Two things we aren’t taught as kids: how to be in healthy relationships and how to invest our money. No one sits us down and schools us. There are no classes in grade school that teach us. We are left to figure it out from whatever is modeled around us. How the adults and people closest to you showed up in relationships and how they spent money influenced you-good or bad.

As I study more about relationships and investing, I can’t help but connect the two. You may be thinking, “how?” The answer is simple. The same principles of investing apply to relationship building and serve as tangible ways to teach how to build healthy relationships.

The definition of investing is the act of allocating resources, usually money, with the expectation of generating an income or profit (Investopedia.com). If you strip that down into simpler terms that apply to all areas of life, investing is: allocating resources (time, energy, physical, financial, emotional, intellectual) with the expectation of increasing those resources and receiving them back. The most significant difference I’ve noticed between investing my money and investing in relationships is that I’m incredibly cautious when investing my money, but not so much when investing in relationships. Why is that? After much reflection, I realized that I don’t value my time, energy, physical, emotional, and intellectual resources as much as I value my financial ones. And guess what? I’m not the only one.

After years of working with clients and coaching them on building better relationships with money, I’ve learned that people view money as their only resource. They don’t realize that money is simply the physical manifestation of their other resources. It is the tangible currency of your time, energy, physical, emotional, and intellectual resources. Let that sink in.

One of the main reasons we don’t value our other resources as much as we value money is because we live in a capitalistic society that teaches us that money is our greatest resource. This deep conditioning has shaped our beliefs, attitudes, and values surrounding money. Time is money. Money is power. Money, power, and respect are the keys to life-all adages that place money at the top of the achievement pole.

If you treated your time, energy, physical, emotional, and intellectual resources as cautiously or as freely as you treat your money, what state would your relationships be in right now? Would they be healthier or not?

With Love, Ashley B.

“Invest in yourself. It pays the best interest.”

~Unknown