Each of us has a financial blueprint, a built-in set of attitudes and beliefs that affects how we deal with money. Our money blueprints grow and change over time. Initially, we inherit our attitudes and ideas from our family. As we grow older, we’re influenced by our friends, teachers, and other role models. And our money blueprints are especially susceptible to messages in popular culture: magazines, television, movies, and current events.
When I was a kid, for instance, my parents were poor. Dad sometimes had difficulty putting food on the table, yet he always found ways to spend on expensive toys: sailboats, stereos, personal computers, and so on. From his example, I learned to put wants before needs. This faulty financial blueprint landed me deep in debt as a young man. It took years to restructure my internal beliefs and assumptions to something more productive.
Behind each financial blueprint is a set of assumptions. Some are assumptions about how money works (the math), and some are assumptions about what money is for (the philosophy). Some of the assumptions are implicit (we don’t even think about them) while some are explicit (they’re obvious and we talk about them all of the time).
Today I want to talk about a few of the financial assumptions we make at Money Boss. These are the fundamental ideas that underly my money blueprint, which means in turn that they underly the blueprint for this website.