You Can't Take It With
You
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By Roger Vine
January 10, 2002
An old acquaintance of mine died just before Christmas after a very
brief illness. It goes without saying that this was a tragedy for his wife
and family. My Mum (herself 79) always says death in youth is tragic, but
less so in old age. The acquaintance was 70, so he didn't die young. The
tragedy for me was that he died rich, a multi-millionaire in fact. So why,
you ask, was that a tragedy? I'll explain.
My acquaintance had
been a Fool for 30 years. He'd had a good professional job and had done
all the things they advocate here at The Motley Fool -- lived below
his means and steadily drip-fed his spare cash into individual stocks; no
funds, no pension, no speculative growth stocks, just steady blue-chips.
By the time he was 60, my acquaintance was already a very rich man, with
an opportunity many would envy. I guess we all have different ideas of
what we'd do with time and lots of money. Buy a yacht and sail the
Caribbean; move to the mountains to hike all summer and ski all winter;
get a big RV and become a snowbird; take the family on a world cruise;
live on a golf course; finally drive that Ferrari; whatever.
So
what did my acquaintance do? You guessed it. Precisely nothing. Worked for
another five years, lived in the same big, shabby house his kids had grown
up in, drove a car worth maybe five hundred bucks. He told me he couldn't
begin to spend the dividends, let alone dent the capital. Why? It's
possible he liked it that way, wanted to leave the kids enough to make
them lazy and make a big bequest to the Tax Man, but I doubt it. I suspect
that what happened was over the years he lost sight of his investment
goals and started to focus on the numbers. The money itself became the
thing: saving it, counting it, watching it grow. Sad because we all know
you can't take it with you. One life, no rehearsals and all that. Money is
only good for what you can do with it.
So keep your investment
goals in sight and whatever it is you're dreaming of, have the courage to
know when you have enough to achieve it and don't wait. Gold casket
handles are a mighty poor reward for a life of hard work.
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