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Don’t Worry About The Stock Market, Invest In Family
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“Don’t worry about the stock market. Invest in family.”
Last week, I joined my wife and one of her co-workers for lunch at a great Chinese restaurant beside our home. After our meal, we opened our fortune cookies and the above line was written on my wife’s fortune cookie fortune!
It was a pleasant reminder that, despite all the economic troubles and financial chaos, when you really get down to it, life is about the relationships you have with your friends and your family. The stock market fell 40-50% last year, companies are going bankrupt, and people are losing their jobs… but at the end of the day all the money in the world can’t buy you the love of your friends and family.
Money is important, of course, but I like to think of it as air. You need air to support you but you only need so much. You could hoard all the air you want but it won’t do you any good. Money is similar. After you acquire enough, having more is less about the money and more about fulfilling some other need, like pride or vanity or competition. The truly important things in life are supported by but cannot be defined by money.
So the next time you get your 401(k) summary, remember that it’s just money.
Don’t worry about the stock market, invest in family.
(Photo: tim_ellis)
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Excellent article, i think more people are starting to enjoy more time around their family now.
Job layoffs – people at home
Food prices – people cooking at home
Gas prices – more people driving together.
Its sad to see that a tragedy brings people together, but what can you do
I like the title of the article. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about money. I love making money, but I’d much rather be a poor person who has great friends and family than a lonely scrooge.
Great post!
I had chinese the other night. My fortune was “you will soon receive a promotion.” This just after my company announces layoffs and a freeze in reviews. Is still being employed considered a promotion?
Investing in family is a great idea, unless we’re talking about Uncle Bob who has yet another new great idea for a ‘startup’ business in Vegas…
Kidding aside, it’s solid advice. Great family relationships are invaluable!
Awesome post – with my new baby girl home from the hospital, it rings even truer for me now…
Family can be expensive too but you want to be able to give them what they need, too.
One way I discovered was giving my daughter a prepaid cellphone. It’s teaching her the value of managing her own expenses. In this case it’s not money but minutes. But the phone always tells her what she has and she’s become pretty frugal with her time!
Great post. Family should be the number one priority in people’s lives and not money. Society has trained us to think that money is the only thing that matters and the only way to be happy is have a lot of it.
I resigned yesterday from the brokerage firm that I endured over 19 years with. I took my 4 year old son and my 2 year old daughter with me to a local Chinese restaurant. My son said ‘Daddy, will you read my fortune?’. I received the same fortune you did. It brought me to tears, which is not easy to do. Thank you for sharing!