Money Matters: Are You a Hunter or Farmer?

When it comes to how our income comes to us and how we manage it, we can be likened to hunters or farmers. For the purpose of this illustration, let’s look and how both of them interact with something they have in common – animals. Let’s start with the hunter. The hunter goes into the bush each hunting day to kill an animal to take home for food and for sale (to get money to pay his bills etc).

His income is governed by how many animals he can kill and carry home. He lives one day at a time without much thought about the future. If he finds fewer and fewer animals to hunt, he goes deeper and deeper into the forest where hopefully he will find more animals. His work is in finding the animals and killing one or two to bring home.

On the other hand, the farmer grows his own animals – be it chickens, rabbits, goats, cows, sheep, you name it. He does not go hunting. He owns the animals. He decides where the animals are located. All he needs to do is stroll over and point out which animal is for dinner, and his men will do the rest. He does not run out of animals to kill because he rears them, the adult among them give birth and the population grows in leaps and bounds. He does not run after the animals in hot pursuit, risking injuries, trips, and falls. He simply goes over or makes a call.

How does this relate to money matters? In today’s world, the hunter works for money while the farmer has money to work for him. The animal is money in this instance the gun is their educational and professional qualification and work experience. The hunter leaves home each day to go look for ‘money’ while the farmer grows his ‘money’ in his backyard and has money work for him, making more money. The hunter runs after money while money runs after the farmer, so to speak. The farmer gets richer and richer while the hunter just gets by day after day, hoping for a better tomorrow.

In the biblical story of Esau and Jacob, Esau returned home hungry after a hunting expedition empty-handed and was so hungry he flung his birthright for a mess of porridge. He lost dominion. Somewhere down the line, he bounced back when he stopped hunting and started farming, and became very wealthy. Jacob was returning home and heard Esau was coming. At the end of the day, Jacob prostrated flat on the ground for Esau and offered him herds of cattle, and Esau told him he has more than enough. If he was still hunting, herds of cattle would have looked like a lottery win.

In today’s world, most people who behave like hunters are employees and small business owners. They work hard for money and hardly have money to work for them. When money comes to them, they consume it and pay their bills with nothing left to grow or work for them. They take it one month at a time, one payday to the next payday, praying for a bigger ‘kill’.

Most people who fall into the category of farmers are business owners and investors. They own the asset but do not work for it. They put money to work, and allow their money to grow to generate even higher returns. They have multiple streams of income. They pay for their vacations for example from one of their income streams which again, they do not work for. Their money does the work while they pursue their interest, which again brings more income.

Are you a hunter or a farmer? It does not mean that every employee or small business owner is a farmer. There are many smart employees who save and invest and have other income streams that cumulatively may be more than their salary. Most people are a mixture of both – part hunter and part farmer – they work for money, and still have money working for them.

There is nothing wrong with being a hunter or a farmer or both. You can be whatever you want to be – you just need to be sure that the road you are on is taking you where you want to go. If you want to become rich, then you do not want to be a hunter. You want to have money work for you, which means you have to save first before spending. If you spend first before saving, then you have a hunter mentality – consumption mentality. You cannot consume your way to wealth. It does not work that way. The farmer has to wait for the herd to grow and mature before he starts to ‘point and kill’. If he is impatient, he will soon wipe out his herd.

If you are not moving ahead financially, you need to take a second look at your mindset and mentality with regard to money – consumption (lack/hunter) or investing (abundance/farmer). What you need is a change in mindset, to stop hunting like Esau and start farming. If you are already farming, you need to wait for the season of harvest before you take profits.

Photo credits: dangiercke.com