This article is part of a money energy block series. I document my personal experience with encountering and overcoming money energy blocks. By sharing these experiences, it is my hope that you’ll be able to relate to your own money energy blocks, helping you overcome them.
I had a huge money energy block when it finally came to buying another car. My faithful 2004 Mazda 3 needed to be retired after a very long and faithful 13 years of service. Though I didn’t know it at the time, I was looking at the world through distorted lenses. From the time I started looking for a new car to the time I had a BMW sitting in my garage would be a long six months!
Initially, I didn’t even want a BMW. I had set a budget of $20,000. So, I thought it was impractical and stupid to buy any type of luxury car. Of course, it’s hard to find anything new and in decent condition for that price. Quite hypocritically and to the contrary, I found myself at Mercedes, Audi, and Lexus dealerships. Of course, I also stopped by Subaru, Honda, Toyota, and Mazda. But as you can see, what I really wanted was a luxury vehicle.
Little would I know I was facing my own major money energy block that would take six months to resolve.
A Lifelong Dream
For much of my life, I’ve always wanted to own a BMW. Call it effective product placement in movies like Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond or The Transporter.
Looking back, the movie is still pretty campy and ridiculously bad. But seeing the enthusiasm of Jason Statham every time he gets behind the wheel of the Ultimate Driving Machine and how he drives it still makes me want one of my own. If you’ve never seen the movie, it’s worth the few seconds to watch the BMW chase scene.
So the idea was planted and would haunt me for the next twenty years. I would finally fulfill that dream some 20 years later. I should really write a book titled How to Easily Own Your Dream Car in Twenty Years or Less. Ha!
A big part of my money energy block was believing I wasn’t good enough to own a BMW. You see, my parents were in the lower middle class in terms of income. They lived their entire lives as if they were poor.
They still live in the same dingy and moldy one-room apartment for the past 40 years. It was small and cramped. But they somehow managed to raise two children in that apartment. I could literally go back anywhere in the 40-year period, and the apartment would look exactly the same.
Cost was always of paramount concern to my father. Because of his poor energy surrounding money and himself in general, we grew up eating a lot of instant ramen noodles with a dash of oyster sauce and some vegetables.
In other words, they never had the drive to improve their own conditions. As a result, I grew up with the same mindset, even though I thought I was above it all.
It’s Never About the Money
When we look at the reasons for why we want something, we quickly discover it’s never about the money.
But what is money? It’s an idea, invented to facilitate the movement of energy. For instance, you buy a smartphone to facilitate the movement of ideas, news, and entertainment. That in turn causes the people who create content in the first place to create even more. And of course the more content that gets created, the more that people require of the Internet to move all this information. This means improving the infrastructure of the Internet. All of this creation and thought is just energy expanding.
There’s yet another way to look at money, and it’s this: Money is our faithful servant. The more money we have, the more comfortable we are able to live. It is an amplifier of our values, be they good or bad. It allows us to amplify the good we do in the world, beyond just the one body we inhabit, and in as short a time as possible.
These are just some of the myths most people have when it comes to money. If you’d like to learn more, please get your free copy of 7 Money Myths Preventing You From a Positive Cashflow here.
I had mentioned earlier that I had been looking through a set of distorted lenses for the longest time. For instance, if I spend more than 5 hours in my Mazda 3, I would hear muffled road noise for several hours while I ate at a restaurant. The car had poor insulation. I would also feel the swaying and vibrating of the car as I sit in a restaurant to have dinner.
Replaying the Same Old Money Stories
Yet, I put up with this discomfort for years, not knowing any better. When I started test-driving the newer cars, the difference in the sound levels within the cabin as well as the comfort was night and day.
But I was still telling myself the same old stories about how wasteful I was being, buying a “car like this”. Somewhere, I was still eating ramen noodles with a dash of oyster sauce and a tiny bit of green veggies, convincing myself that misery was the key to happiness. If that’s the case, then why am I saving money?
Somewhere I lost my way and became the very thing I was afraid of: I became my father.
Money is about enabling us to live comfortably and happily. More importantly, money is energy. It was amplifying the misery already inside of me.
Lack of Experience
You’ll notice I keep saying things that relate to experiences, such as the using BMW’s famous and timeless marketing phrase, “the Ultimate Driving Machine.”
This is because growing up my parents didn’t encourage me to do a whole lot. I remember borrowing an electronic keyboard from a friend when I was in high school. I wanted to learn the piano. Of course, my parents didn’t ask if wanted lessons, just to try it out. And I thought this was all normal.
So as an adult, I rarely tried new things or have the enthusiasm or ambition to. Everything boiled down to cost.
When I saw the phrase the Ultimate Driving Machine I didn’t think much of it. I thought it was just a clever marketing ploy by BMW to get me to buy their cars. Of course, when I got behind the wheel of one to test drive it I finally understood what they meant.
Yet, my programming at the avoidance of experiences during my formative years would contribute strongly to my money energy block.
Overcoming Most of It
I ultimately looked at what I really wanted, which helped me to decide on buying a BMW. Initially, I thought it would be more practical to get a Lexus, for their reliability is legendary. The only things I read about ever going wrong with a Lexus are software glitches in the headunit related to the radio. In other words, it was all very minor.
German cars, on the other hand, are notorious for engine and coolant leaks. It was across the board with BMW, Mercedes, and Audi.
They also have a very good chance of basically not starting. The overall cost of ownership for the BMW was about 2.5 times higher than the Lexus, too. I thought that the first time I had to pay for a major and expensive repair in a BMW that I would regret not getting the Lexus. But then a good friend reframed things for me. She said that the first time my Lexus breaks down, I would be cursing up and down the street, wishing I had bought the BMW instead.
Of course, I didn’t spend my entire life savings on this car. Far from it, I actually followed the 20/4/10 rule to car buying. This is a simple rule that says your monthly car payments on a 4 year load, including insurance, should be no more than 10% of your gross monthly income after a 20% down payment.
And of course I finally started to experience the world more and more, understanding just how important experiences are. For example, I would rather spend $200 on front-row tickets to a Cirque du Soleil show than stock on on ramen. Sure the latter may be more “practical” but at the end of my life, I want to look back and say that I experienced as much as life could give me with as little regrets as possible.
It’s the same thing with the car. When I am older, will I really look back and pat myself on the back, saying I’m glad I bought the practical car?
Or would I say that I’m glad I really took the chance and did what I wanted?