I was feeling nauseous today. I heard about an 80 year old man who lost his 8 figure fortune with Madoff. He was left with enough money to live for the next 60 days and that was it. So he sold his two homes and I guess lived off that. Sad.
But what made me nauseous was that this person was bound to lose EVERY PENNY of his fortune any day - when he will die. Every day that he lives increase the odds of him not being alive the next day and losing it all. 80 year old people don't usually live that much longer. And even if they do - 10 years? 20 years? That's it. And the health goes long before so they can't really enjoy life anyway. All of the money in the world isn't much useful when one has dementia or countless other old age ailments.
So instead of trying to get a 12 percent return on every last penny of his - why wasn't he helping people who don't have what to eat or can't afford shoes and the dentist? I really think it takes a special degree of callousness to hoard such wealth when so many people lack the basics.
Or maybe he was, like the biggest Baal Tzdaka alive. Unlikely.
The Bnei Yisaschar writes that he saw with his own eyes people who were קדושים וטהורים who acted כשפלי האנשים when it came to money!!
I often think that just as people go to counseling to learn how to deal with the complex relationships with other people in their lives, they need therapy to work out the complex relationships they have with money. ואכמ"ל.
May we control our money and use it for good things and not allow it to control us and lead us on the road to Gehenom, חס ושלום.
Remember the two biggest תאוות and נסיונות of our generation - money and Arayos. Don't let either destroy you.
