How I Learned to Adopt an Abundance Mindset

In December, my friends Sam and Mary and I were on vacation in Hawaii awaiting our spa appointments (yes it was a good day) when Mary suggested that over the next 365 days we all agree to play the Money Game together.

She explained that every day we would text each other a short note -- from wherever we were in the world -- to stipulate where we would give our “money” each day. On the first day, we could allocate $1000, the second day $2000, etc. By the following December, we’d be giving away $365K to anyone or anything we chose. (I discovered this is a twist on the Abundance Game you can read about here.)

Of course it wasn’t real cash, but Mary explained the Money Game is designed to reframe our thinking about money as abundant and ours to play with at any time and in any way. It was sort of like having an investment club but with no need to do the research. I was immediately game.

Well, it’s now the middle of March and with a few fits and starts, we’ve been playing the game steadily for 97 days. Today, I decided to look at how we ‘spent’ our over $10,000,000 to date to see what I could learn from the journey so far.

Abundance Starts with Generosity

We are a generous group. It turns out that of our daily allocations, 46 have now gone to charitable causes for a total of about one-third of our allocations, or $3.3M. Our giving choices have ranged from Charity Water to Room to Read to Acumen with a large percentage going to causes where we have some connection. An additional $600K was given to scholarships of all kinds – mostly to women who wanted to go back to school, study the trades, or get a degree in education.

Our next highest contribution category was family, receiving $1.6M to date which includes not just contributions to kids, grandkids, parents, and nieces, but also our contributions to each other’s families. When Sam’s brother-in-law had surgery or Mary’s family faced some legal costs, we were quick to step up and “invest” to relieve each other’s worries. 

Other friends, people we met or people in need generally received an additional $850K. This included a friend of mine with cancer, respite care for caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients – like those that had cared for Mary’s parents, Sam’s friend who had surgery, and a woman one of us met at a conference. 

This category also tells an interesting story about the last three months, as it includes contributions to the families of people unfairly deported, those who lost their homes to the CA fires, and sending gas generators to Puerto Rico after the hurricane. It also includes donations to families of police officers shot in the line of duty near Mary’s home, the family of a woman who one of us knew who died of the flu and left two small children, and the family of someone killed nearby by a drunk driver. The most generous contributor in this category was Mary.

We were also quite generous politically with a little over $500K going to voter registration, Congresswomen we admire, and Robert Mueller’s investigation (if it were possible to direct money that way). I was by far the biggest contributor in this category.

We Believe in Investing in the Future

Our next highest category was our “foundations” which received over $800K so that we might contribute to causes we care about in the future – or as I once said – when we are older and wiser. An additional $250K was earmarked to retirement, long-term care insurance, savings, investments, and health insurance. Looking at that ratio (8:2.5), I realize we would much rather make sure our dollars are going to good causes in the future rather than preventing some future that none of us can predict.

We Also Invested In Ourselves…And Each Other

The last large category of spending was investments in the present, including $450K to grow our businesses (we are all self-employed), and an additional $450K to do business with each other, and help each other launch new projects.

Money was also set aside for homes, vacation homes, cars, travel, and travel together, but surprisingly this only totaled about 7% of the monies to date.

And There Were Some Far Out Investments, Too

Perhaps the most interesting category of spending would be the final $866K in “miscellaneous” expenses. Here you’ll find $80K set aside for a flying car, $15K for curing the common cold, $52K to replant highway 101 in Southern CA after the mudslides, and $49K for kids to take field trips out to enjoy Mother Nature. We also jointly contributed $47K to make Oprah’s amazing speech at the Golden Globes, and Amy Siskind’s upcoming book available to libraries everywhere, and an additional $234K to support women-led film projects.

Am I Feeling More Abundant? Yes!

You may be wondering whether Mary's purpose in enrolling us in this exercise has paid off. For me, I would say it has. As a self-employed person, it is easy to get caught up in a conversation about money. It is easy to feel, at times, that there is not enough versus that there is always more. This daily reminder that there is always money and always more money has tended to short-circuit my inner monologue of money worries (which really weren't serving me anyway). For that I am truly thankful.

This Exercise Helps You See Your Values…And Those of Others

If there is one final takeaway from this experiment so far it is that I have chosen my friends wisely. There is not a wide disparity in what we value or what we care about. Friends, family, causes that matter, our businesses, time together, and investing for the future are where we choose to “spend” our money. I believe this is all money very well spent. In fact, it is where I spend my money now – just in smaller dollar amounts.

Yes, it is nice to dream about vacation homes in Maui, but only so we can more easily make time to get away and enjoy each other’s company in the not too distant future. After all, there’s really no point in having all this money – pretend or otherwise – if we can’t enjoy creating a future that we all want to live in. I look forward to seeing the next three quarters play out. I’ll report back.

If you’re intrigued by the Money Game, I invite you to find a few friends and try it. Or just jot down in your journal every day where you’d “spend” your money. I look forward to hearing what you learn.