I often wonder whether the reason many people find it hard to acquire and accumulate wealth is that they have been brought up to believe the pursuit of money is somehow sinful. Even the Bible says: "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." Although this is often mis-quoted as: "money is the root of all evil."

There is an archetypal image of a rich man lazing on his yacht sipping champagne all day funded by an army of overworked underpaid employees while polluting the planet into the bargain. The phenomenal wealth of the few can appear unjust against the poverty to be found in the developing world, or even here at home.

But there is another side to the coin. Money (or even the love of it) is not inherently evil. Money equates to potential and choice; ie it has the potential to be used for good or not-so-good purposes.

As an example, imagine you were to suddenly acquire a large sum of money. What would that mean to you? You'd have the choice of whether to quit your job. Too many spend too much of their lives working jobs that at best are unstimulating and at worst triggers for all manner of stress-related diseases. If you did keep your job you'd do so through discretion - because you enjoyed it or found it satisfying, not because you had to fulfill a responsibility to put food on the table.

Money gives you discretion over time. You'd get to spend more quality time with family, and doing the things that are important to you. You might try some hedonism at first, but would soon find it deeply unsatisfying. You'd want to use your time to help make the world a better place and would probably find more constructive activities that you carried out at your former job.

Money gives you much more potential to help others than you'd have without it. Philanthropy is not only common among the mega-successful such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Bill Clinton etc, but also with the more moderately well off.

Even investing for profit benefits others, by providing capital for business and employment to workers.

With the above in mind we might be better off adopting Gordon Gekko's mantra of "Greed is Good" from the 80's movie "Wall Street". So long as we use the fruits of our greed constructively.