I find it absolutely amusing that so many financial planners, financial newsletters writers and money magazines editors continue to tell people they just need to start saving more money, thinking this will actually have an affect on their behavior. As you probably have already guessed, this approach doesn’t work very well.

I know this is a long stretch, but I just finished watching The Mission. In this true story, Jeremy Irons plays a Spanish Jesuit who goes into the South American wilderness to build a mission in the hope of converting the Indians of the region. Robert DeNiro plays a slave hunter who is converted and joins Irons in his mission. When Spain sells the colony to Portugal, they are forced to defend all they have built against the Portugese aggressors who ‘secretly’ want to use the Indians as slaves. Suffice it to say that the ending left me in tears for quite some time, again questioning how human beings can do such atrocious things to one another all in the name of making money.

If you have been reading my posts for awhile, you know that I am a huge proponent of teaching kids (and adults) the difference between ‘earning’ money and ‘making’ money. Most people think these things means the same thing.They don’t.

EARNING money is when you trade your time and energy for money, either by the hour, the week, the month or even by the project. The imporant piece is that you only get paid ONCE for that amount of spent time and energy on your part.

MAKING money, however, is when you use your time and energy and creativity creating something that will pay you over and over again…like a book or a profitable website, or investing in a stock that continues to pay dividends or investing in a house that brings you monthly positive cash flow. You expend your energy once and then reap the rewards, sometimes forever.

The piece I can never understand is this: why does our government and the bulk of Americans, constantly talk about needing to ‘create jobs’ when in fact, we need to create businesses that help, 1) individuals to support themselves without being at the whim of an employer and/or, 2) help individuals create businesses that will need employees and hence create jobs for those who are unwilling or not wanting to create their own job for whatever reason.

Back to the movie…in trying to help His Eminence make a case for letting the Indians be, people from all sides tried to sway him. The priest because he say that the Indians were good human beings, lived naturally and peacefully and were truly full of love and community.

The other side, however, kept telling His Eminence that the Indians were ‘animals’ and as such, should be used, legally, for slaves. In other words, let his fellow human beings make money by using the time and energy of the slaves in whatever way they wished.

The piece that I can’t reconcile is why some human beings use the time, energy and creativity of others, reward them aptly, appreicate them for the part they play in that person’s success (even calling them ‘the team’!) and more while others use other’s time, energy and creativity with no thought to what they are putting that person through.
I’m not sure there is a point to this post…it might just be my contemplating humanity. It might actually be a movie review for The Mission and yet it mght actually have a point.

At this juncture, I’m going to just stop and say…Just something else to think about.