I finally decided watch the movie Vanilla Sky, starring Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz. If you are some of the few who have yet to see that movie – A successful publisher finds his life taking a turn for the surreal after a car accident with a jaded lover. Besides being a great movie, Tom Cruise’s character said, “My father wrote about this in his book. Chapter 1… Page 1… Paragraph 1: What is the answer to 99 out of 100 questions?…Money” It could not be worded better than that.  Before I get a lot of people telling me that life is not all about money, let me make a few clarifications:

• Contribution is more important than money
• Money does not measure one’s success or buy happiness
• Money make the world go round and round

Money

Almost everyone everywhere at one point or another has money on their mind. Whether or not they have enough, how they can get more, and what they can use it on. People who say that money is not important are just putting up a facade. You cannot tell me that money is not important to you. The clothes on your back, the reason you get up early in the morning to go to work, the mortgage payment, and car payment, all have to deal with you having and making money.

Contribution is More Important Than Money

I agree with this completely so let’s go into further detail. There are two ways you can contribute:

Contribute Your Time

You can contribute your time in several different ways. You can give people advice on how to live a better life based upon your knowledge and your personal life experiences.  Many people who write autobiographies talk about their challenges and how they were able to overcome them. Some of these people share knowledge they have gained from over 30+ years of experience.  Imagine reading 1 book like this every month for 12 months, that equals learning about 360 years of life experiences in just 1 year! Mother Teresa is a great example of a person who dedicated most of her life to helping others. Her efforts was so highly respected, she impacted the whole world. A smaller scale example would be me, believe it or not, it takes me several hours of my time to write about knowledge and experiences I have gone through in my life. Or how about a vague example of a high school student who spends their time after school helping out at the senior center.

Contribute Your Money

I was having small debate about Donald Trump with a reader of mine on my article about losers. Even though many people portray “The Donald” to be a self-centered egomaniac that is only interested in himself and money, he is still able to contribute more money to charities than most people do in an entire life time. In his show, The Celebrity Apprentice, they were able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for needy charity’s around the world. You cannot donate money to charities by being poor. Contributing your time helps, but your able to do so much more with money. Being wealthy not only allows you to contribute more money to those who need it (food, shelter, clothing, etc.), but being wealthy also means that you are able to provide jobs (employees) and help other people around them (investors) make money.

Money Does Not Measure One’s Success or Buy Happiness

Success and happiness, like beauty is determined by the eye of the beholder. To some success might be having a big house with fancy cars while to others it may be a white picket fence style house with a car the works. Happiness to some might be having $1,000,000 in the bank while to others it might be spending your life with the one you love. Filling your empty with void with materialistic objects will eventually drain out and become empty again. Buying a brand new luxury car will keep you happy for until you get the urge to want something else.

Money Makes the World Go Round

“A man with a briefcase can steal more money than 100 men with handguns.”

– Don Corleone, The Godfather

Like most ideologies, money is a double edged sward capable of doing both good and evil. Money can help a poor man live an average life. Money can help a sick man become healthy again. Money can help a student with journey of a prestige and impeccable education. Money can take a non-astronaut into space! Whether you like it or not, money has the power to do almost anything.

“Life is miserable, no matter what. It is better to be miserable with money than without it.”

-Siva Baba

You have two choices: You can either work hard make enough money so you can live comfortly, enjoy your family, loved ones, and travel or you can continue to tell yourself that money is not a necessity in your life and live paycheck to paycheck. Money is what will pay for those guitar lessons, to donate to your favorite charity, to feed your children, to shelter you from the rain, and almost everything else you do in life. Money truely is the answer to most of the questions you have in life.

How say you?