At The End Of Your Life, The Price Tag Doesn't Matter
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Student Life

At The End Of Your Life, The Price Tag Doesn't Matter

You can't take your possessions with you when you go.

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At The End Of Your Life, The Price Tag Doesn't Matter
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It doesn't matter if you live in a $10 million mansion with 50 rooms, a 15 car garage, and a swimming pool in your backyard. For all that matters, you can have 15 cars in the driveway, own 400 pairs of shoes, and have $4 billion in the bank. You can be the richest person in the world, take the most expensive trips around the world, buy stuffed animals and pictures to mount on your wall, and fly halfway around the world to buy a $2 million purse for your wife. In the end, only one thing matters:

You can't take it with you when you go.

When you wake up in the morning, you may have spent the night sleeping on $2,000 sheets while I slept in a bed on sheets I bought from Target. You might put on a pair of alligator skin shoes that cost you $10,000, while I put on a pair of New Balance tennis shoes that I bought at all the mall for $60. Your shirt and tie might have cost you $500, while your pants might have cost you $500 from an expensive stuffy store in some expensive mall that they charge you $50 to park your car. I might have paid $50 for a pair of pants from JC Penney. So if we were to compare notes, by the time you got out of bed, took a shower, and got dressed, your outfit might have set you back about $10,000, while mine cost me about $200.

Take a look at that expensive watch on your wrist. How much did it cost you? If you went shopping online, or you finally found it in an expensive store in downtown Chicago, did you use your American Express Card to buy it, your Discover Card, or did you have a line of credit from the bank that you use? How much was the price tag stuck to the bottom? While you are thinking about it, I'd like to let you know that I paid $20 for my watch from Target. And I'd be willing to bet that while my watch may not be waterproof up to 10,000 feet under the pond I'll never go swimming in, it will still keep as good of time as your $10,000 watch will. The only difference is, if you break your watch, it's going to cost you donating a body part on Ebay, whereas my watch will cost me $20 from Target to replace. And the best part about it? It doesn't matter where you bought it or how much you paid for it, because you can't take it with you when you go.

Take a look at your bank account. How much money do you have in your bank account? If you are Jeff Bezos and own Amazon, you might have about $200 million in the bank, and another $89 billion in stock options at Amazon. If you are me, that number is going to be significantly lower. And that's fine. But none of that matters, because if either of us died tomorrow, everything stays here.

How about that coffee pot at work that cost you $500? Or that mug that you bought from a foreign country on that fancy $20,000 vacation? Everything you own probably put a dent in your bank account because God forbid someone ever sees you in a Sears or Kmart. But just imagine if you died in a car accident on your way home from work that night. The price of your coffee cup won't matter because it'll have been thrown across the inside of your car and shatter into a million pieces. They aren't going to bury you with it in that $2 million box, because in the end, you can't take it with you when you go.

When you get out of college, you've spent more money than you ever imagined. Maybe you were lucky and were able to pay for your education with credit cards. Maybe you weren't. Maybe you borrowed $100,000 like a lot of people are forced to do, and you owe the government money that you can't file on a bankruptcy--money that you most likely won't ever repay. After college, maybe you'll be fortunate enough to get a job making $50,000 a year. You live at home for the first year or two while you feverishly pay off your debt, and during that time, you get a credit card, or six. Eventually you start paying off your debt little by little, and in the meantime you buy a mansion and take on an $800 monthly car payment. You have a professional job so you feel that you have to maintain a big image and show off your possessions. You've worked half your life to get those materialistic items, and then one day, you find out you have an incurable disease and the doctors tell you that you're going to die. You've worked half your life to own those expensive things, only to find out that everything you've ever worked for or stressed about doesn't matter anymore, because in the same, it's all the same:

You can't take it with you when you go.

As you sit back and observe your expensive possessions, think about everything you've ever accomplished. You were born. You enjoyed your childhood. You made friends. You graduated from high school. You graduated from college. You got a job. Maybe you even got married and had 20 kids. During that time, you built a big fat bank account, bought a yacht, bought that Lincoln MK 6 automobile that you always wanted, spent $3 million on vacations, and but up your 401K plan to $80 million. You own enough clothes to cover half of a third world country. Your cupboards have enough food in them to feed a small city. Your kids have $200 shoes and $5,000 computers. You own everything you've ever wanted. But none of that matters because you're going to die, and you can't take anything with you when you go.

Everything you've ever owned doesn't matter because when you take your last dying breath, it all ends the same. Your body is drained of all the fluids it contains, your organs are taken out, weighed, and properly treated, and your material possessions just sit in the expensive house you lived in. Your 15 cars sit in the driveway. Your 500 pairs of shoes remain on the floor of your closet, sitting on top of the $3 million carpet that you had installed just a week before you kicked the bucket, and in the end, it's all the same:

You can't take it with you when you go.

So as you work throughout your life to buy those expensive things, drive that expensive car, and pay for that $4,000 mortgage every month, ask yourself one question: Was it worth it? Was every drop of sweat you poured into buying those "things" really worth the time, energy and stress you experienced throughout your life? I hope so, because in the end, it doesn't matter what you owned, how much you owned, or how much you paid for it, it's all the same:

You can't take your possessions with you when you go.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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