There’s a lot of information about how to improve your money luck in feng shui, but little that talks about how to actually handle it. One of the biggest areas of unhappiness and frustration in our lives is often our relationship with money – how we spend, save, invest, accumulate and earn money. Sure, we can add Chinese coins and three-legged toads all over the house but if we don’t handle our money well, it won’t matter. Yet, the way you handle your money is a big part of your money feng shui – and it has a powerful effect on your ability to attract and grow your money.
Respect all money
There are a variety of types of money. There’s some money that goes out toward bills, money that’s saved, money that’s invested and money you spend on fun. Give your bills and payments as much or more respect as your investments.
Like watching annual feng shui afflictions, managing your money by keeping bills low and paid in a timely manner is a top priority in money feng shui. Setting up a system to manage your bills is especially helpful. Staying organized with money keeps your focus on money, and its focus on you (read: having more of it).
Use a feng shui color system for all your accounts.
Bills – place these in blue folders to keep them small and not activated.
Income – place salary and pay stubs in a yellow folder to keep it stable and grounded.
Savings statements – place your savings statements in a green or brown folder. Tape a three-tie Chinese coin to the folder to activate it and help your savings grow.
Investments – Place these statements in a red folder to activate them and keep them going strong. Add a three-tie Chinese coin to promote growth.
Contain your bills and expenses
One of the ways we handle money going out the door is by managing the bills that come into it. If you have paper bills that come to you in the mail, always pull those out of all the mail and put them into a small basket. A small basket helps to contain the bills and keep them small. Once they’re paid, file your paid bills in a blue folder.
Prefer to handle it all electronically?
That’s one way to manage paper, but there’s a magic in actually touching your money, whether that’s in the form of currency, a statement from your bank or from your investments.
The act of acknowledging your bills and handling them right away makes sure you keep your focus and attention on them, and that’s good feng shui.
It’s also a good idea to select a date to pay your bills.
One way to get behind on payments is having varying due dates. If you need to pay at different times of the month because of the way you’re paid, have your bills set up so that you know that the 1st and 15th are your bill-paying days, for example.
If you can, get your days down to one day a month. I always pick the 15th and have any bills I receive set up to pay on that day. This way I never miss a payment date.
See money grow – spending vs. investing
Once you have your eye firmly on your bills and accounts and they’re organized into color-coded folders, it’s vital that you see your money grow.
In order to make money grow, you have to put it into something, like a seed that you plant in the ground. Look into investments that take a small amount out a month (seed) and that goes into an account (ground) that grows.
Be clear on one thing when it comes to growing your money: the money you put into an investment account isn’t money buying a stock or a bond, it’s an investment in you.
I think of financial growth as self-growth.
We spend money on manicures, vacations, or a car, and usually have no problem spending on ourselves, but we often don’t think about investing in ourselves, but investments are something that financially validates you because the money you put into a savings or investment is you paying you.
If you pay your bills, why not pay yourself?
By making even a small monthly investment, you are putting money into your financial self-growth, and that helps you earn more, attract more, and have more.
Water draws water
Just like adding a little water to a dry pump will bring water out of the ground, once you see yourself not just as a bill payer, but an investor and you see your money growing, you will accumulate and grow more money. You may say you can’t afford to, and I say you can’t afford not to if you want more money in your life.
Fun money
Have your finances sucked all the joy out of money for you? Too often we don’t think about having fun with our money. It’s often a source of aggravation and that takes the joy out of having it. When money is only about obligation – paying this or that bill — it’s hard to enjoy it, and more importantly, hard to see it accumulate.
Do you remember being a kid and taking money out of a piggy bank to go buy something and how much fun that was? Then recreate that feeling with a fun account.
I have a bank account that’s just for fun and each month I put a small amount of money in that I spend on whatever I choose and feel happy about it.
This account is for pure monetary joy. I never feel guilty about what I spend out of this account because it is there completely and purely for my pleasure. Think about setting up an account like this so you can associate having money that’s just for your enjoyment.
