Confessions of a Poor Money Manager

Wake Up  Call

    

     We were sound asleep and the ringing of my cell phone was unnerving.  Nobody wants to get a call in the middle of the night.  Rarely, is it a good call.  This time was no exception.

 

     Art’s youngest son, Ross, was on the other end.  “Mr. Clayton, I’m calling to let you know my dad has just passed away.”  It took more than several seconds for the gravity of what had happened to register.  Art Nelson was my best friend and he was only 53 years old.  His two sons, Matt and Ross, had grown up with our boys and our families frequently did things together.  One thing that immediately popped into my mind was our sometimes Christmas tradition of taking our families to the evening Christmas Vespers, service and then going to a local steak house for supper.

 

     The last thing on Art’s mind was dying.  It was not on his radar, at all.  After all, he was not all that old and he still had a long list of things he wanted to accomplish in life.  His wife, Marilyn, and his two sons were everything to him and nobody had more friends than Art.  More than one of us considered Art our ‘best’ friend.  He was an accomplished golfer, a hunter, a builder, a minister, a great friend and believe me when I say, he loved having fun with his family and friends.

 

The Uncertainty of Time

 

     Art’s death was a wake-up call for me in a number of ways.  Life really is brief, at best, and always uncertain.  In fact, it reminds me of that game we all played when we were children, ‘musical chairs.’  Whenever the music stops everybody scrambles for a chair.  The problem is, there is always one less chair than people.  Somebody winds up without a chair to sit in.  The game goes on until there’s only one person left and that person is named the winner.  In real life, however, even the last person standing faces a certain demise.  Nobody has a chair to sit in forever, this side of heaven.

 

     “For all men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; The grass withers and the flowers fall…” 1 Peter 1:24,NIV

 

     “You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.  You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”  James 4:14, NAS

 

 The Passage of Time

    

     Where finances are concerned, most of us act like there is an unending supply of time.  We want to treat it like a commodity we can purchase at the grocery store.  Jim Croce’s song, ‘Time in a Bottle’, expresses this sentiment as well as I’ve seen.  The fact that it was released after his untimely death makes the lyrics even more poignant:

 

If I could save time in a bottle

The first thing that I’d like to do

Is to save every day

Till Eternity passes away

Just to spend them with you

 

 

If I could make days last forever

If words could make wishes come true

I’d save every day like a treasure and then,

Again, I would spend them with you

 

But there never seems to be enough time

To do the things you want to do

Once you find them

I’ve looked around enough to know

That you’re the one I want to go

Through time with…

 

 

    While these lyrics refer to the love between Jim Croce and his wife, the real sentiment is even more basic, our desire to extend time, to stop the passage of time, or, to capture and use time as currency to be applied somewhere else.

 

     In reality, life is brief.  And, not one single person really knows how much time they have.  This presents a problem for those who are hanging their hat on the hope they will live long enough to realize all of their dreams.  The hard cold facts are we don’t know if we will live long enough to enjoy our earthly destinations.  Jim Croce did not, neither did my friend, Art.

 

Passing The Test of time

     What am I saying?  Simply this, our pursuits in life, including our financial strategies, need to pass the test of time. It’s the not knowing how much time we actually have left that drives the point home that everything in life must pass the test of time.