Podcast Episode 273: Popular Fables and Financial Planning

Fables have been a part of our culture for centuries and have always served a valuable purpose for children. Unless you have your own young kids or grandkids, you might not have thought too much about fables in years, but today we’re going to dust off a couple to help us with our money.

The first fable we discuss on this episode is the Miser and His Gold, which tells the story of a miser who hid his gold and would dig it up once each week to gloat over it until it was stolen. The hole that remained could do as much good as all that gold was doing for him by staying buried.

The obvious takeaway here is that it’s okay to spend the money that you’ve worked so hard to save. In fact, we often have to push good savers to change their mindset in retirement. Planning and budgeting will always be important, but the ultimate goal isn’t to die with as much money as possible.

The next fable we think through is the Dog and His Shadow. This one is a little more well-known but it tells the story of a dog carrying a piece of meat in its mouth when it saw its reflection in the water. Wanting the other piece of meat as well, the dog snapped at the reflection, dropping the meat and losing it altogether.

The takeaway from this fable is to not get caught up with comparing yourself to other people when it comes to financial planning. Be happy with where you are and with what you’re doing. Knowing what you need is much more important than anything someone else is doing. You might already have enough money for retirement so why would you want to risk losing any of that because you took risk that you didn’t need to take?

There’s an advisor in our office that likes to ask, “Why would you keep playing a game that you’ve already won?” It’s a great question and one that you might not even realize applies to you unless you’ve done the proper planning.

If you want to have a conversation and find out where you stand, we always encourage people to take advantage of our Money Map review and get the process started.

1:45 – The Miser and His Gold

6:50 – The Dog and His Shadow

9:58 – Why play a game that you’ve already won?