The Need for Wealth Accumulation

There are four reasons we need to accumulate wealth:

1. We must live.
2. We must live well.
3. We must let others live.
4. We must go.

All life is but a sustaining process, says Herbert Spencer. We must eat. We must live. We must eat to live.

Unfortunately or fortunately for us, sustenance has come to be directly associated with the presence or absence of wealth. The invention of money, as the most common form of wealth, has enabled us to "store food" far into the future. The more we are able to store, the more we are assured of continued sustenance.

But our ability to store food rests in our ability to "create food" in sufficient quantity. Imagine a bell sitting on its rim. Our life is somewhat like that bell.

From the moment of birth to the time of death, we undergo an evolution and regression process. Our physiology allows us to experience infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age before we finally make our exit. Our ability to create wealth coincides with that physiology: playtime, schooltime, productive time, and retirement time. Note that the period during play and schooling at the ascent is matched by the retirement period at the descent. During our play and schooling times, we depend on our parents for sustenance, then we create our own food during our productive period, but at retirement time, we fall back on what we have stored for the future, if we have any.

Do you have any?

That's why, we need to store enough, or accumulate enough, if only to make sure that we live comfortably when we are already too old to create wealth. But to store enough, we need to create sufficient output in the present time so that we can have a remainder, and at the same time, are able to enjoy life as it is.

And this is where our problem lies. Most of us do not store enough because our output is not enough for the present, or so we think or feel. And even if the output is good, we are buried too deep in our enjoyment of the present that we put forth the need to prepare for the future. What we don't realize is that no matter what level of output we have for the present, short or full, we can always set aside some amount for the future, if we want, without substantially upsetting our present level of comfort.

Are you short or full?