Daily Thoughts #34: What money can do for us? (钱能为我们做什么?)

Talking about money, I read an article that described about it and I found it very interesting.  

There are two ways to perceive money. One is wealth and the other one is tool. It is important that we can differentiate how we see money as. When money is referred to wealth, then it is more likely to be an indicator of how the society value you, meaning how the society pays you for your service. On the other hand, when money is referred to tool, then it becomes the tool for us to obtain more value and to be appreciated and of service for the society.  

Thus, when comes to a rich person mindset, it is important to note that money is not ‘wealth’ but merely a tool. A tool to obtain assets, which was the essence of what Robert Kiyosaki had mentioned in both of his book (Rich Dad Poor Dad and Second Chance).  

Charlie Munger once mentioned before that: 

To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people. 

What I see in this quote is to keep on invest the money on myself like keep on picking up new skills, try to learn a rare skill that the market is lack of, get to know important people and more. All of these need money as a tool to get there. The market out there always promotes buying stock, finance management, buying lottery, which could bring wealth. However, all of it are very luck based and not much from personal production. It is important that, to be a wealthy man, one must be able to provide valuable service or product to the society. That is the main key to achieve wealth.  

What money can do best is to buy time. We invest our money in some courses, which save us time from starting from scratch to learn something which we don’t even know it exists sometime. It also saves us time to get to know other people through attending networking events, conferences, workshops and any other occasions. This is because time itself is the only limited resource in the world and is the ultimate fair resource which everyone has, 24 hours per day.  

Spending money can be with many levels, some may use money to delegate the daily chores out to service provider. Then, the time bought can be used for better purpose or value activities (depending on our preferences). However, it is important that when we spend on physical consumer items, it will be the start of depreciation of value of our money spent. Most of the consumer items have this characteristic, excluding collectible items like art pieces and artifacts. 

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钱本身具有两个角色：其一是财富，其二是货币（道具）。能分清这两个概念其实很重要。财富本身其实是社会对我们所提供的价值给予的标价并以钱给予回报。而，当我们把钱当成货币或者是道具时，才是像富人开始那样懂得用钱。钱本身不应该是最终目的，而是达成目的的一个工具。之所以如此，我们得一直问自己想要的是什么，那么的来的财才知道如何处置。

就像查理芒格说的：

要想得到一样东西，最好的方式就是让自己配得上它。世界还没疯狂到会回报那些配不上的人。

其实，要变得有钱不是一直去赚钱而是把自己变得值钱。所以，钱应该投入到能使个人成长的领域，比如上课，学习社会稀缺的技术，结交重要的人物等。反而，靠炒股，理财，买彩票等这些活动是能带来财富，但是并不是持续不断和实在。只有自己在创造价值，才会是成为富人的真正开始。

钱作为工具，最大的用途就是购买时间。因为时间本身就是不可再生，不可增长，绝对公平的资源。花时间来买时间可以有很多层次，比如外包自己的生活琐碎事务，让有空档时间来处理更有价值的事情或者是让自己休息（也是对身体的投资）。请专家来协助，也是在省下时间来自己摸索，并让自己有时间聚焦在创造价值的事务上.

最不值得的花钱方法就是购买实体消费品，一旦买了，就是贬值的开始。其实任何商品都是为了要满足人们的需求或欲望的一种载体，所以买的时候，慎重。就像刚过的双十一，简直是疯狂，我想买来的东西，80%可能搁在一旁，忘了。所以啊，慎重花钱，花在自己身上（尤其是脑袋）。