JULY 30, WEDNESDAY

FINANCIAL ADVISOR

Today I went to my financial advisor to discuss what I should do with the money sitting in my bank savings account from selling my house. I had two issues. One was whether Mercer, the company through which the money will be invested was investing my money in ways better suited to paying them commissions than making money for me. I was assured this wasn’t so. But the other critical question was when and how to invest at a time when Trump’s increasing the deficit might suddenly make the US’s increasing debt unsustainable and cause the dollar to lose value and lead to a crash of some kind. Or maybe his tariffs would cause massive inflation or maybe the economy would fall into a recession. Of course my financial advisor had no idea what the future will bring and neither does anyone else with certainty. So she if going to cautiously invest one sixth of the money every month for six months so that if some huge financial event happens during that time I won’t have risked everything. But who knows.

But one other thing that is uncertain caught my attention with more intensity. She said that I had enough money in my account to last until I die. Her calculations were based on my dying at 95. I turn 88 in a few days. What she was saying was that I have enough money because my time is almost up. I had better spend my money quick before I drop dead. Seven years max and I am gone, but probably less. Not only that but any day now my knees can give out or my brain and all I’ll be able to do is to sit in a rocking chair and look out the window with nothing to spend money on. So I had better spend it right away while I can. But I’ve almost worn myself out trying to pare down the number of things that I own in order to move. So I can’t spend money on more things, I’m over that.

She was trying to reassure me that everything will be all right. But it isn’t money that I need to be reassured about, it those seven years or less until something gives out, which her reassurance doesn’t much to help with. Better to drop the discussion and just to let go and float along without thinking about anything, to follow the Buddha and to see if I can quickly attain enlightenment, total non attachment, so that nothing that happens will matter.