Today, I came across an article by Martin Lee, on one of his older blogs, sharing on James Skinner’s ideas about wealth some time ago at one of the seminars he gave some time back …
Martin wrote about James asking audience members if anyone had any money in their wallets. Then someone gave him a $10 note, which James then went ahead and put into his pockets, not returning it to the person who gave it to him after that. The lesson learnt?
James said: “Do not in any situation give money to people you do not know, on terms and conditions that are unclear, and without understanding the underlying risks that are involved, because the money will not come back to you.”
This is one of the rules for wealthy people, who check out the premise behind giving their money to anyone for any reason. It then made me think about myself who is usually the generous sort and where my money goes when I hand it over to someone else.
Many times, in our human nature, we say we don’t really expect any returns when we lend or give our money to someone and see it as a generous move. However, based on James Skinner’s advice, what we failed to do was to find out the reason for the person being given the money and on our part, we failed ultimately to protect our own hard-earned money.
This leaves me to wonder how often we think about protecting our own money and freely give it away without second thought … how well do we know this person we are handing our money to and do we know any of the risks involved in handing over that dollar?
I am generous to a fault but this statement by James Skinner made me think twice about my mentality about protecting my money today. Some may say this delves into being stingy and selfish in many ways, but in reality, it’s really about us working hard to make our money and then simply giving it away without second thought. The more I think about this, the more I realise how much I need to protect the assets and goods I have … otherwise, it will simply disappear somehow, somewhere and my road to wealth will not be going anywhere then.
What do you think? Are you generous to a fault and giving away your money without checking first? I suppose if you’re like me and you’ve committed to being wealthy, then the first change to make is to guard your dollars carefully and ensure you’re just not flushing it down a toilet bowl for any reason… better to check than regret later.
To Your Well-Guarded Wealth
