on Nov 29th, 2009how i handle finance
When I was a little girl, my grandfather, at the end of his long, hard life, would often say to me, “Suze, listen. They can take your money, they can take your business, they can take your family, they can even take your mind. The one thing they can never take,” he would say, “is your heart, and you must grow up valuing your own heart. Love life for what you can give it, Suze, and don’t get bitter over what it will take from you.”
Who are the people in this life you truly love and cherish? What are the things you value most? What do you think, deep down inside, is the key to your freedom? Do you really think the answer is something as simple as money?
Most of my clients come into my office with the goal in mind that they want to be free from their worries about money. That’s a perfectly good goal, and that’s what the purpose of the first six steps of this book has been: to help you break through the barrier of financial anxieties and put yourself in control of your money.
To me, though, that is just the beginning of financial freedom rather than the end of it. I have come to believe that the pursuit of money for its own sake is a hollow pursuit indeed. So these last three steps to financial freedom are not about money, but about true wealth. About abundance. About my grandfather’s lesson that true financial freedom is when you know you are rich, with or without a penny.
The advice in these three short but all-important chapters is radically different from what you will read in any other financial book and unlike what you will hear from any other financial adviser. These last three steps will take you beyond what money can buy, and they will, if you let them, make you rich or, perhaps, remind you that you already are.