As I make progress towards becoming debt free, I am making it a priority to educate myself more about money. I want to have a better understanding of handling finances, financial mindsets and many other useful topics. My favourite way of doing this is reading. This is a part of my journey that I’m particularly keen to share with you as I believe you could get a lot of value from it. Here is my finance book of the month.

Finance book of the month – Money and Mindfulness: Living in Abundance

This week I would like to share a book that I first read around three years ago. I don’t believe that it is well known in the debt free community, however I think that it is incredibly relevant.

Lisa Messenger, the author, is the founder of the global brand the Collective and launched a magazine that has been sold in 37 countries. It is deemed an incredible success and has made an outstanding profit…and she funded it entirely from her own pocket. I should add that Lisa did not come from money, she just found her own way of doing things.

Lisa demonstrates that normal is not always best. After all debt is “normal”, and we all know how we feel about debt!

At the very beginning of her book Lisa challenges the taboo of talking about money, and this is what first drew me in. For those of us in debt, the thought of having an open discussion about it can make your knees shake. Following our debt free journey what then happens when we find that our financial health continues to grow? Perhaps we begin to do rather well with money and become what is considered “well-off”. Would we be OK talking about money then? Well of course not, that would be boasting.

Lisa explores this ridiculous attitude that the world has towards money and encourages us to think positively about it. It is OK to have it, it is OK to enjoy it and it is OK to want more! In one of the opening pages of the book she states “I love money, not because I dream of having a driveway full of fast cars and a closet full of designer outfits…but because the moment I stopped seeing money as the root of all evil and saw it as a fuel of fulfilment, everything changed for me.”

As a result of such a negative experience with money, many of us may struggle to come out of the debt cloud with a positive outlook towards the wealth that we may be about to build. Money and Mindfulness opened my eyes to having money as a positive thing. It also suggested that the goals we set for ourselves and our finances in the future are entirely achievable, whether that means having a comfortable amount in your bank account or earning millions. You don’t need loans from the bank or years of experience in business. What you need is a level head and a healthy attitude about success.

Currently, I see very little of my income go towards enjoyable spending and the concept seems so foreign. As we move towards becoming debt free, it is so important to become familiar with having money that does not disappear straight into a credit card payment or loan. The transition might be a tricky one for a lot of us, but this sort of preparation will be a big help!

You can find Money and Mindfulness: Living in Abundance here on Amazon. (This is an affiliate link. I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you choose to use it. Thank you!)

I absolutely encourage you to begin reading (or listening to audiobooks) as part of your debt free journey. Not only do you learn something as a result, but it also allows you some time to switch off from your debt and all the other goings on in life and just focus on the book in hand.

You can read my previous Finance Book of the Month post here.