In the corner of my parents’ living room sits a large armchair, Louis XV style. It’s my father’s chair, generally speaking no one else sits in it, unless one of the cats sneaks in. It’s quite handsome, and guests frequently remark on it.
My mother tells the story of how they acquired the chair:
We were just married, still young, and then one of the doctors at the hospital died of cancer. He was just in his 40s, also very young. We decided we shouldn’t wait forever to get nice things, and [my father] went out and bought this chair.
On the whole, my father was very good about managing the money responsibly and saving for retirement. He was and is a strong influence on my development of good financial habits. He is a little nosy, in fact, asking me all sorts of questions over the years:
- Have you paid off your student loans yet?
- Are you putting away the max into retirement?
- What are your investments worth [what’s your net worth]?
He definitely has an agenda: to have a self-sufficient, financially successful daughter. He wants me to be debt-free, and to have the freedom that comes with adequate (or bountiful) savings. He taught me about investing, and enjoys talking about it with me. When I go home to visit, we discuss this at least once each visit. I suspect we sound like fishermen, bragging about the big one we caught, with little mention of the teeny fish that had to be thrown back.
At the same time, he periodically urges me to live a little. I remember when I first got out of residency, I was unsure how much to save and how much of my new income I should spend. He encouraged me to live in a nice place and to feel OK getting a newer car. Some of the current bloggers might advise otherwise (live like a resident! live on half!), but they weren’t around then.
In the meantime, that chair sits in my parents’ house, grand and beautiful, but also a little uncomfortable. It is a prettier, more modern version of a memento mori, reminding all who know the story that yes, life does come to an end, sometimes an untimely one.