The Money Myth It was October 1987, I remember it as clearly as if it was yesterday.

We had just arrived to my brothers in law's condo in beautiful Kaanipalli Maui. It was my first time to Hawaii and my first real vacation after a grueling 20 years of school and my first four years struggling in the working world. It was going to be perfect! The condo, beaches and sea were pristine and magnificent. I turned on the TV and there it was. The stock market had just fallen 500 points and the world, as we knew it was coming to an end right before my eyes. I figured if the world was ending, we might as well enjoy it and go out with a bang, so we lived it up, and had the best time in the glorious islands of Hawaii. Jump forward two years to 1989. We were in Europe for the very first time, on a trip to England and France. I turned on CNN international in our lovely Marriott hotel room in central London, and watched in astonishment as the Berlin wall was actually being torn down, and people were jumping over and running from East to West Germany. I was in Europe and Communist-controlled East Germany was gaining its freedom. What was going to happen next? Maybe the world was starting again. Now 20 years had passed. It was summer 2008 and we were on our fourth international trip in four years. I wanted my son to get a feel for some other parts of the world before he was off to college. The first year we went to Ecuador on a mission trip, we visited the Galapagos, Peru (Lima, Cusco, and Machu Picchu), and magnificent Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (where I had lived for two years as a child). The next year we visited China and Japan, where my son had always wanted to go, the third-year to Italy, Croatia, Sicily, Spain and France, and now we were on the first day of our 12-day at Baltic Cruise from London where we would visit Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Russia, Finland and Sweden. I turned on the TV in our cabin and all over CNN was blaring oil prices were approaching $150 a barrel and gas was over four dollars a gallon. The bottom ticker headline read Banks to lose another $250 billion after the trillions that had already been lost in the sub prime mortgage melt down, due to the real estate initiated recession/depression, which were currently experiencing. It seemed as though every time I left the country there were some international, geopolitical, monetary crisis, which occurred as soon as I left the US of A. Was there some connection here? Maybe I should just stay at home! I thought to myself, how could this be happening? What caused the price of oil to more than double to over $150 a barrel in less than one year, and the plummeting of real estate prices, huge inventories, and banks losing trillions of dollars? Where was this money going? Where did it go in the stock market crash of 87, and the bursting of the tech bubble in the 90s? The subsequent recession of 2007-2009 and continued scandals have caused many to people to lose their jobs and up to or even more than half their monetary/financial wealth. This did not have to happen!

Then I remembered something I had learned many years earlier. We can never predict the future number of buyers to sellers of anything. This money was not lost, it was never there! Money cannot be created nor destroyed, (except by the mint!), just the value that it represents to society. The constant barrage of frenzied news in the media continuously perpetuates this Money Myth. The buildings were not gone, the supply didn't halve , nor did the demand for oil double over the last year. Speculation over the future price of oil , gold and other commodities, was artificially inflating their prices. The tremendous overbuilding and optimism that caused real estate prices to grow in certain parts of the country over the last decade at a rate of 20 to 30% per year was just plain silly! It all goes back to basic supply and demand. The same over-exuberance and crash in the stock market, the bursting of the tech stock bubble, the crashing of the real state market, and the coming crash of oil and commodities are all based on irrational sentiment swings in the basic equation of supply and demand. This got me to thinking about what is money anyway? and can it really be created or destroyed other than by the mint? A brief history of money from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money My conclusion after lengthy and careful consideration, is that money cannot be created or destroyed. Watching CNN, Fox MSNBC and CNBC daily as the fluctuations of supply, demand and speculation numbers go up and down actually should have little to no bearing on our everyday lives unless you are a trader (which I don't recommend), but for the rest of us it would be better to consider exactly what money is. The price we pay for anything is totally related to supply and demand. Used cars, cruises, condos, food, gas, everything. Since we never could, and obviously still cannot control nor predict the trillions of intricacies which factor into what causes and influences (especially in today's global marketplace since the inception of the cell phone and the internet) the often pendulous daily fluctuations on the speculation of the supply and demand, it would certainly be presumptuous of us to think that we would be smart enough (over a long period of time) to accurately predict what is going to happen and therefore bet on the future prices of anything., especially at the exact time when we are going to need the money. (which we also may not be able to predict with any degree of certitude). This is why I believe there are just 3 keys in regards to being successful when it comes to money. 1) figure out who you want to be and what you want to do, and the size of your contribution to society, life and humanity as a whole. What are you going to do to make others lives better, easier, more fun and enjoyable, more joyful, healthful, enthusiastic, optimistic, educated or whatever your passion and talents allow.

2) The exchange of value, or money that you have earned , which will be in direct proportion to the size of your contribution to the world, from providing your unique talents and gifts to others, should never be put at risk, betting on some future ratio of the number of buyers to sellers of anything. Some should be spent, and some should be saved, in a vehicle, which is not subject to loss. Loan some of your earnings to others ( like banks and credit card companies do, giving others opportunities) for a prearranged and agreed-upon rate of return, so that from the beginning you will know at exactly what rate your savings (providing future economic freedom and opportunity) will grow. 3) Don't watch the news!!!!!!

Money myth is a game, a fallacy and/or faade that is pushed on us by this massive industry which plays with and on our emotions on a daily basis. They are the only ones who profit from the fluctuation, tactics and constant hyped-up 24/7 news tickers fooling us, and actually stealing away our precious focus and attention from what is really important in our lives family, love, creations of value and contribution to our fellow man and posterity. Don't be fooled by this myth anymore and simply choose not to participate in it.