Money Isn’t What You’re Missing
What I’ve learned after years of studying money and happiness
Every other week, Paul Ollinger investigates how redefining success can help us lead better lives.
In the oft-quoted climax of the 1996 blockbuster Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise stares through teary eyes at Renée Zellweger, the love interest he’d almost let slip through his distracted, metaphorical hands.
His last-chance pitch to win her back: “You complete me.”
This sincere vulnerability captured her heart and five Oscar nominations despite — or perhaps because of — the fact that his revelation perpetuates a prevalent but childish fantasy: that each of us is an incomplete person lacking only a tiny gift from the universe to become our fully realized selves.
I remember watching this scene in the theater and thinking, “What a load of Hollywood fairy tale crap!” Yet in one area of my life, I applied Jerry’s flawed logic. I thought money would complete me.
Ever since I was a boy, I dreamed of being rich. Part of this fixation came from a desire to avoid the financial stress I sensed in my parents as they raised their six children. Another part of me wanted the material things we didn’t have, like a big house, shiny cars, and an Atari 2600. But most of all, I had…
