If we were to walk down a city sidewalk and ask 20 people what they thought a life of abundance and purpose would look like to them, no doubt we would receive many different answers. From society’s perspective, a great deal of the answers would revolve around wealth, money and the things that money can buy. Some answers may include the idea that abundant living would mean a person is fulfilled through meaningful relationships that create a sense of purpose in ways that benefit one another.
What is wealth? According to Webster’s Dictionary, the definition of wealth is an abundant supply, abundance of valuable material possessions, property or resources. Wealth, money, and riches are amoral in and of themselves-they are neither right or wrong morally. To have wealth is in the same vein-neither right nor wrong.
From a Christian perspective, abundance is more a life lived for others and our relationship with God, enjoying all the blessings we receive and then being a blessing to others. While financial prosperity may be part of the abundant life, in no way is it a requisite for enjoying an abundant life. After all, many throughout history have had meager financial resources yet have had lives that were filled with deep seated joy, peace, and contentment. Neither having or not having a lot of wealth by itself will bring anyone a life of purpose, a life of true abundance that brings an inner joy.
As a financial advisor having had the opportunity to help many investors over the last 30 years, I understand the desire we all have, that need to feel confident that our finances will allow us to do those things in retirement we have dreamed about doing. This of course means that our investments will hopefully create the financial opportunity for that to take place. But, unless we know through planning just how we want to live out our retirement years specifically, we can never be comfortable that our investment returns will match our needs. This is common sense. While investing our money well is very important, I cannot emphasize enough that our true joy comes from how we invest our lives. We call this Life-Investing, and we help clients have clarity in how they want to live their lives for abundant living.
Confidence in our financial future begins with knowing how to live that abundant life that brings a real sense of meaning and purpose. In turn we become better investors as we look to what is most important to us. This, of course, looks different for each of our client families.We all have different gifts and abilities that we can share with our families, friends, and new relationships as we look to helping others around us. It has been said that we are never more like God than when we are generous. When we give of ourselves, with our time and other resources to help make others’ lives better, we can truly say and feel we are living the abundant life!