Money and beautiful are words one rarely uses in the same sentence.  You can easily imagine dirty money, lack of money, filthy money and various other negative pairings, but most people don’t associate beauty with money.  And don’t even talk about spending lots of money or dreaming of becoming wealthy.  We hear that seeking wealth is not spiritual and is a greedy, materialistic way to approach life.

Personally, I love to look at money and wealth in a completely different light.  I choose to see these as manifestations of the abundance we can have and share during our physical journey in this world.  I am not talking about greed.  In my mind, greed is an insatiable need to hoard wealth of any kind and keep it all to yourself.  I don’t understand this approach to wealth.

I am talking about the kind of wealth that allows you flexibility in your choices, a life of abundance and the ability to share this goodness with the world around you.  When I have the financial ability to do so, I absolutely adore spending money on my family, friends and anyone else who needs the assistance.  It is an awesome feeling to spend money on someone (including yourself) just for the sheer joy of it.  And sometimes, it helps that person in a way you may not even see.

When I graduated from school, I was about to start interviewing for my first job in the professional world.  Had blue jeans and t-shirts been the interviewing fashion of choice, I would have been rockin’ it.  But as you can imagine, most businesses wouldn’t be too interested in speaking with a candidate sporting mega-casual Friday dress.  And as an added bonus, I learned that for some strange reason, clothing stores were not going to freely give away nice suits and dress shoes just because you were a nice person.  At that moment, having money would have been a really huge help for me.

And this is where the beautiful part enters the picture.  My family was blessed many years ago with a wonderful friendship with another family.  We have a special connection to them and always will.  At that point in their lives, they had substantial financial wealth and were thrilled to be able to help me in my time of professional need.  I don’t recall asking for their help, and truthfully, I don’t think it would have crossed my mind that someone would even consider taking me shopping.  It just didn’t register in my mind that something like that could happen.  But it did!  They took me shopping and bought me several lovely suits and multiple pairs of beautiful dress shoes.  They bought shirts and bags and blouses and slacks – just for me.  I remember feeling like I was in that scene in Pretty Woman on Rodeo Drive (but ideally with a different profession in my future).  It was dreamy!  And I believe that my fun and joy could have only been matched by theirs.  They adored being able to give someone such a gift – and not just any someone – me!  I used those clothes for years and thought of our friends each time I wore them.  Their generosity was a huge gift to me then and still is today.

This moment may just sound like a nice little shopping trip, but for me, it was a defining moment in my life.  Truly.  Not only was I able to walk into my interview in something other than jeans, I was able to walk in with confidence and a sense of pride in my appearance.  It showed me that someone outside of my home actually believed that I was a special person and believed that I was worthy of these gifts.  I realized that having money meant that you could help give someone else hope when they didn’t know which way to turn.  I had spent so much time focused on a lack of money, but I realized that it was a lot more fun to focus on the joy it could bring.

Now I love money, and thankfully, it loves me back!  I agree that it is more fun to spend it on fun stuff like vacations, gifts, and helping people, but I am also thankful for things that are maybe less fun.  I am grateful that I get to spend money on replacing my roof this year because it means that we have a home and the tornado mostly missed it.  I am thankful that we have to pay big chunky taxes because it means we have other money coming into our home.  I am grateful that we have to pay insurance deductibles because it means that we have wonderful doctors and hospitals who are helping to keep us healthy.  All of these are wonderful things that we can have with beautiful money.  We are able to do more for others and live with more freedom if we can focus on the joy we can have with money.

I am going to be a millionaire.  I’m not sure how that is going to shake out, but it’s officially on my To Do list.  Can you imagine how much awesome stuff we can do with millions of dollars?  Can you imagine how any people we can help and how we can shape peoples’ lives in so many wonderful ways?  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to feed a hungry family, send a child to college who otherwise couldn’t go, deliver medical help to someone who really needed it, and take a dream vacation with your family and friends all in the same year?  To me, that would be some beautiful money.

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