Carl Richards is a Certified Financial Planner™ and creator of the Sketch Guy column, appearing weekly in The New York Times since 2010. The following article is reproduced with permission from his weekly newsletter and his website can be found here.
Greetings, Carl here.
Risk is what’s left over after you think you’ve thought of everything.
We are really good at managing risk by looking backward and preparing ourselves to handle a situation we’ve already seen… only better this time.
But we’re not very good at preparing for something we can’t even imagine.
That’s a real bummer because “something we can’t even imagine” is precisely what we need to be prepared for.
It’s not the car you see coming that will kill you… it’s the one you don’t.
Bummer, right?
Let me be clear: The point of this is not to cover yourself in bubble wrap and lock yourself in the house. Nor is the point to create specific event-based insurance for all possible worst-case scenarios.
The point is simply to foster general resilience.
You know—like an emergency fund.
Because, guess what… emergencies will happen. And when they do, general resilience provides a margin of safety.
That’s what will protect you from the thing you never saw coming… not trying to predict the future. And certainly not bubble wrap.
…
Talking about money is hard.
All over the world, people are taught never to talk about money, politics, sex, or religion in polite company.
On 50 Fires: A Podcast About Money and Meaning from Executive Producers Chip and Joanna Gaines, I will remove money from that list by having frank, funny, and often difficult conversations about money—the kind we were all told not to have!—with guests from all walks of life.
In each episode, I invite a new guest to answer the question: “What does money mean to you?”
Their answers will reveal much more than their attitudes about money, spanning revelations about identity, community, faith, family, and the true meaning of wealth.
If you like my Weekly Letter, I think you will love this podcast. Listen to the first episode here.
-Carl
P.S. As always, if you want to use this sketch, you can buy it here.
