What Jesus teaches us about investing, taking risk
Did you know that there is an estimated $5 trillion just sitting in money market accounts in the United States today? According to the FDIC, the average national return on a money market account is less than 1/10th of 1%. It would take about 100 years to see a 10% return at that rate.
So why are people "hiding" their money from opportunities that could drastically increase their earnings? Fear. People waste the opportunity because they're afraid of loss. They'd instead choose a "safe" 1/10th of 1% return with a bank than the risk it on an opportunity that could bring them exponentially more.
Money doesn't want to sit on a shelf; it wants to work. All it's waiting for is a person with an idea, a plan, some passion, and a compelling argument. If someone with all those attributes came to me but didn't have any money, I could solve finding the money in a heartbeat — and create more money in the process.
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Even Jesus argued against the mindset of sitting on money. In the Parable of the Talents, Jesus tells the story of a rich man who left town for a while and gave a pile of money to three of his servants to manage in his absence. He gave different sums to each, according to how well the servants managed money. He gave one guy five bags of gold, which the servant invested and doubled. He gave another servant two bags of gold, which he also invested and doubled. And he gave the third servant one bag of gold. This servant was terrified of risk. He was afraid his boss would punish him if he lost the money, so he dug a hole and buried it. When the boss returned, he was furious that this servant was too scared to put it in the bank to earn a little interest. In the end, the rich man took the bag of gold back from the terrified servant and gave it to the one who now had ten bags.
In today's terms, we could say he emptied this guy's savings account and provided all the money to the guy who invested wisely and doubled his investment!
Jesus ends the story by telling the crowd that whoever has a lot will be given more, and whoever has a little will probably lose what little they have. Some people despise that lesson. They use it to fuel the idea that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer, and they moan about fairness. But that misses the point entirely.
Jesus is not making a statement about the system or even fairness; He's saying that people who aren't scared to jump on opportunities — even though there's a risk — will likely have more money than those too scared to take a chance. It's not about inequality; it's about being willing to seek out opportunities.
If the government waved a magic wand tomorrow and completely evened out every American's bank balance so that everyone had the same amount of money, things wouldn't stay equal for long. Almost immediately, you'd see the people who were rich before start re-building wealth again, and you'd see the people who were broke before start to lose what the government gave them. Why? Because it's not about the money. It's about the ability to see and seize the opportunity, and that's a life skill that can be learned.
How does this concept help you see the opportunities in front of you today? Easy: forget about money for now. People let money — or the lack of it — blind them to the opportunities all around them.
Money is not an opportunity. Money is a resource; it funds opportunities. Very few people want money for the sake of having money. Instead, they want the things that money can pay for — things like nice stuff, building a business, hiring a new employee, exciting experiences, and a secure retirement.
But that doesn't mean you can sit back and wait for it to flow your way; it doesn't work like that. You still have to build the idea and the vision first, then pound the pavement, make connections, build a network, and do the work of finding how money is earned – whether it is in your bank account or coming from others willing to invest in your idea.
When you take off the blinders, you can see opportunities everywhere. Don't bury your gold in the desert, as the scared servant did. Could you imagine what could be achieved with $5 trillion?
Erik Weir is principal of WCM Global Wealth LLC in Charleston and Greenville, S.C. and is author of the upcoming book, WHO’S EATING YOUR PIE? Essential Financial Advice That Will Transform Your Life, due out in May 2022.
