If I were a rich man, yabba-dabba-dabba yabba-dabba-dabba-daba-doo… Now look, I will be the first to acknowledge how lucky I am: in a world filled with want and poverty, my family and I live in the greatest of comfort. (The old joke must be told. The flight attendant settles an elderly gentleman into his seat and asks, “are you comfortable?” He replies with a shrug, “I make a living.”) 
 My domestic comfort notwithstanding, my wife and I work very hard, and as neither of us has a pension beyond our self-employment IRAs, and as we have relatively young children (7 and 11 years old) who (or so I’m told) need to be fed, clothed, and educated, we worry about money. Yes, we are aware that “money can’t buy you love.” But it can buy you just about everything else, including freedom from worry, and that – in a nutshell – is 50% of my definition of what it is to be monetarily rich: never having to worry about money. The other 50% of my definition of what it is to be rich is to have so much money that it becomes imperative to give it away. I am about […]