How Important Is Money?

Whenever I give a seminar on the subject of “Finding Your Purpose In Life” or I write an article on the subject I inevitably get questions from the audience or emails asking me how I can talk about the importance of making money in the same context. They'll say or write things like, money doesn't buy happiness and it shouldn't be part someone's true purpose.

I always appreciate and welcome these questions and comments, but let me expand on what I mean by the importance of making money. For example, if you live on a remote tropical island, where there's plenty of free fish and coconuts, you're right, money isn't important, but if you live in the industrialized world where money is the medium of exchange, as it is in every industrialized world, then money is important. It is, in fact, extremely important.

It is particularly important to parents who want to send their kids to college; who want to live in a nice home and share in all the abundance of our society. It's important to people who want to travel and see what the rest of the world looks like. People who want to have the things that make living a little easier and more enjoyable, so that they won't grow old before their time through drudgery. People who want to surround themselves with good books, beautiful things, and have their leisure time to develop their minds and spirits.

Anybody who says money isn't important is not living in the real world. Money is every bit as important as air, water and food; you need it to survive in the industrialized world.

I wish people would stop coming up with the old, tired and ridiculous saying that, “money won't buy happiness.” Neither will poverty! Nothing can buy happiness, so that premise is absurd.

One of my favorite quotes is from Abraham Lincoln, who once said, “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” So, since it doesn't make a bit of difference as to how much money you have to determine how happy you'll be, you might just as well have money.

If you have a positive mental attitude toward life, money will make you just that much happier; and if you have a negative attitude toward life in general, at least having money will permit you to be miserable in comfort.

As to how important money is, that's up to each individual. Money and the accumulation of a lot of it can be as important to one person as becoming a champion golfer, or making a world-changing discovery or becoming outstanding in a particular field is to another.

The next time someone tells you that money isn't important, ask that person if he or she would turn down a pay raise or refuse an inheritance. Chances are that person downplays the importance of money because he or she hasn't figured out how to get his or her share.