What if You Only Had 24 Hours to Live?

I have let my massive six figures of debt keep me up at night more than once. Many times more than just keeping me up, but actual panic attacks over worry and thinking, "How am I going to pay off all this debt." Well, I have done it once before and I am diligently working on doing it again. But does worrying about debt and credit scores really matter in the end?

This past Sunday I was reading an article by Lee Eisenberg entitled "Your Money or Your Life?" and it sited a series of questions that financial planner George Kinder asks his clients. He has all of his new clients answer three hypothetical scenarios.
1. Imagine you have more money than you ever dreamed of. What would you buy? Where would you travel? At this point, Kinder says, most people go crazy: Golf memberships! A condo in Vail! A 45-foot cabin cruiser!
2. Now imagine that your doctor diagnoses a rare disease; you will die within 10 years. Suddenly, we're thinking harder about what's really important. Plenty of material goodies will wind up on the list, but it's clear that with tighter time horizon, we're far more discerning about what really counts.
3. Now the doctor says that you have only 24 hours to live. The question isn't, "What would you like to do or buy between now and tomorrow?" It's this: "What did you not get to do in life, who did you not get to be?"

All of us would answer these questions differently and I am pretty sure having less debt or how high your credit score would not be a concern. So how would you answer these questions? Would you have exercised your creativity more? Given more back to the community, church, the planet. Fix a broken relationship? I think the majority of the answers would not even require money or taking on debt.  For myself I think I need to worry less about debt and need to get back to focusing on self worth rather than net worth for a while. After all the best things in life are free.

[This post is written and copyrighted by Financial Elite (http://financialelite.blogspot.com/ ).]

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