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Wouldn't it be nice if someone could guarantee you that you would live to be 100 and stay in as good of health as you are in now? Unfortunately, no one will be ever be able to give you that guarantee. Obviously, none of us have even a minute more of life promised to us. However,
longer time period we plan to hold on to our money, higher chance that something will happen to us before it can do us any good.
By way, money's lack of intrinsic value is main reason you should never put it ahead of your health. However, there are many people who do exactly that. Some will work themselves to death or ruin their health just to make a few extra dollars. They apparently don't realize that money and possessions become meaningless when and if you lose your health (or your life). I speak from experience on this issue. Nine years ago, I was diagnosed with stage three cancer. I was sure I wasn't going to make it, even after I was told by doctors that chemotherapy was destroying cancer. It's amazing how all of my material possessions that I had thought so much of suddenly became so meaningless to me when I had lost my health and thought I was going to die. True, money can be used to buy best health care possible. However, even best health care money can buy can't always restore you to good health or even save your life.
Of course, a lot of people save money over course of their lives, not to spend it for themselves, but to leave it their children and grandchildren. That's great, although I've always believed that buying large insurance policies is a much more cost effective way for people to enrich their heirs. Regardless of whether you leave your heirs money in bank, property, possessions, large insurance payouts, or all of above, whatever they receive will be just as intrinsically challenged as it was for you.
The bottom line is that, while we all must earn as much money as we reasonably can and save responsibly for retirement and other events in our lives, we must also keep it in perspective and keep our priorities straight. Perhaps use of more of our financial resources to help others who are less fortunate is one way to keep our focus in right direction. At any rate, we should never overemphasize money's importance or put it above things that actually do have intrinsic value - things like our families, our physical and mental health, and our spiritual well-being.
Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, and trivia buff from Hopewell, VA. He also serves as a political columnist for American Daily and operates his own website - http://www.commenterry.com - on which he posts commentaries on various subjects such as politics, technology, religion, health and well-being, personal finance, and sports. His commentaries offer a unique point of view that is not often found in mainstream media.
