What's Your Number?

January 29, 2007

Tonight I would like to take a moment and recognize one of the best books I have read recently regarding the issues facing boomers in retirement. Lee Eisenberg's The Number focuses on our choices and dreams, not our investments and returns. Too often in planning, we focus on hard numbers produced in a vacuum without any understanding of what money means to us, or what we intend to do with it.

I have a link to the number to your right on my site, and I encourage you to look at his blog, buy the book, and most of all examine the issues brought up by the book. It is well worth taking the time early in your life to make decisions that could lead to a healthy and happy retirement. Sure, everyone wants a million dollars, but why do you want a million dollars, and how will it change your life? Will you still be the same person? What kind of person will you be? These are the issues and questions brought up by the author. This book is about money, but ultimately it's about the life you want, the life you don't, and the costs of each. The hardest hitting questions come at the end, and I will leave them for you to answer personally. I will however share with you my personal favorite.

You just found out that you have an incurable disease and have 24 hours to live. What did you not become?

The questions raised in this book are uncomfortable to ask ourselves, but if they are asked will lead to the most honest answers, because we cannot lie to ourselves. In the book, Lee talks about his fellow colleagues and how their number frequently changed throughout their careers. As they hit 100K, their number became 1 million. As they hit 1 million, it became 10 million. The point of the whole exercise is more self awareness rather than a specific financial goal.

So What's Your Number?