can be from inheritance, divorce, donation, charity or a very good friend. Alternatively, you can earn the money through providing a product or service for a very large number of people (c. 87% of billionaires).

Bill Gates sold software. Many estimates suggest that there are over one billion PC’s running a version of Windows. If it cost $100 each to have that software on the PC’s, the company’s revenues would be $100 billion from that one software alone. Not only has he provided a valuable service to many people, hundreds of thousands of people have earned their livelihood with his company.

I’ve willingly given more than $100 to Microsoft, from which Mr Gates has benefitted. It has definitely been worth it and then some.