It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now: HOW TO CREATE YOUR SECOND LIFE AT ANY AGE by Barbara Sher

Author:Barbara Sher [Sher, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307764041
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

See the difference?

In personal matters, winning is the lonely choice. Treating life as a sport is unaffectionate and dehumanizing, and it creates a poverty of experience. When survival is at stake, of course no one has a choice. You work as hard as you have to and pay whatever price you must. But winning to prove a point, no matter how honorable the motives, may have too high a cost in quality of life.

But successful people have a lot of money. Don’t pretend that’s not a wonderful thing.

I’m afraid I’m going to do exactly that, folks. After reading some articles about the misery that descended on most lottery winners, my suspicions were confirmed. Almost all of them became divorced or alienated from angry friends and family. One of them wound up in jail for robbery, because he had overspent his prize and needed money! Too much money can actually make you more miserable than not having enough.

Having been a very broke, worried, and overworked single parent, I put great store in having “enough” money. Enough to me means not having to work myself to death to make ends meet, not waking up at dawn clutched by fear that I can’t afford a doctor for my kids or a carburetor for my car. But I put no store in having to work myself to death for too much money or waking in fear that I’ll lose my sailboat or have to pawn my diamonds. When I ask people who ache to make the big hit, to be very rich, why they want that, here’s what they say—and what I answer.

1. Money gives you safety.

You don’t need great wealth for that. If you have enough money to meet your bills and take care of illness or other normal problems, you have as much of a sense of safety as a human can have. Any high-paying job can disappear. Big investments can founder. And those with fortunes so great they’re in no danger of losing them need bodyguards.

The amount of money you need—above bare necessities—depends on your viewpoint. I know someone who scratched by on almost nothing but managed to travel the world year after year. I know people who feel rich on twenty-five thousand dollars a year, and a surprising number who earn twenty times that much but live in terror of poverty.

2. You could do such interesting things if you were rich.

Like what? Travel to exotic places? Go to Outer Mongolia? But that’s impossible without a lot of money.

Don’t be so sure. Lots of ordinary people manage to save their pennies and travel all over the world. Sometimes having less money results in a fuller experience.

“You can stay at a five-star hotel in Italy if you want to, but you won’t meet any real Italians. And chandeliers and linen napkins get boring after a while,” a friend told me recently. “Every time I visit a foreign country and stay in smaller places, or at the homes of friends, I come away with a much more powerful sense of where I’ve been.

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