5 Key Components to Your Relationship with Money

Evaluate and Improve Your Money Habits

By Muhwezi Daraus, Ultraserve Limited

"As in any strong, healthy relationship, there has to be harmony between all the working parts, and your relationship with money is no exception." This is what Vickie Champion, author of Simple Steps for Listening to Your Intuition with Money, So You Can Sleep Like a Baby has to say.

She breaks your relationship with money into 5 parts.
1. Managing it - This consists of the day to day tasks involved in taking care of your money as it comes in and goes out, or the cash flow. This might be paying bills, tracking deposits, paying school fees, keeping a budget, etc.
2. Spending it - Basically, this is how you spend your money.
3. Earning it - This is how you make money.
4. Saving it - This includes the methods and how much money you hang onto.
5. Investing it - This is about ways you get your money to make you money.

Vickie helps her clients realize that if any of these five components are neglected and out of kilter, it will cause all of them to start crumbling down. We've all heard, "You are only as good as your weakest link."

She says, for instance, if you don't earn enough, it's extremely hard to save and invest it. Then there's little desire to even bother with managing it, which causes spending to spin out of control.

Or, if you don't manage your money well, you will tend to over spend, which causes you to under save and invest. This results in a lack of motivation to earn more of it.
Vickie believes that in order to keep your relationship with money healthy, you have to take care of, and respect, all parts of your relationship with it.

Take Vickie’s money quiz to assess your current relationship with money. I just took it myself, and found it to be quite thought provoking.
We all have attitudes about money that may hurt our ability to make wise decisions.

Do you have a weakest link? Then identify it.