Money, fulfilment and aggro

What are the most valuable things in your life?

Speaking with a long-standing client today, I was impressed by his view of what he called the “currencies in his life”.

He named three currencies in life; money (understandably, quite obvious), fulfilment and “aggro”.

He explained that we all need money to some extent or other, but for him, it was what money allowed him to do rather than simply trying to accumulate more than he had.

And what he believed money allowed him to do was to increase one of his other currencies, fulfilment and reduce the other, “aggro”.

By aggro, he meant a range of things; getting rid of frustrations or the politics of work-life, for example.

He related the story of a friend who was hating the work that he was doing.

The friend couldn’t see a way out of his dilemma and felt that he had to carry on working to produce the amount of money he needed to retire.

Through the financial planning process, ably carried out by my colleague Shelley McCarthy, he discovered that he already had enough and could choose to retire immediately.

This course of action is precisely what he did do; he resigned from his job and immediately saw a fall in the currency he didn’t want, “aggro”.

Unsurprisingly he saw an immediate rise in the value of his fulfilment.

I thought it was an excellent way of looking at the interaction between money and life.

If money is a currency that can be exchanged to increase the opportunity for fulfilment, doing the things you want and enjoy doing and getting rid of the things you don’t want in your life, aggro, that’s a neat way to look at things.