Money is the root of all evil
Ever heard of that saying?
I’ve met people who deeply believe in that to the point that it stops them from pursuing riches.
They want to remain “good”.
Do you believe in that?
Here’re my personal experiences with people with money.
Have a read and I’ll let you know my thoughts by the end of this post.
Story 1: The rich A-hole
If you wanted to prove that money is the root of all evil, this person will make a great point.
This person came from poverty, where his mum passed away when he was still very young and his father is a drunk. He was one of the youngest in the family. The thing is… he was blessed with a very sharp mind.
His luck came when he was sent abroad to study. He put his all into his studies and managed to land a prestigious job in the UK. His hard work also paid off as he managed to become one of the youngest partner in an investment bank. For those who are not in the field, that is a massively difficult feat to achieve involving a lot of late nights, hard work, brilliance, standing out and also luck.
Whilst he was making good money in the investment bank, he was also spending his free time (or whatever there is) to personally evaluate and invest into startup companies.
Through both his job and high-risk investing, he managed to amass a fortune for himself. This enable him to resign from his high flying investment banking job and started his own venture to focus in the investment in startups. The beginning years had been tough on him, but eventually he managed to land on a few investments that gave him multifold returns.
That took years to build.
He started his new venture as a 3-partner venture. It ended up with him alone as his partners left him. This was because he was hard to work with. He disrespects everyone around him and it’s always his way or the highway. When he finally succeeded to generate a fortune in his solo venture, his arrogance got to him and he started belittling his ex-partners. He also had a habit of trash talking other people.
Interestingly, the short period of time that I got in contact with him, his venture is slowly falling apart as troubles brew and the market’s only had unkind words about him.
This is the story of my ex-boss, of whom I have written more about what kind of a boss he is in another post here.
Story 2: The humble Mick
Last week I introduced Mick in my “Money is an Illusion” post. Let me tell you his story.
Coming from a family of doctors, Mick started his career as a dental surgeon in Singapore. He spends his youth earning his fortune through his dental practice, which provided quite good income. He got his sports car at quite a young age and had a lot of fancy things including a yacht party.
However, he knew that it was just a short period of his life where he’d indulge in these fancy things. After this period of time in his youth, he gave up all these and started pursuing the long term sustainability of his wealth, instead.
Other than that, he felt that earning a living looking at people’s teeth was not something that he’d be keen to do for the rest of his lives. So, he looked out to other means of earning income.
One way was through investment. Where he puts his money to work for him through various assets.
Another way he found was through network marketing. He liked the idea of being able to lead a team to success and spent countless hours coaching his junior team members, in both work and personal life included. In contrast, his dental practice has been mostly himself.
Through his hard work in network marketing, he managed to work his way towards earning a $1 million a year income. However, he was ever humble and does not spend lavishly. Instead, he took his additional funds and poured them all into his investment bucket to generate more income.
This was where I met him and I’ve learnt quite a lot from him. Lessons learnt from my days in network marketing was shared in another post here.
Many other money stories
There are many other stories of people who have money, who are chasing after money or even those who are poor.
- A client whose business generates millions in profits always stress to do things by right and pay up when it is time to pay up
- The business owner who stole the secret recipe from his previous job and show up as an arrogant person who is actually proud of that fact as he managed to generate more revenue than his ex-boss
- That property agent who puts up fake ads to draw in more leads
- That other property agent who will not do such thing and eventually decided to quit the industry
- Ponzi schemers who are poor and knows what they are in continues to aggressively lie through their teeth to bring in more victims with the hope of getting rich
And many more… that I’m sure you would also know if you keep a look out.
Closing Thoughts: Money is…
Is money the root of all evil? There are rich people who are terrible people. Conversely, there are rich people who will go out of their way to help others. There are people who will do illegal and unethical matters to get rich. Also, there are people who will uphold their ethics in their pursuit of wealth.
My take? Money amplifies ones character.
This is to say that if the person has a bad character, more money will bring it out in a bigger way. On the other hand, a person with a good character will show up with more of that when they got more money.
An interesting observation is that the one with a worse off character will usually be out there showing off hence people will always associate money with evil as shown in Story 1. Whereas with a humble person, there is no showing off or parading his/her riches so we wouldn’t be seeing more of these.
Before you get rich, who are you deep down? And who you want to be?
In my opinion, it is more important to work on our character as it doesn’t change whether we have no money or whether we have a bunch of fortune.
