Some years ago I lent a friend money to buy her family tickets to the circus, and just today, it popped into my mind that she never repaid me.

Any problem with that?

Well, yes. I lent her the money more than 20 years ago.

The money is gone.

But it still pops up sometimes as something I have to remember and fix. It’s taking up bandwith that I could use for something more enjoyable or productive. 

Money and friends is something that can be tricky, but it doesn’t have to be.

Not if you live according to these five basic rules that I will present below. 

But before I do that, I want to explain how I view money.

Money is – in my world – energy that flows through your life, the way blood flows through your body. You want to bless that flow and make sure the energy is good.

I pay my bills with gratitude, and I imagine all the good things my money is doing, as it moves through the eco-system in the world.

Let’s get down to it. Here are my rules. 

1. Only Lend an Amount of Money you are Okay with Giving Away

The truth is you might never get the money back. That is why you should never lend anyone an amount you are not okay with giving them.

The money might come back to you – or it might not. But in that case, it’s  moving in another direction and doing good. Be okay with that.

To improve the energy of the money that you lend, imagine what good the money is doing to your friend. Imagine them spending it, and then imagine the next person or business who received the money spending it. Continue like that following the money flow. 

2. Never Borrow Money – But if You do, Pay it Back Quickly   

Never borrow money from friends or relatives.

If you absolutely have to – maybe you lost your credit card – you must pay the amount back promptly because your credibility and reputation is on the line, and it’s one of the most precious assets you have.

Warren Buffett says it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. I think that’s true, so you have to take good carer of it.  

If you pay it back promptly, you will leave a great impression of trust and reliability.   

3. Round it up

Always round it up so it’s in the other person’s favor.

If you borrowed 87 dollars, give back 90 dollars – or maybe even a 100 dollars.

Why?

Well, first of all, counting coins seems petty. 

Secondly, there’s a time value of money. There is inflation chipping away at the value, and there is also the optional value, meaning what it could have been worth in the meantime if invested.

4. Give Without Expecting an Equal Return 

Many of us carry around an inner notebook where we notice what we give and what we receive, and many of us compare the two accounts like checks and balances.

You shouldn’t do that.

Give without expecting to be gifted back in the same dollar value. In fact, give without expecting anything in return. Give because you want to in that moment.

If you don’t, you might carry around resentment – and that is a very high price to pay.

Everyone’s mind set about gifts is different, and everyone’s budget is different. Don’t expect people to think and act like you, because they are not you, and they will behave differently to you. 

5. Be Silent About Money – Unless Asked

Since you are here reading this, you probably have an opinion about spending, saving and investing.

Sorry to say, but it’s true: Most people don’t want to hear about your money. It makes them feel uncomfortable.

So don’t chat about money.

Only speak about spending, saving and investing if someone asks you directly or comes to you for advice.

If you like to discuss investing, seek out groups or friends where you have an agreement that it’s the subject you talk about. 

If you want to find peers to discuss money with, you are welcome to join my free Facebook Group Managing Money Freedom here.

How many decisions do you make every single day?

Decisions like which socks to wear with your outfit, which jam to put on your morning toast, which route to take to work, which calls to make at the office, which emails to answer (and which to ignore), what to prepare for dinner, which book to read for the children and which film to watch in the evening.

A normal person makes hundreds of micro decisions every single day.

By late afternoon your brain is so tired that you don’t have energy for any more decisions and you go into one big “NO!” mode.

Oh yes. Studies have proven this.

A US study of 1,100 parole hearings found that the prisoners were much more likely to get parole if the judge had to make the decision in the beginning of the day and less likely later in the day.

The numbers are actually stunning: prisoners who appeared in the morning received parole 70 pct. of the time, while those appearing later in the day only received parole 10 pct. of the time. 

In other words, the prisoners shouldn’t worry too much about their appearance, race or general prejudice – they should really worry about the judge’s level of decision fatigue. In other words, how many other decisions had that judge already taken that day?

Judges are not the only ones who get tired after making many decisions. You do too. 

You really have to look at how many decisions you expose yourself to every single day and do your best to minimize that.

Most people spend some of their best brain time making mundane decisions and when it’s evening, the kids are off to bed, they sit down to take serious decisions about what to invest the family’s hard earned savings in.

Do they ever make that decision? Maybe not, and if they do, there is a risk that it will be a bad decision made with decision fatigue.

What can you do to overcome decision fatigue?

Obviously, you can learn from the judges and make important decisions first thing in the day.

But most of us are busy with kids and full time jobs, so some of our best hours are reserved for making breakfast, going through a commute, attending meetings, going through another commute, shopping for dinner and preparing dinner.

So what do you do if you want to reserve some strength for making great decision later in the day? 

Here are five steps:

1. Make One Decision that Removes Other Decisions 

This would be something like a meal subscription box that delivers the recipe and the ingredients for cooking meals.

Most people consider them convenient as they no longer have to do the shopping.

But what is really great about meal subscription boxes is that they eliminate hundreds of small decisions about what to put in the shopping cart and what meal to prepare and how to prepare it. It releases brain capacity for more important stuff. 

If you really enjoy shopping, you can simplify the meal decisions by making a meal plan for 30 days that you recycle each month. Decisions taken once. 

You can set up the same kind of system for your wardrobe.

You can do this like Steve Jobs and wear the same kind of sneakers, blue jeans and black turtleneck sweater for the rest of your life.

Alternatively, you can create a kind of “meal plan” for what to wear. Plan seven days and reuse it for the season. Switch to a new plan each season. 

2. Simplify Your Life

A lot of people fill up their lives with more and more stuff.

More social media accounts, more connections on each account, more connections in real life, more stuff and more events.

This is a slippery slope, because the more stuff you have and the more activities you engage in, the more fatigued you become.

So the solution is to keep only what is most important to you.

Only have things in your life you really appreciate or that fulfill a specific need (the Spark Joy woman Marie Kondo explains this much better than I do. Check out her book or her Youtube videos if you need help with this).

The same thing goes for relationships. Only keep the people in your life who really matter to you. Stop seeing the people who make you feel deflated. The superficial relationships that do not nurture you sap at your energy much more than you think.

Coaches like Tony Robbins say that you become like the people you surround yourself with. Who do you want to be?   

3. Establish Routines

Routines help you overcome small decisions about what to do when.

Let’s say you always spend time arguing with yourself if you should go for a run. I know people who spend more time debating if they should go for a run than the actual run takes them. 

It’s terribly draining to fight with our own ego about doing exercise. Better to have a fixed time to do it, like early in the day. I would suggest getting up 30 minutes earlier and do your exercise – then you don’t have to think about it for the rest of the day.

You can establish routines on a daily level and you can establish routines on a weekly level – or even monthly.

Let’s say that you often discuss with your partner when to spend quality time together. You can set up a weekly date night.

Or let’s say that it’s very hard for you and a group of friends to find time to see each other. You spend a lot of time doodling and coordinating each time, emails flying back and forth. You can set a specific monthly day (e.g. the 4th of every month) to have dinner and catch up. 

4. Turn it Off

I remember ignoring a knock on the door. I was an exchange student in Spain, and the dormitory was a very lively place. There was always someone who wanted to play, drink coffee or just chat.

I remember feeling guilty for ignoring a knock on the door, but it was necessary for me to do it sometimes. Otherwise, I would never learn anything. 

Those days were so simple. All I had to ignore was a knock.

This was before the internet was widely available and before smartphones.

Now you have to ignore a phone call, text messages, notifications from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Whatsapp, Twitter and what not.

Turn off the notifications so they don’t pop up on your phone or learn to ignore the knock. 

5. Make Decisions Fast and Stick to Them 

We can’t avoid all decisions. We need to eat, do stuff, see people after all. But when there is a call for a decision, make up your mind very fast, within a few minutes really and then stick to it.

The worst thing you can do when facing a decision is not making it.

Decisions that are still lingering in the background suck the energy out of your brain like few other things do.

That’s because your mind knows that you have unfinished business and it keeps wanting you to return to it and finish it.

So just make up your mind and stick to it. 

Make Big Decisions

You really have to practice making big, powerful decisions. Most people spend a lot of time on small decisions and ignore the big strategic ones.

They will spend hours discussing which vacation to take, which restaurant to dine at, which course to take, which Chardonnay to drink or which movie to watch.

But when you ask them about their finances, they can’t even remember what the status quo is.

They don’t know how much money is in their retirement pot, what it is invested in or who is investing it for them.

They haven’t even gotten around to the family’s saving pot.

Maybe it’s not invested. Or maybe they don’t have one. Or maybe it’s invested in the easy way where someone else makes the decisions for them – but they don’t know what it is invested in.

These are decisions that can change the financial destiny of the family. Their life can change really.

Why do these decisions get ignored?

It’s called decision fatigue. All the will power was used up on small matters like dinner planning and color coordinating socks. 

If you need help with making important decisions about investing in specific companies, you might want some help with my check list with 12 questions you should investigate before you put your money in a company. You can download it here. 

Do you want to learn how to evaluate and calculate the value of a company? I teach you how to do that in my e-book Free Yourself. You can download it here.