Money, after all, is just a medium of exchange. You don’t eat money, you don’t drink money, you don’t drive money, money doesn’t play music for you and nor do you don’t stay in money. Rather, money enables you to buy food that you eat, juices that you drink, cars that you drive, iPods to play music on and a house where you stay.
Similarly, money is merely a medium of management. What may appear to be as managing money (whether investing, borrowing, spending, tax planning or insuring etc...) is in reality, managing EMOTIONS. As Ayn Rand also pointed out “Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver."
Greed, Fear, Envy, Love, Hope are among the many emotions underlying your day-to-day monetary actions.
- You HOPE to go on a world tour; hence you invest your money to build a suitable corpus.
- Most of your money is in Bank FDs, as you FEAR the stock markets.
- GREED makes you fall prey to fancy schemes that promise to deliver extraordinary returns.
- You insure yourself, as you LOVE your family and don’t want them to suffer if, God forbid, something unfortunate was to happen.
- You crave for an iPad because you ENVY your colleague having one.
- You plan for your taxes because you HATE giving money to the Govt.
Various studies corroborate the fact that, in contrary to popular perception, man (and woman too) does not always behave rationally and logically. Also, decisions ‘biased’ by deep-seated emotions often lead to sub-optimal and wrong choices.
We must, therefore, endeavour what Oscar Wilde endeavours “I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them and to dominate them.”
The bottom-line: There is No Room for Emotions
...Know when Emotions overpower Logic and how to Outsmart the Chemical Locha in my forthcoming publication 'Your Guide to Finance and Investments'.
