Does What You Earn Affect How You Feel And Other Money Questions

Have you seen the money related conversation starter cards circulating in the social media lately?

It is the Financial Service Council NZ teaming up with Hatch investment platform who brings us these downloadable cards that each have a money related question to answer.

I thought I’d do a post series of personally answering a few of these questions in each post and inviting you to share your own answer to the same question in the comments! You can download your own set here.

Does What You Earn Affect How You Feel?

Yes, I’d say it affects how I feel.

So far in my working life there’s been very few times I haven’t been on minimum wage and at times it has been frustrating.

But I’ve been working on feeling grateful and I’m pretty happy to say I’ve learned to be grateful for the money I do earn and what I can do with it. I think earning more eventually will make me even more grateful, knowing what I used to get by with.

Other things earning money makes me feel are a sense of accomplishment, pride and like I’m contributing extra to my family beyond home duties.

Earning my own money also makes me feel free and independent.

At the end of the day, money is such a crucial part of life that it would be hard NOT to attach feelings to it!

How Much Of Your Income Do You Save?

I have a few different savings accounts, that’s how I keep track of my different savings goals.

We have one joint savings account to save for a sleep out, then I have an account to save for a trip to go home (it’s a Rabobank NoticeSaver account, the highest interest rate I’ve been able to find, but the catch is they require a 60 day notice to withdraw funds), emergency fund account, and three more savings accounts, one for bigger wants, one for my 30th birthday celebration and one for personal development (like short courses etc.).

Depending on my weekly priorities, my savings rate is anywhere between 10%-30%/week. In general I’m pretty happy with that and don’t feel like I need to increase it. I much rather have a higher investment rate than a savings rate!

(If you’re unsure how to calculate your savings rate, it’s the amount of money you have saved divided by your income. So if you save $200/week and your income is $800/week, the calculation is: 200/800 = 0.25 = 25%.)

Is Building Wealth Good, Bad Or Morally Neutral?

In my personal opinion building wealth can be morally good.

There’s of course more and less moral ways to go about it though. Investing doesn’t only build wealth for you personally but can be a force for good too, creating work and prosperity for others as well.

For example, investing in a company can help create work for others, property investment on the other hand can offer a home for someone else.

Also, if I’m thinking from my point of view, I do my best to give from what I have, and believe that amount will just increase with my own personal wealth.

Without building wealth, that wouldn’t be possible. At the same time, it does require a bit of effort to choose ethical investment options, and doing good with your wealth depends on your personal values.

So, in my opinion, building wealth isn’t automatically morally good. It really depends on the individual’s own attitudes and view of the world.

Either they don’t really care about the byproducts of their wealth building journey, or they are really aware of it, and try to actively make the world a little better place.

You can find the next part to this series here.

I’d love to hear your answers to these questions in the comments below!