What can your Money not Buy?

According to a Yiddish proverb, ‘the world stands on three things: money, money, and money. Having money is a necessity, not having it is a big problem on its own. Money can solve at least 75% of problems if not more, but the truth is that money cannot solve all problems. Maurice Baring says, if you would know what the Lord God thinks of money, then you only have to look a those to whom He gives it. Samuel Butler also says, it has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil, but the want of money is quite the same. Therefore, everyone tries to get money. On getting money, we start to think of buying the whole world, impressing people, intimidating people, and just doing all we can with money. However, having money is not all, there are still things we may not be able to buy with money.

Top Article: 12 Universal Laws of Life

Manners

According to Margaret Walker, ‘friends and good manners will carry you where money won't go’. While both the rich and poor can be proud, manners, the way we behave toward other people, or our regard for people are intrinsic and are things we can’t buy with money. The way we treat our friends and people around us when we are rich has a lot to say about our personality. We should always remember, that the path by which we climb up is the same path we will take coming down. Nobody owns the world. It might be my turn today and another tomorrow.

Morals

Mark Twain says, ‘morals are an acquirement; like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis, no man is born with them’. While growing up, we see people around us, and how they behave and we also learn from this. We don’t pay to learn morals from people around us, we rather imbibe what we see and get from our parents or the closer ones. Our money cannot fetch us good manners. Martin Luther King says, The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

See also:

Never outshine the Master

Don't ask for help like a Beggar

Always say less than Necessary

So much depends on your Reputation

Respect

Blaise Pascal says, ‘if you want people to think well of you, do not speak well of yourself. When we have so much money, people start to hail us and pretend to respect us. They treat us better compared to when we had nothing, however, they do not respect us, rather they respect the money. Once we try to pretend as if there is no money anymore, they show their true colours and make us understand that there was no respect at all, it was all pretence. Even while they respect us when they see us, they say negative things at the back. It is sad money can’t buy respect.

Character

According to O.J. Simpson, the only thing that endures is character. Fame and wealth, all that is an illusion. A proverb says, when a man has no money, his behaviour is that of another person. Between the time of having money and not having it at all, our character hardly changes, we only hide them for the time being. We can have all the money in the world, but our dirty character would hardly change. We think we can treat others anyhow because we feel we are better that time. However, changing for the better is the best, as positions and riches are volatile.

Common Sense

A Swedish proverb says, ‘do not throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds water. Making money itself requires common sense, and maintaining it requires more. While there is no perfect guide to maintaining wealth, not having common sense is a good way of losing wealth. We might be pushed to spend unwisely, thinking having money has no end. Before we sleep and wake, money with its wings is gone. Unfortunately, we can’t use our money to buy more common sense, maybe we can use the money to employ those that have.

Trust

We can with our money have a thousand workers, hundreds of security men, and tens of inner caucus, but getting those that we can trust is beyond the capability of our money. Having money is an invitation to those that we can’t trust. You hardly even know why these people are closer to you; are they here for the money, your inheritance, your life or do they love you. Everyone becomes a suspect. While we think we have a lot of money, we should not think we can afford the trust of those around us.

See also:

How to learn a Skill very fast

How to identify Intelligent people

What defines a successful person

The difference between the Rich and the Poor

Patience

Jean de La Fontaine says patience and passage of time do more than strength and fury. There is this confidence we have because we have money. We most times think we can just jump into anything because our money can go ahead of us. Instead of taking our time, looking at the situation before making a decision, we rather want to fight thinking we have the backup of our money. Anyway, we need to learn to be patient, as our money can hardly help. We might think we are winning, but we are creating more enemies.

Integrity

Our money doesn’t automatically make us men of integrity. We have to exhibit integrity, but cannot make people think we have it. People might even pretend to make us think we have some integrity, but right inside of them, they know we have none. Maintaining who we are with money is quite difficult. Even people tend to make us get angry, just to make us guilty about having money. Handling it with wisdom is very important. Our money can’t buy us integrity, but we can try to keep our integrity even in money.

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Love

In all honesty, people can love us when we have money. And how do we know, we know this by the number of people around us and those that are still trying to come closer. However, just like honey or sugar attracts the ants, so also our money attracts them. They love our money and not us. We might think we successfully bought their love, but no, it is only for a short time. People’s love can’t be bought with money. When the going is good, people stick around. When things become otherwise, people go to the next person with money.

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