A while ago, I was a meeting with my Financial Advisor. Frankly, it wasn’t a meeting I was looking forward to. Enough said, he was an affable chap but my finances had become a problem pile under the table. Packed away and relegated to that space every time the topic came up.
The Financial Adisor was a solid man. His affability did not come in the way of his plain speaking.
He is a well meaning chap and he is also in business. He told me that I have to factor for inflation, key life events and my aspirations. And to maintain a decent lifestyle, I would have to put together a tidy sum.
It ensured sleepless nights. The tidy sum was one part. The bigger part was looking into the future and picturing how it would all be.
The whole conversation got me thinking about enough.
Amongst all things I became present to, I could clearly see how my goalposts shifted over the years. With every passing year, ‘enough’ has hardly stayed stable. I jotted some random thoughts that morning. I pull them out now and then. Last week I was reading them after hearing Morgan Houssel speak.
Eleven reminders
Here are eleven specific points from those notes. Syncopated. Keeping dive in mind! It’s only February. 🙂
1. Innocuous temptations are the first steps to the grand palace of avarice. It is important to begin staying mindful to where it all begins.
2. To add is easy. To remove from the list is tough. Buying is energising. To prune, is necessary action.
3. To add emotion to a material possession is dangerous to mental health.
4. Cultivating simple habits, routines leading up to an affordable life is as important (if not more) as building a corpus.
5. Meaning and purpose that comes from service and purpose provides immense energy and push.
7. Buying for need trumps buying because it is possible to buy! Or that it will be delivered in fifteen minutes. Or ten.
8. Taking good care of material possesions is important is key. Just thinking of what it took for an object to get shaped into something of value, can be a mind boggling discovery!
9. Engaging relationships, people and community bring great joy now and over time.
10. What is enough needs an early and firm decision. Something that will not move.
11. The single most important possession is the body and mind. To keep the first one safe and the other, sane is comes before all of the above.
Rich stuff
I remember infinitely rich conversations with people who did not let their material wealth intrude their ways of life and relationships.
They were curious about the human mind and its many dimensions. The horizons they sought to discover were often at the edge of their own comfort zones. Their offices were spartan and neat.
That is my aspiration.
On a subsequent meet with my financial planner, I told him about my aspirations. It was his tun to look at me with bewilderment.
Enough has not been said about enough. Or has it been? Whichever way you think of it, enough is always enough. At least that’s what happened I learnt from my financial planner.
He never saw me again.
