Wisdom on Wealth

In my line of work, I talk to a lot of dying people.

I guess we’re all dying. Some of us are just more aware of it.

I talk to women whose doctors found a lump, and they now know every square inch of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. I talk to men who had heart attacks way too early in life. I see the look in a couple’s eyes when they know one of them soon won’t be there.

I talk to lots of widows. A few widowers, but lots more widows. Those statistics are true. Most of the widows are older – beyond retirement age. Some are 50-ish. A few are young. Very young.

None of it seems fair. It makes you sad, angry, confused.

But it’s life, isn’t it?

When I’m having conversations with people about financial matters, they usually want to talk about “life” matters – getting out of debt, investing, saving for retirement, turning assets into income for retirement. All important stuff.

What happens when your brilliant idea is met with a tepid response?

For some of us, anything less than enthusiastic applause for our fledgling dreams is reason to pack up our ambitions and go home. A thought that took weeks of courage-building to share with another crumbles beneath what feels like a withering barrage of criticism…even if it was simply a yawn.

Let’s face facts – most of us were born insecure about our own abilities and the world has done precious little to divest us of that self-perception.  

Maybe your dream is an idea of how to do things differently at work. Or putting yourself up for a new position. Or getting 100% out of debt once and for all. Or committing 100% to getting back to your high school weight. Or changing careers. Or running a marathon. Or making a commitment to do whatever it takes to restore your marriage. Or quitting your job and starting a new company based on your unique vision. 

You have a dream…a vision of how life could be so much better if you simply made that vision come true.

And no one else cares

Whether your primary role is that of parent, president, partner or patron, you will benefit if you know how to lead…effectively.

Just the word “leadership” conjures up mental images that, for many, are more caricatures of famous leaders than characteristics of effective leaders.

What comes to mind when you read the word “leader?” A corporate CEO? A head coach? A powerful politician? An influential religious figure? An intellectual? A philosopher?

Those are all expressions of leadership for sure.

But what about a mother of two children? How about an experienced tradesman looked up to by the younger guys? A career educator? A soft-spoken librarian who diligently sees to it that all his patrons are served with excellence?

Last week we took a depressive look at the end-game of runaway financial co-dependence between parents and adult children.

I promised we would follow up with some strategies you can use at every stage of life to prepare parent and child alike for the financial separation that should come with adulthood.

As a parent, you should have a lifetime goal of helping your children learn the twin concepts of freedom of choice and freedom from consequences.

As parents, we spend much of our time in a child’s early years simply protecting them from consequences they have no capacity to comprehend. We do not let them play in the street, ride in the car standing up, talk to strangers, touch the hot stove or stay up as late as they want to.

“Mom, I promise this will be the last time. I’ve just had some unexpected things come up and I don’t have money for the mortgage payment. You don’t want me to lose my house do you?”

Laura could feel the all too familiar waves of nausea, anger and anxiety crashing against her heart. She would try to resist, but she knew it was no good. He would wear her down. He always did. And he knew just how to do it.

Her son is 47 and Laura finds herself trapped in a codependent financial relationship that seems destined to sink her financial ship. Whatever she does from this point is going to be painful.

It didn’t need to be this way. But she and her late husband Rob kept telling each other they would deal with it soon. Maybe next year. After the crisis of the moment is over.

He was an only child. They’d wanted to have more, but nature had other plans. So, they doted on their son, lavishing all the love they had for an entire family on their entire family…of one son. He was the center of their universe.

And it didn’t take long before he realized it.