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TO YOUR WEALTH: Christmas, donations and the reason for your wealth | Lost Coast Outpost

TO YOUR WEALTH: Christmas, donations and the reason for your wealth | Lost Coast Outpost



Last year I went to Mexico during President’s Week with my oldest daughter. A group of us came down and had the privilege of serving in a few orphanages.

One of the men we met ran transitional housing for young men in their late teens. He grew up in rural Mexico, moving to the United States as a teenager. He didn’t make good choices as a young man, but he eventually married and had a successful career. While showing us around the buildings, he pointed out that he could have played golf throughout his retirement in Southern California, but felt called to return to his community in Mexico to serve. I’m sure he still enjoys playing golf; nothing wrong with that. But his life was not limited to accumulation and leisure.

Her story reminded me of one of the things we say at Johnson Wealth Management: Our purpose is to help people live and leave legacies. Indeed, we believe that investing should never just be about yourself.

Creating wealth is not a bad thing; that’s a good thing. But when it is an end in itself, it may have no meaning. Money – like life – can be gone in an instant. We all live and leave something. Even if you never give a cent in your life, you will when you die.

Investing, financial planning, and wealth building require a “why.” It’s too easy to worry about what to invest in and how to implement a strategy, but the why should guide everything.

So what is the reason for your wealth?

Far too often, wealth creation can be used as a way to withdraw from the world. To avoid difficult things. To insulate us from human suffering. Paradoxically, we become less human when we ignore or avoid human weakness. True wealth – holistic wealth – is meant to address needs such as human poverty, suffering, and brokenness.

Our trip also reminded me of something else. When you are surrounded by people with great needs – physical, relational and financial – and you actively seek to meet those needs through presence and service, you tend not to be as captivated by what someone said on social networks about daily news. outrage, or who could predict the next stock market crash, or whether interest rates will change at the next Fed meeting, or in the latest political soap opera.

The news wants to sell you more news, not make you a wiser person and investor. Some of the things that catch up with us in our dopamine-driven attention economy take our attention away from the things that matter most: the people and needs right in front of you.

The 17th century French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal said it best: “Man’s sensitivity to small things and his insensitivity to larger things are the marks of a strange disorder. »1 To put it plainly, we should spend the most time, energy and resources on the things that matter most.

This Christmas season reminds us that it is better to give than to receive. Joy is not only found in money but in sharing wealth.

Warren Buffett himself understands some of this. In a recent letter to shareholders, he wrote:

I am also fortunate that my philanthropic philosophy has been enthusiastically embraced – and expanded – by both of my wives. Neither I, Susie Sr. nor Astrid, who succeeded him, believed in dynastic wealth…

It has also been a particular pleasure to me that so many of Berkshire’s shareholders have independently arrived at a similar view. They saved – lived well – took good care of their family – and, thanks to the prolonged capitalization of their savings, they reinjected significant, sometimes enormous, sums into their society…

(My children) have each spent much more time directly helping others than I have. They like to be financially comfortable, but don’t care about wealth.2

Worrying about money is poison. Discover how to use the money and time you’ve been given as intentional tools for the bigger things in life.

“I’m not Warren Buffett,” you might say. Few people are. The size of the gift is not what matters.

Jesus of Nazareth emphasized this long ago when he drew attention to the giving of a poor widow which surpassed that of the rich: “This poor widow gave more than all, for they all contributed from their abundance, but out of her poverty she put all she had into living” (Luke 21:3-4, NRSV).

You can give away a ton and it doesn’t mean anything.

You can give almost nothing and that means everything.

Poverty of wallet and poverty of heart are two different things.

Don’t get me wrong. Doing great things doesn’t always mean going on trips to serve communities affected by various types of poverty (although I encourage it!). There’s also no need to write a massive check to an institution, church, hospital, or nonprofit (although I encourage that too!). Greatness can be doing seemingly small things over and over again. Sometimes these things, these needs and these people are right in front of you.

Look.

So give.

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Sources:

1. Thoughts, Penguin Classics, p. 237.

2. November 25, 2024. Consulted online.

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Brandon Stockman has been a Series 7 and 66 Certified Wealth Advisor since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. He has the privilege of helping manage accounts across the United States and works in the Fortuna office of Johnson Wealth Management. You can sign up for his weekly newsletter on investing and financial education or subscribe to his YouTube channel. Securities and advisory services offered by Prospera Financial Services, Inc. | Member FINRA, SIPC. This should not be considered tax, legal or investment advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results.