How’s your relationship with money?

Question: I have been paying premiums on my regular pay variable unit-linked (VUL) life insurance policy for several years now. But all I see is money flowing out. And any fund value the policy has earned over the years is still far off from the premiums that I had already paid. I don’t think that the fund value will even reach that amount. Should I discontinue this policy?

Answer: I listed the following adjectives that can help you describe your relationship with your money:

Caring- kind, generous and loving to each other;

Stable- built on love, trust, loyalty, safety, consistency;

Supportive- always ready to lend a loving and helping hand;

Dishonest- partners are not true to their word;

Insincere- just pretending; and,

Weak- cannot withstand any tension or pressure.

The list of adjectives has three each for positive and negative relationships. But if you analyzed the adjectives closer, you would see that in all relationships, there is an agreement to be together between two parties; not just parties but people. More importantly, the common denominator for a relationship that is caring, stable and supportive is love.

Here is the shocker. Fr. Mike Schmidt, in a YouTube video of Ascension Presents, said that truth is a one-way street (cue sound of screeching tires)! Now why would I unload that seeming contradiction after just establishing that love is the common denominator for healthy relationships? But in essence, Fr. Mike was just quoting St. Thomas Aquinas who said that true love is “to will the good of the other.”

We choose first to love, not because of what we will get in return, but because we genuinely “will” the good of another. And if we do get any reward, that would just be icing on the cake. Fr. Mike did say that we should also set boundaries so that we do not end up as doormats. But let’s put a pin on that for now.

So, what is the connection between loving relationships and money? The funny thing is that there is none. As pointed out, relationships based on true love need to be between two individuals. If someone argues that he has a relationship with his money, then there is only one human being in that arrangement, him and him alone. And because he will never wish harm upon himself, his relationship with money can only be for his own benefit, not that for another. Money in itself is not bad for it can be a tool to achieve a greater end. But it is written in 1 Timothy 6:10 that, “For the love of money is the root of all evils, and some people in their desire for it have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.”

Your regular pay VUL life insurance policy is one of the best financial products that can serve as the tool to help you meet that greater end, of expressing true love for another. It is with this financial instrument that you will be “willing the good” of your beneficiaries, whom you should designate as irrevocable, without any expectation of return on the policy and even reciprocity from those beneficiaries.

Now, remember the point about setting boundaries? For future reference, when you buy additional life insurance coverage, buy just enough to ensure a decent annual lifestyle for your beneficiaries when you are called from this life for a practical period within which they should have already learned how to fend for themselves. Do not be a doormat.

Oh and one more thing, always remember that your capacity to love came as a gift from above. INQ

Send questions via “Ask a Friend, Ask Efren” free service at www.personalfinance.ph, SMS, Viber, Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. Efren Ll. Cruz is a registered financial planner and director of RFP Philippines, seasoned investment adviser, bestselling author of personal finance books in the Philippines and a YAMAN Coach. To consult with a YAMAN Coach, email [email protected]. To learn more about personal financial planning, attend the 98th RFP Program this October 2022. To inquire, e-mail [email protected] or text 09176248110.