On Silver and (Self-)Respect

"No lower can a man descend than to interpret his dreams into gold and silver."
Kahlil Gibran

Have you ever heard of a Financial Planner firing a client before he’s even hired? Neither had I until I experienced that a few days ago. My husband and I recently took a class on planning for retirement. Honestly, I should say I took the class and he took less than half of it because he was too busy. At the end of the class we signed up for individual “lab work” with our teacher, a very knowledgeable and agreeable man who seemed to be very grounded, and, although he never mentioned any religious convictions, very spiritual. It was a very detailed and fast-paced class in which my biggest insight was how little I knew about retirement planning in general and our own financial situation in particular.

In order to prepare for the lab, I spent one long evening digging around for our personal information, four hours reviewing it with my husband, and many more hours gathering more documents, sorting them out, and filling out all kinds of financial questionnaires. I even went on the Internet and used various financial planning tools available to get an idea what kind of recommendations are in vogue these days so I could compare it with whatever my personal guru had to say. I stuffed my attaché case and headed to the meeting, knowing that my husband, again, would be late.

I walked into a cheerful, bright, and solid looking office and soon Mr. P ushered me to his office. I explained to him we should not wait for my husband and we immediately got down to business, the business of sharing what my own and my husband’s relationship with money is or my interpretation of it. I brought up the parable of the Rich Young Man and my instincts about Mr. P were proven right when he asked me what I thought of the parable of the Talents. He asked several questions about my husband’s retirement plans (none), when I would like to see him retired (fully retired, never), etc. Smoothly, we moved unto more mundane issues and spent the better part of an hour sorting out all the information I had gathered and explaining the differences of opinion regarding investment strategies that my husband and I had had during our long marriage. Sixty-five minutes into our meeting he still had not shown up.

Mr. P looked into my eyes with a surprisingly perplexed kindness, “I really don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “You have done a lot of work and there is a lot more work that needs to be done, but the fact that your husband hasn’t shown up yet worries me a lot.”It shows no respect for me…” before he could finish his sentence I exclaimed, as the insight hit me, “And no respect for me either!”

As if on cue, the missing person materialized out of nowhere, apparently convinced he was “only” forty minutes late. We resumed the conversation where Mr. P and I had left off after he asked my husband several philosophical questions which my husband answered in his usual evasive and fatalistic way, “My profession does not allow me to….” “Well, as I was telling your wife before you got here,” replied Mr. P, “your life seems to be quite a mess right now and it looks like you haven’t set your priorities straight yet. The fact that you came in so late, that you are so unhappy, have neglected your physical health, and feel so overwhelmed in general, tells me, and I don’t take this in any way personally, that you don’t respect me very much, you don’t respect your wife, and you don’t respect yourself either. You go get your life together, take a year or two, and then when you have everything sorted out, come back to me and I’ll be glad to work with you! Otherwise, even if we fixed your financial affairs, you would still be unhappy.”

You’d think a bomb had exploded in front of us! We were stunned. I wanted to cry for a million different reasons that would take forever to untangle. My husband looked shocked and hurt and incredulous: he could NOT have heard that! In his world, Financial Planners never ignored a dollar dangled in their faces… how insensitive could this guy be? He can’t possibly be talking about ME…. It took us a few minutes of mutual questions and answers before we had the strength to stand up and say goodbye. I hugged Mr. P, “Thank you.”

My husband carried my heavy briefcase to the parking lot. “No one in the world knows what my life is like… At one point I looked at you and you looked… vindicated!” he said angrily. I looked into his eyes with my tearful ones and responded, “I don’t want to be right. I want to be happy!”