The Will To Meaning & Enough Personal Financial Life Planning: Why We Seek More Beyond Enough (Financial)

The Will To Meaning & Enough Personal Financial Life Planning:

Why We Seek More  Beyond Enough (Financial)

Shaddai: God, God Almighty, God All Sufficient, Enough

          What is the impetus behind the hamster wheel pursuit of More beyond Enough (financially)?

There are haves, have nots, and have little want some more

(which is never Enough)

          As a retired fee only planner and author in personal financial life planning, I’ve heard many of the following ‘presentational’ rationalizations & justifications for seeking More, More, More beyond already having enough or being on track to enough (and taking additional risk):

·         Just in case ‘I need more to have Enough’

·         You never know (the fear of deprivation)

·         Enough? – just a little more (and more, and more, and more)

·         To redirect to other purposes: political, charitable, etc

·         If you are not growing you slowing

·         Invention of potential low low low risks with high seriousness (that  more wouldn’t save in any case)

·         Habituated behavior - It’s what I do and know

·         Relative comparative status

One could theorize More (and more-onic behavior) is:

• Acculturated (more is better, more solves the fear of deprivation) and thus more becomes habituated – consciously or unconsciously and or
• A function of external comparison (‘status’) pecking order for one’s validation ‘I did better than The Dow Jones therefore I am’ or ‘to beat the Dow Jones or not to beat the Dow- that is the question – tis nobler to endure the slings of outrageous market swings…”

But what is really the drive behind this ‘more – moreon – imperative’ that  it avoids while seeking means beyond financially enough (even putting enough at risk fiscally)?

Having to deal with the will to meaning (Frankel) – ‘why am I?’ and derivatively finding meaning IN one’s life to matter

Man insists not only being satisfied (enough in Latin- jds) but also on being able to satisfy; on being a need, not only having needs.

Abraham, Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, p 193

A Story 1972

          Contemplating going to be fee only personal financial planner, I interviewed many in the financial services business. I would bring up the subject of linking personal financial resources to life goals.

          In one interview with a then manager of Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance, I was stopped short before I could expound on the question with the gentleman responding:

          “You are making more of life goals and financial resources than really is the reality. The reality? We are born, we grow up, go to school, get married, retired and then we die.’

          PS Connecticut Mutual was subsequently merged out (really saved from going under)

Everything, by its nature, desires to complete itself

Learning from the Tanya, Volume 2 p122, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

Stipulation: Original Incompletion - the following is this writer’s foundation assumption of concept which it is man’s task is continuing to complete the incompletions of his soul INside out (spiritualizing the material, materializing the spiritual) which is in contrast to the Originals (1):

Where ideally does personal financial life planning and Enough (both financial as Shaddai) interconnect? At the ‘crossroads’ of Meaning be it @ 777 Meaning Parkway, 40 Meaning Causeway, or 18 Meaning Becauseway??

Meaning (satisfying (2)) to manifest one’s will to meaning.

In particular, this meaning is: Meaning IN one’s life to matter INside out – harmonizing & aligning meaning and the means for enough & one’s will to meaning.

Enough doesn’t guarantee meaning but rather the means if required for the pursuit of meaning INside & INsight out.

The personal financial planning business/industry (notice  profession is absent in this labeling) has failed – double crossed against ‘the light’  at the boulevard. It neglected (other than a wink if that) linking, harmonizing, let alone meaning, enough, and personal financial life planning – preferring ‘more, more, more – the ideology,’ per Edward Abbey ‘of a cancer cell.’

Who is rich? One who is satisfied with his lot.

Who is strong? One who overpowers his inclinations (3)

Ethics of the Fathers 4:1

          Finally Yaakov (Jacob) and Esau met. Both were in biblical terms wealthy. Having avoided Esau all the years for fear of Esau’s retribution for Yaakov’s finagling – conning Esau out of the birthright and blessing, Yaakov prayed, prepared for war, and now sought to appease with gifts to Esau of great great value. Initially, Esau demurred but finally accepted. When Esau inquired why the large bequests to him by Yaakov, Yaakov answered to paraphrase, ‘I have plenty – I have ENOUGH.’

          Yaakov’s ENOUGH?

          Shaddai

1.- The Originals:

• Original Defectiveness (Orthodox & Conservative Judaism) – man is deficient, lacking, flawed
• Original Dreck (Reform, Reconstructionist Judaism etc)– man is a piece of crap (inadequate) around which the world revolves
• Original Sin – I am wrong, ‘missing the mark,’ transgressing, even bad or malevolent’
• Original Innocence (Progressives – snowflakes, crybullies) - man is good – it’s the system that is bad, fix the system and all will be right in the world (OUTside In

2. – satisfied, satisfying, satisfactory  derives from the Latin for ‘enough.’ Notice how culturally we disdain ‘statis as in satisfactory’ by a ‘C’ on a report card isn’t excellent, isn’t good, it’s just average. Thus enough is imbued with merely be average which doesn’t even quality for Lake Wobegon “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.".

3. – including his or her ‘more-on’ inclination