It's Not About the Money

by Kessel, Brent

• ISBN13: 9780061234064
• ISBN10: 0061234060
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-12
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Your personal finances don't have to be a source of constant anxiety and suffering. Combining ancient wisdom with Wall Street insights previously known to only a handful of the most sophisticated investors, It's Not About the Money includes: A revolutionary path of financial and personal growth based on insights from the world's spiritual and wisdom traditions, Field-tested practical financial planning recommendations that have created tens of millions of dollars of abundance for clients, Eight financial archetypes to help you understand your financial habits and reach your highest potential, Dozens of exercises to help you transform your financial life from the inside out, rather than from the outside in, A concise and comprehensive guide to managing your finances, Step-by-step instructions on how to implement a global, socially screened, high-performance investment strategy.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xiii
It's Not About the Money	p. xv
Financial Planner by Day, Yogi by Dawn	p. xvi
Why This Book?	p. xviii
Financial Freedom for Your Soul	p. xx
The Nature of Mind
You Will Never Have Enough	p. 3
The Wanting Mind	p. 4
Wired to Want	p. 6
If Only	p. 7
In the Flow	p. 9
But It Feels Good!	p. 10
The Financial Toll of Wanting	p. 11
Diminishing Returns	p. 12
The More We Want, the More We Want	p. 12
Financial Planning and Great Investment Advice Won't Get You "There"	p. 13
Wanting Better Investment Returns	p. 16
At War with Yourself	p. 17
Not Wanting	p. 20
The Unconscious Wins Every Time	p. 23
We Get What We Think We Deserve	p. 24
Your Core Story	p. 25
The Script Is Written	p. 26
The Seeds of the Core Story	p. 30
Understand Your Story	p. 31
To the Very Core	p. 33
No Quick Fix	p. 35
The Eight Financial Archetypes
Introducing the Archetypes	p. 39
Our Stories Change	p. 42
The Guardian	p. 45
The Guardian's Core Story	p. 49
What the Guardian Feels	p. 51
Seeds of the Guardian: Survival Mode	p. 51
What the Guardian Thinks	p. 55
The Payoff	p. 55
Breaking the Guardian's Death Grip	p. 57
The Pleasure Seeker	p. 61
The Pleasure Seeker's Core Story	p. 62
Seeds of the Pleasure Seeker-"Why Suffer?"	p. 64
The Payoff: Death-Defying Buying	p. 65
What the Pleasure Seeker Fears	p. 66
The Dark Side of Pleasure-Seeking: Buy Now, Pay (Big) Later	p. 68
A Different Kind of Pleasure	p. 72
My Hands Are Empty	p. 74
The Idealist	p. 77
The Idealist's Core Story	p. 78
Seeds of the Idealist-"The Eye of a Needle"	p. 80
"Money Just Sucks"	p. 81
Heads in the Sand	p. 82
Hippies with Money	p. 84
The Payoff	p. 85
Breaking Free	p. 86
The Saver	p. 89
The Saver's Core Story	p. 90
The Dark Side of Saving	p. 93
The Payoff	p. 95
Breaking the Saver's Death Grip	p. 95
The Star	p. 99
The Star's Core Story	p. 100
Seeds of the Star-Bring on the Bling	p. 101
The Payoff	p. 103
A Painful Chasm	p. 104
Freeing the Star	p. 105
The Innocent	p. 109
The Innocent's Core Story	p. 110
What the Innocent Believes	p. 111
Seeds of the Innocent	p. 113
The Payoff	p. 114
Get Comfortable with Money	p. 115
The Caretaker	p. 119
The Caretaker's Core Story	p. 120
What the Caretaker Believes	p. 121
Seeds of the Caretaker: "He's Not Heavy..."	p. 122
The Payoff	p. 123
The Dark Side of Caretaking	p. 125
A Different Kind of Caretaking	p. 128
The Empire Builder	p. 135
What the Empire Builder Believes	p. 137
The Wanting Mind and the Empire Builder	p. 138
The Payoff	p. 139
Treat Yourself Like You Treat Your Business	p. 140
Removing the Blinders	p. 141
In the World and of It
The Middle Way with Money	p. 151
Think More	p. 154
A Four-Year-Old Runs Your Financial Life	p. 156
Your Money Mask	p. 159
Your Innate Financial Wisdom	p. 161
Hold Both	p. 163
This Is Depressing!	p. 165
The Middle Way for Each Archetype	p. 165
Heart Racing?	p. 175
Opposites Attract	p. 175
Go Slowly	p. 177
Play!	p. 178
Your Divine Nature and Your Human Nature	p. 178
The Conscious Investor	p. 181
Holy Investing!	p. 183
What Investing Is	p. 183
Interconnected Versus Isolated Wealth	p. 184
Investing as Though We're All One	p. 187
Does It Really Work?	p. 188
When the Past Does Not Equal the Future	p. 189
Doing Good and Doing Well	p. 190
The Middle Way for Investors	p. 191
True Diversity	p. 193
So How Does a Diversified Portfolio Perform?	p. 196
Unearthing the Hidden Fees and Costs of Investing	p. 198
Time Is on Your Side	p. 202
Prepare Yourself	p. 205
The Yoga of Money	p. 211
Self-Centeredness	p. 213
It's Not Just for Saints	p. 216
Right Motivation	p. 219
If Not Now, When?	p. 220
How Much Should You Give?	p. 221
Three Buckets	p. 224
What Can You Give?	p. 226
What's Your Cause?	p. 229
Teach a Man to Fish	p. 231
So You Want to Leave a Legacy	p. 232
Don't Wait until You're Dead and Gone	p. 233
You Have Arrived	p. 237
Don't Do, Be	p. 239
As Good as It Gets	p. 241
The Nuts and Bolts	p. 245
Ready-to-Go Investment Strategies	p. 246
Cash Flow	p. 249
Debt and Mortgage Management	p. 250
Retirement Planning	p. 253
Taxes	p. 254
Annuities	p. 255
Insurance	p. 256
Estate Planning	p. 260
Financial Planners	p. 263
Socially Responsible Investing (SRI)	p. 263
Smart Philanthropy	p. 263
Debt Reduction Services	p. 264
Donor-Advised Funds	p. 264
Characteristics of and Practical Recommendations for Each Archetype	p. 264
The Guardian	p. 264
The Pleasure Seeker	p. 267
The Idealist	p. 269
The Saver	p. 271
The Star	p. 273
The Innocent	p. 275
The Caretaker	p. 277
The Empire Builder	p. 279
Resources	p. 283
Acknowledgments	p. 289
Index	p. 293
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

It's Not About the Money
Unlock Your Money Type to Achieve Spiritual and Financial Abundance

Chapter One

You Will Never Have Enough

"Just a little bit more."
—John D. Roockefeller, when asked how much is enough

A friend of mine recently handed a homeless person on the street a dollar. The man looked at the money in his hand, looked up into my friend's eyes, and then quite matter-of-factly stated, "It's not enough." Though that dollar was probably not enough to meet the needs of this unfortunate person, even those with abundant financial means tend to approach money from this same "not enough" perspective. Why is it that so many of us feel such a deep sense of scarcity when it comes to money?

Compared not only to a person who relies on handouts for income but to a nineteenth-century monarch, you're probably relatively wealthy. You probably have a warm home and your clothes are comfortable. You can travel most anywhere you want at fifty times the speed of the monarch's fastest team of horses, and you can visit a modern health care facility for treatment if you become ill, a place where no one will try to bleed you or apply leeches as a cure.

Of course, some of you may answer that the reason you feel you don't have enough is that you simply don't. Indeed, you may be struggling. You might not be able to be admitted to that modern hospital due to a lack of insurance coverage or financial resources. You may have to choose between paying your heating bill or your car insurance or hesitate about investing in real estate for fear of not being able to pay the property taxes. If you face this kind of dilemma, I acknowledge that you are in a very difficult position, one that my own experience with finances makes it difficult for me to fathom.

But no matter what our circumstances, our minds tend to promise us, falsely, that happiness is tied to getting more of what we want—better food, housing, transportation, recreation, health, and travel, to name just a few possibilities. If that were really true, though, wouldn't we all be happy beyond belief by now?

Over the last several decades, economic growth in almost all developed societies has been accompanied by a very modest rise in subjective well-being. In the United States between World War II and 1995, the increase in income has been dramatic and the amount of work time required to buy most goods has fallen substantially. Yet according to almost all of the scientific evidence, there has been little or no change in how happy Americans say they feel. And this is true the world over. In 1958, Japan had an average per capita income of about $3,000, an amount well below the present poverty level in the United States. By the end of the twentieth century, Japan was one of the wealthiest nations in the world, but still there was little discernible change in subjective well-being (a mere 3 percent increase over forty years). And in a survey of members of the Forbes 400 "richest" list, the world's wealthiest individuals rated their life satisfaction exactly the same as did the Inuit people of northern Greenland and the Masai of Kenya, who have no electricity or running water. Obviously, we're not that much happier despite our collective material progress. Why is that?

The Wanting Mind

Most of us would not consider ourselves greedy. Yes, we might want a bigger house in a better neighborhood, but we want it for our expanding family. Yes, we want a nicer, newer car, but it's because of its safety features or fuel efficiency, or because the reality is that our position in our company depends in part on how others perceive us. We may not want a specific material item, but instead want a better salary or a higher quality of life, the ability to take more vacations and enjoy time with our spouse or friends. But even when we crave something intangible like security or time off, there's no denying that most of us spend a lot of time just wanting. What's more, we often act on these desires in ways that leave us less than free financially. It's as if there's a force outside of us compelling us to squander our capital, be it financial or spiritual. This force is known in several Buddhist traditions as the Wanting Mind.

The Wanting Mind is always craving an experience different from the one it currently has. Whether we want money, love, that great new sweater, a 20 percent investment return, or a more equitable world, the Wanting Mind insists that things need to change in order for us to be happy, and money is one of its favorite objects to focus on. The Wanting Mind's whole reason for existence is to strategize and fight for a different future. It exists on the premise that what we have right here, right now, can't possibly be enough. The Wanting Mind continually takes us out of the present moment in its attempts to make us happy in some better tomorrow. And unless we inquire into the subtle and often hidden workings of the Wanting Mind, including whether its promises of happiness are actually true, we remain its slave and will likely spend a lifetime chasing its images of freedom.

The broader evidence shows how pervasive the Wanting Mind really is. In The Overspent American, Juliet Schor writes that between 1975 and 1991, the number of people who said that a vacation home was a key component of the good life increased 84 percent. During the period from 1987 to 1994, the income people said they needed to "fulfill all [their] dreams" increased from $50,000 to $102,000, much more than the rate of inflation. According to another psychological study, the majority of those people in industrial nations want more than they possess: 61 percent of those surveyed said they always had something in mind that they were looking forward to buying.

We all like to point fingers at the overspenders and insatiable materialists as the culprits, the real money addicts. However, in my experience, the Wanting Mind plagues everyone, from people on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder to the most aware spiritual teachers and the wealthiest members of society.

It's Not About the Money
Unlock Your Money Type to Achieve Spiritual and Financial Abundance. Copyright © by Brent Kessel. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from It's Not about the Money: Unlock Your Money Type to Achieve Spiritual and Financial Abundance by Brent Kessel
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.