Summary: Let's Talk Money, & An Interview with Bonnie Dewkett, The Joyful Organizer<br> Whether we like it or not, many things in life boil down to relationships. We all have a relationships with money and we all have relationships with the "stuff" in our lives. Again, just like many other things in life, our relationships can be positive or negative experiences. But often it just depends on how we frame them.<br> <br> So, let's take a look at our relationship with money and our relationship with "stuff". To help us look at money, we're going to discuss a recent article by Seth Godin, one of our favorite bloggers. To help us look at the things we surround ourselves with in life, we'll talk to Bonnie Dewkett, Certified Professional Organizer from The Joy of Organizing podcast. Read more...<br> <br> <br> <br> Combined Topic: Let's Talk Money With Seth Godin <br> In this episode, we talk about an article by Seth Godin. If you haven’t heard of Seth Godin, he’s written fourteen books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. And every single one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything. Candidly, his blog post is typically the first thing in my Inbox in the morning. Seth is also a fellow Buffalo boy, like me.<br> So, Seth recently wrote a post titled Thinking About Money. He said, "Many marketers work overtime to confuse us about money. They take advantage of our misunderstanding of the time value of money, of our aversion to reading the fine print, of our childish need for instant gratification and most of all, our conflicted emotional connection to money. Confusing customers about money can be quite profitable if that's the sort of work you're willing to do"<br> <br> He makes a few interesting observations about money that we thought was interesting and so we picked a few of them and discussed our thoughts:<br> <br> <br> The amount of money you have has nothing to do with whether or not you're a good person. Being good with money is a little like being good with cards. People who are good at playing cards aren't better or worse than anyone else, they're just better at playing crazy eights.<br> <br> <br> Money spent on one thing is still the same as money spent on something else. A $500 needless fee on a million-dollar mortgage closing is just as much money as a $500 tip at McDonalds.<br> <br> <br> If you borrow money to make money, you've done something magical. On the other hand, if you go into debt to pay your bills or buy something you want but don't need, you've done something stupid. Stupid and short-sighted and ultimately life-changing for the worse.<br> <br> <br> To go along with #3: getting out of debt as fast as you possibly can is the smartest thing you can do with your money. If you need proof to confirm this, ask anyone with money to show you the math. Hint: credit card companies make more profit than just about any other companies in the world.<br> <br> <br> There's no difference (in terms of the money you have) between spending money and not earning money, no difference between not-spending money and getting a raise (actually, because of taxes, you're even better off not-spending). If you've got cable TV and a cell phone, you're spending $4,000 a year. $6,000 before taxes.<br> <br> <br> If money is an emotional issue for you, you've just put your finger on a big part of the problem. No one who is good at building houses has an emotional problem with hammers. Place your emotional problems where they belong, and focus on seeing money as a tool.<br> <br> <br> Like many important, professional endeavors, money has its own vocabulary. It won't take you long to learn what opportunity cost, investment, debt, leverage, basis points and sunk costs mean, but it'll be worth your time.
