Have you ever noticed how important ‘things’ are to people?
Often those ‘things’ are expensive and are about keeping up appearances. Whether we’re talking cars, boats, handbags, jewellery or any assorted expensive ‘things’, the sad things is how much store is put into owning ‘things’ that are never likely to be assets…they’re more likely to be liabilities that cost you money rather than making you money.
Research shows owning ‘things’ gives people a feeling of success or even status…with the ‘things’ treated like trophies of success. Interestingly purchases of success trophies are often directly related to an emotional need, or to fill a void in a person’s life. Additionally, being able to show off your latest trophy ‘thing’ is frequently tied to ego.
So why are we talking about ‘things’ when the title of the post is “Emotions and Money”?
While speaking with a colleague recently we were reflecting on how intertwined money and emotions really are. With the price of out of control emotions often paid for in terms of hard earned dollars or even worse, in borrowed dollars…it’s scary. To add insult to emotional injury, neither of us has ever seen a truly successful outcome arising from an emotional purchase. Oops!
Many people are making their way through life on the assumption emotionally driven purchases are smart purchases. They’re NOT! Emotional purchases are about giving away your power to make wise choices.
The same thing applies when fear and uncertainty, other nasty emotions, impact financial decisions. Fear and uncertainty can be crippling…in some instances it can be so crippling it can stop you from making wise and balanced decisions. The funny thing is, inaction and overwhelm can result in very expensive mistakes being made; simply because you did nothing!
Financially successful people do not let their emotions rule their decisions. Instead of allowing themselves to make emotionally charged decisions they outsource the emotional control to financial professionals such as a trusted financial planner.
Why outsource? Because they realize their limitations and elect to outsource their sense of balance to people with years of training. People who can take the emotion out of decision making for them. People like me become trusted confidants who can help you achieve your goals. An added bonus of clients outsourcing their sense of emotional control when it comes to money, is it allows them to manage their stresses more effectively as there’s always a balanced third party view available.
If you’re keen to outsource your emotion related financial stresses about decision making it’s time we chatted. Give me a call on 0407159298.
Talk soon Gayle
