I recently talked to 2 friends who have pretty different perspectives on money. But both of them have one single worry – money is not enough.

1. One of them is my ex-colleagues. I dropped him a message in MSN (not sure if he’s reading this) and asked how is he doing. He told me life sux when one is not a millionaire. My immediate reply (yes, I didn’t even spend more than 10 seconds) was that he might still think life sux when he is a millionaire but not a billionaire. And he agreed. I can sense he’s under some financial pressures but well, is life really all about money? What happens to contentment? What happens to appreciating what you have?
2. Then few days later, the other friend of mine related to me about his baby daughter having fever. It was quite bad, around 39 degrees. And for someone that young, it was very dangerous. Fortunately she has recovered. My friend then decided to try and get a thermometer in case the daughter gets fever again in the future. However, he soon found out that the cheapest thermometer is around RM 140. My friend is a very thrifty person since he alone has to support his entire family. His wife is working but her salary is not enough to cover her own expenses. She spends a lot on dresses, bags and other branded goods. So in the end, both my friend and his wife decided not to buy the thermometer. Oh yea, my friend did not know how his wife spends her salary. =_=

Notice what is wrong with these 2 scenarios? I’m sure you can.

The first one lost track of what matters most in life and keeps chasing after money. It’s a typical thing that most of us would do, myself included. Let’s be honest, money is always important but if we allow the lack of money to ruin our life and label life as SUX, then it’s pretty obvious something has gone wrong. Our life should not be dictated by the amount of money we have. There are still plenty of things that cannot be bought by money. Why not learn to accept what we have, enjoy our life and also learn to appreciate things as they are? Why want to make ourselves suffer by keep thinking that life’s sux if we’re not millionaire? And most importantly….what’s next once you’ve achieved the status of millionaire? Billionaire? Then what’s after that?

The second one, on the other hand, lost track of what matters more to him – his daughter. Is his daughter’s well-being less important than RM 140? It’s not wrong to be thrifty but there are things that should not be avoided. And what about his wife? Why is she willing to spend thousands on luxury goods but not RM 140 on the daughter? Will they be happy if their daughter gets seriously ill? What if something bad happens to the poor girl? Will they look back upon this stupid decision of theirs and regret?

Sometimes, it saddens me to see how money is changing the world. People have forgotten what matters most to them. Either that, or they have defined the wrong meaning of ‘happiness’. Yes, we can’t survive without money but no, money is not everything in this world.

I recently finished Mitch Albom’s Have a Little Faith. It’s a very good book and in one of the pages, they talked about how a baby gets born to this world with a clenched fist. Because it is human nature to try and grab everything we can. But when we leave this world, our hand will be pale and empty.

Because, at the end of the day, there’s nothing we can bring together with us except for 1 thing – the memories our loved ones have of us while we’re still here. And how long those memories last would depend on what we do while we’re here.