Money Blind
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  • The Book
    • Introduction
      • Revolutionising your relationship with money
      • Better money decisions, step by step
      • The slow suicide of monetary self-deception
    • 1: Towards Financial Enlightenment
      • 1.1: Becoming Wiser with Money
        • 1.1.1: Becoming a better investor
        • 1.1.2: Financial philosophy: what is it and why is it necessary?
        • 1.1.3: The two types of financial errors
        • 1.1.4: What unites every money decision?
      • 1.2: The Root of All Deception
        • 1.2.1: Where does the path to good investing begin?
        • 1.2.2: Why focus on money?
        • 1.2.3: What other investment books miss
        • 1.2.4: Money Blind
      • 1.3: Money and the Good Life
        • 1.3.1: You are a brain surgeon
        • 1.3.2: The four types of knowing
        • 1.3.3: Putting knowledge to use: becoming practically wise
        • 1.3.4: What is the Good Life?
      • 1.4: Is the Good Life for Sale?
        • 1.4.1: Money. Huh. What is it good for?
        • 1.4.2: Is success for sale?
        • 1.4.3: Editing your life story
        • 1.4.4: From having a mind full of money to being mindful with money
      • 1.5: Money Maxims
        • 1.5.1: Resetting your relationship with money
        • 1.5.2: Principles
        • 1.5.3: Rules
        • 1.5.4: Triggers
      • Storytime: The most valuable knowledge in the world
    • 2: How to Have a Healthy Relationship with Money
      • 2.1: The Inner Game of Investing
        • Storytime: It. Never. Works.
        • 2.1.1: First per cent problems
        • 2.1.2: The only way to solve money problems
        • 2.1.3: Does financial advice help or hinder?
        • 2.1.4: How to stop financial rumination
      • 2.2: Misunderstandings and Lethargy
        • Storytime: Doubling down
        • 2.2.1: Expenditure is more important than income
          • 2.2.1.1: Universal basic instincts
          • 2.2.1.2: How to spend it, and not spend it
          • 2.2.1.3: The unexamined dollar is not worth a dime
          • 2.2.1.4: Adviser or enabler?
          • 2.2.1.5: The game of life is not a numbers game
        • 2.2.2: Enough is more important than more
          • 2.2.2.1 Give, give, give, me more, more, more
          • 2.2.2.2 If less is more, then more is also less
          • 2.2.2.3 Enough is enough
          • 2.2.2.4 Right place, wrong mime
          • 2.2.2.5 Enough is more than enough
        • 2.2.3: Value is more important than price
          • 2.2.3.1: Is it better to look rich, or be rich?
          • 2.2.3.2: Is it better to own or to rent?
          • 2.2.3.3: There is always an underlying emotional reward
          • 2.2.3.4: Selling style over substance
          • 2.2.3.5: Putting a price on real value
        • ↓ Coming Soon ↓
        • 2.2.4: All purchases are investments
      • 2.3: How You Do Anything Is How You Do Everything
        • Storytime: What do Blackheath people do?
        • 2.3.1: Beware the Arrival Fallacy
        • 2.3.2: Beyond needs and wants
        • 2.3.3: Denunciation is still attachment
        • 2.3.4: Take control
      • 2.4: All Success Is Subjective
        • Storytime: Hollywood Hero
        • 2.4.1: No human is an island
        • 2.4.2: What are you worth?
        • 2.4.3: Write your own success story
        • 2.4.4: Be your own hero
      • 2.5: Inspired by Love and Guided by Knowledge
    • 3: How to Invest Like a Non-idiot
      • 3.1: All Investments are Gambles
      • 3.2: Your Life in Your Money and Your Money in Your Life
      • 3.3: The Investment Universe in a Grain of Sand
      • 3.4: There Is No Best Investment
      • 3.5: No Investment is an Island
    • 4: How to Get Help That's Actually Helpful
      • 4.1: Help!
      • 4.2: (Almost) All Financial Advisers are Crooks or Idiots
      • 4.3: Know your Enemy, and Your Friends
      • 4.4: Should You Hire Help or Go It Alone?
      • 4.5: The Future of Financial Advice
    • 5: How to Buy a Better Life
      • 5.1: Be a Financial Philosopher
      • 5.2: The At-Least-I-Know-I'm-Doing-Something-Right Investing Checklist
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    • Enlighten me!
  • Other
    • What this book is about
    • What this book isn't about
    • This book's logical flow
    • If... Then...
    • Stories
    • Maxims
    • Contact and comments
    • Editing guidance
    • Endnotes
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What this book isn't about

The non-contents

PreviousWhat this book is aboutNextThis book's logical flow

Last updated 4 years ago

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If these ideas already existed in a sufficiently well-organised form, this book wouldn’t.

If traditional, non-philosophical, investment books reliably changed our relationships with money from our brains outward, rather than hoping to do it from numbers-based tactics inward, there would be no need for this book.

But from the same self-deception that is the cause of the crummy relationships with money they’re trying to improve.

Money Blind is about beating self-deception. The trickiest thing about self-deception is that we also deceive ourselves into thinking we’re not deceived by anything. At least not in too dangerous or expensive a way.

Yet when it comes to money, and our just-about-incessant interactions with it, not to mention all the really catastrophically crappy things it inspires people to do, this is very far from being true.

What this book isn’t about is almost as important as .

In addition to the ‘What this isn’t about’ sections of the respective intro pages for each Part and Chapter, this is what Money Blind isn’t about:

1. Money Blind is about investment advice, but it isn’t about the illusion of reassurance

Most people seek investment advice for reassurance. And most receive it. But what they receive is usually only an illusion. It’s the reassurance of an industry that’s dressed itself up to be impossibly complicated, but you needn’t worry, because it is here to deal with that.

2. Money Blind is about mindset more than money, but it isn’t about equivocal woo-woo

Some investment books rightly acknowledge that money doesn’t solve money problems. But then dash immediately into an impractical land where willing yourself to have an ‘aura of abundance’ or redefining what being ‘rich’ or having ‘wealth’ really means is the answer… mysteriously overlooking that obsessing about ‘abundance’, ‘rich’, and ‘wealth’, or ‘having’ anything, be it stuff or status, is exactly what made things messy in the first place. Exhortations to love yourself or pigeonhole yourself into one of X number of different money types come from the same shelf as get-rich-quick schemes. If simply knowing it’s how you feel inside that matters were the answer, we’d all have got unstuck centuries ago.

3. Money Blind is about money, but it isn’t about numbers

We get stuck with money because we get stuck in the ‘having’ mode, when we want to be in the ‘being’ (or rather the ‘becoming’) mode. Because it is only in our participatory relationship with it that money takes on any meaning. Financial success is very rarely anything to do with numbers. There is an underlying emotional reward behind every use of money, every thought of money. Pretending there isn’t blocks us from working out what it is we really want to achieve and subsequently whether what we did to achieve it worked or not. Focusing on the numbers simply doesn’t work. I don’t care how strongly you think it will for you. It won’t. Everybody thinks they’re the exception. And everybody is wrong.

4. Money Blind is about changing behaviours, but it isn’t about specifying what those behaviours should be

If someone tells you how to spend your money, write them off as an insecure fool and move along. It doesn’t work that way. You can even tell someone that spending money on experiences will make them happier than spending it on stuff, and they’ll find a way to turn an experience into a material good. This book is about preparing your mental ground for insight, and wisdom. Becoming wiser with money means that when you slow down and think things through, you’ll make better money decisions by yourself. As a side-effect. Learning to think things through is harder than believing that the solution is for sale, but it has the great advantage of actually working.

5. Money Blind is about short-term work and long-term ease; it’s not about ephemeral easy answers and a lifetime of rumination and worrying about money

Some of the best financial advisers I’ve met have still been suckered in by the instantaneous palliative promises of get-rich-quick schemes. More than once. They’re that tempting. But they lead to a lifelong mental slog. Slogging is shit. We want real rewards from effortless effort.

*

In summary, Money Blind is about understanding, in a profound and participatory way, that if you can’t see because you have your hands over your eyes, it’s better to remove your hands and adjust to the light than to pay for an expensive guide dog.

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