Doctors and money – it could be titled anything, but since this dialogue was started with a doc, I have called it Doctors and Money!

“If you had outsourced managing your money to an outsider, and he had managed it the way you have managed, would you still hire him?”

I started my training in personal finance with this question.

The head of Human Relations of a very big finance group (oops!) said:

“Hire him? You got to be joking. I would have fired him and sued him for what he has done to my portfolio”.

The whole class rocked with laughter, but many realized that their answer would be the same! Now if you replace the word Human Relations Manager with the word ‘doctor’ you are likely to get the same response. In fact one doctor told me “Not just money, we are not taught about Human Relationship skills, Computer skills, etc. and we need to learn all this. Will you do a lecture for us……?”
That started the process ….and hence this post!

Most of us work to create income. This income is used to pay taxes, spend, save, invest, grow the money and give in charity. We need to enjoy the process of creating wealth because we trade our time, and energy towards this activity. In fact many of us devote too much time to create wealth and not enough time to manage it or enjoy it. Many of us do not know how to treat money as a commodity – somewhere we tend to treat it like a scorecard. This creates a lot of negative energy in our bodies.

We trade time to pile up money or things – and many of those things we never use. It is so difficult to see people (not just doctors) buy things (bought with money) but lying unused. The same person who does not care about a Rs. 1000 shirt will get back to you saying “I do not have time”.

Funnily to earn this Rs. 1000 – he has TRADED HIS TIME. Funny, because we all have limited time, but we treat time as infinite and money as finite. In fact money and time are fungible. Every minute that you waste or every rupee you waste – are but substitutes of each other, is it not?