“You write so much about what your readers need to know about money and investing,” said my wife as I sat down to write my next post. “Why don’t you write what people must know about their money? You know, the real truth about money…like the 10 commandments on money?”

As always, I thought she had a point.

So, here are a few ideas – not 10, but 15 – that I’ve picked along the way, and that I believe are some of the most important ones you must know about your money,

1. You think too much about your money. Stop doing that because your money doesn’t think about you.
   

    

2. You are not your money and your money is not you but you best look after each other anyway. You might be together for a while.
   

    

3. You’ll never have more money to save and invest than you do right now, so find a way to save and invest more of what you’ve got.
   

    

4. You don’t have a I-have-less-money issue. It’s a how-you-manage-your-money issue.
   

    

5. You’ll never be perfect with managing your money, so aim for getting better.
   

    

6. You’ll never live in the future or the past, so find a way to be happy with your money in the now.
   

    

7. Your financial life doesn’t get better, you do. Life is life – it will happen to you. It’s your job to get better in the middle of it all.
   

    

8. Your ‘average’ financial position is not the problem. It’s the consequence.
   

    

9. Even though you might not feel it, think it, believe it or hear it, you are good enough with your money than most experts would have your believe.
   

    

10. Your happiness works from the inside-out. Money really can’t buy you more happiness.
    

     

11. Your money is your responsibility, not anyone else’s. So stop blaming others when things go wrong.
    

     

12. Master your fear of not having enough money in the future, and you’ll master your life.
    

     

13. Real success is not about what you earn, own, achieve or win but who you become along the way. So work towards ‘becoming’, not towards ‘having’.
    

     

14. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity that has money, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.
    

     

15. Money just brings out the basic traits in you. If you were a jerk before you had money, you are simply a jerk with a billion rupees.

These last two thoughts come straight from Warren Buffett, who knows about money better than what you or I can ever know.

Finally, as the famous proverb goes, “If you want to feel rich, just count the things you have that money can’t buy.” (Like that smile on your child’s face when she is with you)

So play the money game, but only for the excitement of playing it.

Don’t take it too seriously, for life’s too short to be wasted running after money.