What Your Retirement Planner Doesn't Tell You
Save in order to give your life away, not to retire comfortably.
By Lynn Miller | posted 3/06/2000 12:00AM
In the movie Out of Africa, the lead character, Baroness Blixen, returns to Africa from a visit to Denmark. Her Muslim servant, Farah, meets her at the train station. Upon seeing her, he asks, "Are you well, Msabu?" She replies, "I am well, Farah." She then asks him, "And you, Farah, are you well?" Farah replies, "I am well enough, Msabu."
I am well enough. What an amazing statement of contentment. And in our time, how rare a sentiment.
Periodically, business magazines run "comparative salary surveys" describing what people in various jobs are paid on average. The implied question for readers is "Are you paid well?" What a great response it would be to say: "I am paid well enough."
Wouldn't it be healthy to be able to answer the question How big is your house? with "It is big enough"? Or your TV: "The screen is large enough." Or your church's membership: "Our church is big enough!"
Contentment in life is a biblical goal. The apostle Paul said he had "learned to be content whatever the circumstances" (Philippians 4:11, NIV). And the letter to the Hebrews encouraged its readers to keep their "lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have" (Hebrews 13:5).
Contentment is indeed a biblical goal, but not everyone sees it in terms of having enough. Certainly the commercial world doesn't. The dominant message of most retail advertising is more. Now 15 percent larger! screams the streamer at the top of the cereal box. Have you ever seen a product advertised as being Good enough or Large enough?
No business sector is more affected by the drive to "get more" than the financial-planning industry. Just read the advertisements for mutual funds: "Higher Returns With Us!" is the message, not "Our returns are enough." The easiest way in the world to scare financial planners out of their wits is to respond to their question—Will you have enough money for retirement?—with Farah's answer: "I will have enough." They argue that since there is no way to predict the future accurately, one can never be sure there will be enough. But the underlying problem is not that one cannot accurately predict the rate of inflation or the rate of return on your investment; the problem is that contentment has been left out of the equation.
Life Is a Gift—Give It Away
There is a difference between most financial planners' thinking about retirement and my own. I don't think of retirement at all, at least not in terms of idle comfort. The alternative to retiring comfortably is not to retire uncomfortably, but to live as an offering to God and of God. I understand my life as a gift that is managed so that I can afford to give it away at any age. I believe I should organize my life as if it were something to use up, to give away, to expend.
In the late 1980s some denominational leaders asked me to produce study materials on the biblical subject of firstfruits. My congregation gave me three months to focus on this study, which eventually became a small study book titled Firstfruits Living. And for the last eight years I have conducted hundreds of seminars and workshops across the United States and Canada.
Occasionally a financial planner will come to me after a seminar and say, "You're out of your mind, telling people that they need to calculate their retirement needs based on 'being content with enough.'" I respond by saying that we must be thinking of very different goals when we think of what enough is for. Financial planners usually admit that they are thinking of "enough" in terms of retiring comfortably, being able to do all the things one wants to do, take all the cruises you have ever dreamed of, living comfortably in a retirement community in a warm climate.
March 6 2000, Vol. 44, No. 3
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