Posted by Mike Smith :: August 29, 2007 @ 7:13 am

Money is often grouped with resources that are limited, most notably time and natural resources. While similarities do exist between money and limited resources, thinking of money as a limitless resource is a way to broaden your possibilities.

The money that I’m talking about is not what’s in your bank account. That certainly is a limited resource. I’m also not suggesting that you go on a spending spree once you change you thinking on money. No, as you’ll often hear on the Lending Club blog, financial conservatism is at the heart of nearly every positive decision in personal finance.

I’m talking more about money in the global sense. Traditional zero-sum thinking holds that in order for my own money supply to go up, someone else’s needs to go down. That categorizes money as a limited resource. If there’s only so much of it, then clearly for someone to gain, someone else must lose.

I believe that viewing money as a limited resource is an outdated concept. Thinking about it that way may stunt growth and hamper innovation through the guilt of not wanting to take away from our fellow human beings. When something new is created, it can create money along with it. Growth of your money through innovation will likely increase the amount of money available to others, not take away from it.

To give you an example of creating value in the money supply, consider the example of YouTube. Within a year of its launch, YouTube had grown from nothing to one of the most recognized and visited websites out there. While people may see its value differently, Google was willing to pay $1.65 Billion in stock to buy YouTube.

Through their creativity, timing, and insight, the founders of YouTube had built incredible value in an amazingly short amount of time. Did they have to take away from others to do it? No. The jobs and revenue that they created wouldn’t have existed unless they had made it so.

If the thought of money as a limited resource, and the guilt that sometimes accompanies that thinking, has been holding you back from being creative, it may be time to change your thinking. Your bright idea may create more than just the next YouTube, it may create something that people used to think was a limited resource: more money for the world to enjoy.