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Now IT IS TIME to answer the question, What is true wealth, true financial freedom? This question is the real bottom line of life and each one of us must address it, regardless of the bottom line that shows up each month on our bank statements. Why? Because the quality of our lives does not depend only on how we accumulate, save, and spend our money. True financial freedom lies in defining ourselves by who and what we are, not by what we do or do not have. You are the person you are right now. We cannot measure our self-worth by our net worth.
I have a friend named Ruth whom I love dearly. Now ninety years old, she’s the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever met. She received her Ph.D. in ancient Greek literature from Yale at a time when that was still a rare achievement for a woman, and has spent her life learning, teaching, reading, and living.
She was married for most of her life to Leon, whom she loved deeply. After he died some years ago, she came to me for financial advice. For all her education, she had always left their finances to Leon, and she knew that now she would have to take control herself. After we added all the numbers, she understood that she had far more money than she had imagined she would. She seemed relieved at the news but strangely untouched by it; her money, I would come to learn, has very little to do with who Ruth is.
As our friendship grew, she and I would discuss her finances—and everything else under the sun—every single Wednesday over lunch. There is not a thing that, to this day, I can’t talk to Ruth about. She is so wise, so profoundly contented with who she is, that simply being in her presence restores me in a way that’s hard to describe in words. I feel that she lives in a state of grace, and that whoever is in her presence is touched by it, too.
In recent years, Ruth grew weaker and she finally decided to give up her house. She chose to move into a life-care community, where you deposit a large sum of money, pay a monthly maintenance, and receive whatever nursing or medical care you need. We had invested well over the years, and Ruth had more than enough money to stay in her own house with live-in nursing care, which was what I had thought she would want to do—but her inner voice told her she wanted the home. We packed her books and journals, some souvenirs from her travels, her photographs, her tapes of Leon’s lectures, all the things that matter to her, and she moved in.
Ruth to this very day still exudes that state of contentment, of grace, which makes her seem stronger, as if her body weren’t beginning to fail her. Her nieces visit her, as do the friends she has still and some of her former students; she and I still have lunch on Wednesdays. Not long ago, I asked her how it felt to be growing more frail. “Suze,” she said, “my future is so tiny and my past and present are so rich. It surprises me to say this, but I’m not afraid. I’m truly happy and content just as I am.” I believed her absolutely.
Ruth’s freedom is in the life she has led and the love she knows now. Within herself she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is rich, not just in money, but in the realm of true wealth, where nothing she has can be taken away from her. Though she’s in weakening health, at ninety, every day she feels rich and free, even strong—and the irony is that her real wealth has nothing to do with her money.
If you today could foresee your last days, if you were on your deathbed right now—and one day you will be, believe me—do you think you would be there wishing you had more money? Or wishing that you were vastly rich in the way my friend Ruth is?