I was at the gym recently and someone shared with me that their dear friend had just passed away. “Derrick,” he said to me, “you never know when your last day on earth is going to be. Make sure you leave it all on the table.”
His comment made a deep impression on me. It reminded me of a simple illustration done by Randy Alcorn, author of The Treasure Principle. It’s so simple yet so profound.
You can see that it’s just a dot, followed by a bold line, with an arrow at the end of the line:
The dot represents the short time we have on earth, and the line with an arrow represents eternity. In that dot is everything that happens to you during your lifetime—births, graduations, weddings, funerals, jobs, kids, grandkids, vacations—the highs and lows of your life. We get so caught up in the dot that we lose sight of the idea of eternity. Like it says in James 4:14, “You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”
Think about the dot not as just those fleeting eight or nine decades of your existence. The purpose of the dot is to lay the foundation for what comes next, for eternity. Tomorrow is not promised to any of us, so what we do now is what counts. That’s what my friend meant by “leaving it all on the table.”
“Let’s face it, at the end of our lives, we’re not gonna count how much money we have,” says Jon Gordon. “It’s not gonna matter what kind of car we drove, what kind of house we have. When we die, it’s gonna matter: Did we make a difference in the lives of others? Did we make an impact? Did we leave a legacy?”
Until you’ve taken your very last breath, you can still have the powerful impact you’re looking for.
John O’Leary told me about a favorite poem of his called “The Bridge Builder” by Will Allen Dromgoole. It’s the story of a man, near the very end of his life, who builds a bridge across a vast, fast- moving river. A presumably much younger man on the other side of the river calls to him and asks why the old man is bothering to build a bridge when he will never come this way again. The old man responds that he is not building the bridge for himself; he’s building it for the younger men who will come behind him.
That’s the question to ask yourself. Not what you are going to do today or tomorrow, but how it will have an impact long after you’re gone. In the movie Gladiator, Russell Crowe plays a Roman general, Maximus. As he and his men are about to attack, he says to them, “Hold the line, stay with me!” And then he says something powerful: “Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity.”
Now, you’re probably thinking, “How does focusing on the line rather than the dot relate to giving?” It has everything to do with it. I call it investing in the eternal economy.
In Economics 101, the future value of money is always greater than its present value.
Why? Because you can invest it now and make more money. One dollar placed in virtually any reasonable investment vehicle will be worth more ten, twenty, or thirty years into the future. Logically, therefore, the time value of money means that by investing money today and allowing it to grow means a larger amount in the future, so you should give it away upon your death.
In the eternal economy it’s just the opposite. The present value of money is worth more than the future value. Why? Today’s impact value is greater. Hear me out.
Upon their death, most people leave their greatest gifts to their children, their children’s children, and maybe other family members. Often they will also include bequests to organizations they have supported during their lifetime. This strategy is admirable, but it locks up your money so it can’t be used for good today. The beneficiaries have to wait ten, twenty, thirty, or more years before the money will have any kind of impact. Consider this: what would happen if you decided to concentrate your giving on the here and now? Even if you give a smaller amount today, it unlocks the ability for that money to immediately begin impacting people’s lives. If you provide money to improve a school system, your contribution toward giving children a better education will have an exponential impact. Those kids are going to grow up and have families of their own and be productive, some no doubt because of you. It’s like a farmer saying, “I’m going to wait a couple years to plant these seeds because they’ll improve in the package.” No. The seeds get better once they’re in the ground and can start to grow. Your giving today is adding value to lives, and that value is projected forward into eternity.
Here’s a specific example. Let’s say you decide to leave a bequest in your will for $10,000 to Doctors Without Borders. Well, that’s great. I’m sure the organization will welcome that $10,000. The problem is, the $10,000 may go to them in ten years, twenty years, thirty years from now. But what if you gave them a smaller amount today, say, $2,000? That money can change the lives of people today and will surely have a multiplier effect because those people who were saved by that $2,000 will have had decades of leading productive lives, probably with children of their own who have also, even if indirectly, benefited from your gift.
Sit down with your spouse, your family, your investment advisor, and implement the giving strategy that you’ve put in place. Money put in motion creates waves. Remember, your money can either be a stagnant pond of water that doesn’t move at all or a river where value continues to flow.
By diligently and consistently giving now and not later, you can flip a person’s paradigm. I see this across all demographics—people making more money so they can give more, giving more so they can earn more. It’s a beautiful cycle. It’s the eternal economy, the cycle of giving that keeps paying dividends forever. That’s something you cannot achieve with any other investment.
This excerpt is taken from “Good Money Revolution: How to Make More Money to Do More Good” by Derrick Kinney. To read other articles of this book, click here. To buy this book, click here.
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