The Fisherman Parable

Chris, David and Producer Tommo explore why the parable is useful, but perhaps a little too simple. Money may not be the source of happiness, but it can provide security, choice and peace of mind. The real question is not just “how much is enough?” but “enough for what?”

Introductions

Chris Budd – Founder of Ovation Finance, author of The Four Cornerstones of Financial Wellbeing, trustee of a hospice and, as someone else once described him, the “grandfather of financial wellbeing.”

Tom Morris – Managing Director of Ovation Finance. Award winning, Bristol-based, chartered, B-Corp certified and employee-owned.

Fancy a chat with Tom Morris and the team at Ovation? Contact details here

Tight Ass Tommo

Featuring long-running manga series One Piece on BBC iPlayer, selling your car and not ironing your shirts!

The Fisherman Parable Explained

There was this chap lazing on the beach, sipping a beer. He’s fishing with his rod propped up beside him, and he lives in a grass hut on the shore with his family.

A businessman comes up to him and asks the fisherman, “How many fish have you caught?”

And the fisherman replies, “Three. Enough for my family for supper. I’m going to go and have a siesta soon.”

So the businessman replies, “You know what, you could catch a lot more fish if you tried a bit harder.”

And the fisherman says, “Well, why would I do that?”

And the businessman says, “Because as well as having fish for yourself and your family, you’d have more that you could then sell for a profit.”

The fisherman replies, “Then what would I do?”

And the businessman says, “Well, with that profit from the sale of the extra fish, you could buy a boat. Then you could catch even more fish and make more profit. Then you could buy yourself another boat and pay someone to go out and fish for you.

“After a while, you could have a whole fleet of fishing boats catching and selling loads of fish, making lots of profit.”

And the fisherman replies, “Then what would I do?”

“Wow,” the businessman says, “you could use the profit to perhaps build a nice bar on the beach that can then create more profit. You can use that profit to build some hotels. And within a few years, you’d be a very wealthy man.”

And then the fisherman asks, “Then what would I do?”

And the businessman says, “Well, then you could be so wealthy you wouldn’t have to work at all, and you could spend your time lazing on the beach, sipping beer and fishing.”

What is that parable is all about then?

Why the Parable Is Too Simple

Link to Episode 113 – Maslow, Money and Happiness

Episode 125 – Feeling Financially Safe

Real-Life Examples of Financial Wellbeing

Start With Happiness, Not Money

What Would the Fisherman’s Financial Plan Look Like?

Conclusions From The Guys

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Episode Transcribe:

Introduction

David: Hello, everybody, and welcome to another one in our long-running series of financial well-being podcasts.

I say long-running. This is episode, which is not bad going. And if you’re out there and you reckon you’ve listened to all episodes, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a little line if you have. We might have to then test you on what you can remember.

But if you have, well done. And if you haven’t, why not?

Chris: Test them on their sanity above anything else.

David: Whose voice was that chirping in there? Introduce yourself, mystery speaker.

Chris: Hello. My name’s Chris.

We look at Tommo’s blank face. A little reference from the 90s there.

Chris Budd. I wrote The Financial Wellbeing Book. I’ve written three novels. I’ve published six books. I’ve written eight. And, yeah, general happy kind of chap, really. Living in North Somerset with my wife and too many guitars, and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of records.

David: Very good. And Tom Morris, perhaps you’d like to tell us a little bit about yourself.

Tom: Yeah, I am a managing director and financial planner at Ovation Finance.

For those who don’t know, we support this podcast and we are an independent and chartered financial planning firm based in Bristol. We’re B Corp certified and employee owned, which we’re awfully proud of.

We try to implement a lot of what we talk about today into how we deliver financial planning for our clients, and would love to get the message out there far and wide about what we’re talking about. It’s really important to us.

Whether financial planners are listening to this, or whether it’s the general public, if you can take some of what we talk about today and bring it into your financial plans, fantastic. That’s what this is all about.

And before I pass over to you, David, you noted that we’ve been going for a long time. I just spotted the date of our first episode, and I’ve got a feeling this is probably going to go out not too far away from our 10th anniversary, because our first ever episode was released on the 26th of April 2016, according to what I’ve just looked at. So we are 10 years old, David.

David: Well, that’s not bad going. And I remember that first episode very well because we recorded it round at my house and had to abandon the recording because my dog wouldn’t stop snoring.

And we didn’t take the hint, did we? We’ve hopefully got a little bit more professional since then. But yeah, 10 years, that’s not bad going.

Just a little bit about myself. I am a screenwriter. I would have said last year, I’m probably pretty much retired, but I’m moving back into semi-retired mode now. I’ve got a really exciting project on the go at the moment that sadly I can’t really talk about in any detail. It may or may not happen, but don’t you worry: if it does happen, you’ll be the first to hear about it here on the Financial Wellbeing Podcast.

Apart from that, I spend a lot of time also in North Somerset, living in the same village that Chris does. In fact, occasionally I meet him out walking our dogs.

And I am also, hopefully, the person to help you, the listener, make sense of the incredibly detailed financial knowledge that these two super brains have by asking all the obvious questions.

Chris: David, can I just add, I had a lovely phrase the other day, which I think might apply to you, possibly to me as well. Somebody said they’re not retired, but they’re not working anymore, or not in the job that they had been doing for a long time anymore. They said that they were pre-tired.

I quite like that. Pre-tired.

David: I mean, I do get very tired.

And I know, Chris, you’re a big fan of the afternoon nap. In fact, I also have now discovered that the afternoon nap is a very, very good thing. And if you can build it into your busy schedule, which I suspect Tom might find a little bit more difficult, then it’s a marvellous thing.

Anyway, we’re getting off the point now, as we so often do. So let’s get back to the main event.

Today’s Topic: The Fisherman Parable

David: Before we go on to talking about it today, just briefly tell us what today’s topic is, Chris.

Chris: So today, David, we’re going to… I’d be interested to see… There’s a phrase in films: Jaws isn’t about a shark.

David: Right.

Chris: Jaws is about lots of things. The plot is the shark. But what’s Jaws actually about? Matching relationships, misuse of authority, all sorts of things.

So in the same way, we’re going to look at an old parable called the Fisherman Parable and actually ask ourselves: what is it actually about? And is it actually kind of not right?

So, yeah, we’re going to have a look at the Fisherman Parable.

David: Interesting. OK, before we dig too deep into that, I’ll actually very briefly say something about Jaws.

As a screenwriter and as an occasional teacher, I would always be teaching my students to be able to sum up their film in one sentence. They call it the logline. What is the premise of your film? How can you sum it up in one sentence?

I used to tell the story about two very well-known Hollywood scriptwriters. So they definitely had pedigree; it wasn’t as if they were pitching like no one had ever heard of them. They walked into a studio and the producers said, “Right, okay, what have you got for me today?”

And they just said: “Jaws in space.”

And that was the pitch for Alien. And the guy just went, “Great, we’ll make it.”

You know, Jaws in space. So it’s being able to sum these things up sometimes. Sometimes less is more.

Tight Ass Tommo: Money-Saving Tips

David: Before we go on to talk more about that, though, we need to come to, I think, arguably the most popular feature on this podcast, which is Titus Tomo, where our monarch of meanness advises us on how we cannot spend too much money on things.

Before we come to him, Chris, have you got anything for us this week?

Chris: I have, David.

I love my animation and my graphic novels and comics and that kind of stuff. And there’s a well-known, very long-running manga series, Japanese comics, called One Piece. And I’ve just discovered that it’s been made into an animation.

BBC iPlayer has all series, all episodes: 1,122 episodes of One Piece. They’re about 23 minutes per episode, so that’s a total of 460 hours of viewing.

So I was thinking, if you’ve got kids, you allow them, what, an hour a day of television time, maybe? Perhaps two at weekends? Well, that works out at almost exactly 52 weeks.

So here’s my tip. Cancel your Disney+, your Amazon Prime, your Netflix, and start your kids watching the One Piece series on BBC. It’ll take them an entire year to watch the whole thing.

And I’m going to say by the end of it, they’ll probably want to start again. You could go through their entire childhood with them only watching one programme and save yourself all those subscriptions.

David: Great advice. That is great advice. And also, obviously, make sure you’ve paid your TV licence, but it does work out substantially cheaper than a lot of these major subscriptions. So that is great advice, Chris. I like that.

I’ve got one this week as well, slightly more drastic, which is: sell your car.

OK, so we have just got rid of my partner’s car, which we were having all sorts of problems with. It was off the road more than it was on the road. But she was very wedded to the idea of having a car that was just hers, and I absolutely understood that.

So we finally got rid of it. We got £94 for it. Somebody had to come and take it away because it was stuck on our drive and it wouldn’t start. That’s another story, which I won’t bore you with now.

But we thought for a while we would try and just manage with one car. Plus, I have to confess, we also have a camper van as well, so that can be pressed into service if we both need a vehicle at the same time.

We’ve worked out that in terms of insurance, road tax, extra petrol and everything, we’re probably saving ourselves about £1,500 a year by not having that third car.

Now, this has only been going for a few weeks, so watch this space. I might report back in a few months’ time and say, “No, no, we had to have a car each.” But at the moment, just think slightly differently about what you use cars for and whether or not you can manage without that extra car.

Tom, over to you.

Tom: I was thinking about this and it’s one that I absolutely buy into.

I do a lot of video calls with clients. I might wear a shirt for the meeting, you know, look professional. But I’ve stopped ironing both sides of my shirt. I only iron the front now because what’s the point? The back, no one’s seeing it.

Might just do one side of the arm as well. But why that’s such a good tip is it’s a little bit less electricity being used and less steam that you need to put through the iron. You save yourself a bit of time as well.

So there you go. If you’re doing video calls, only iron the front side of your shirt.

David: Well, that’s very good advice, but I’ll offer some cautionary advice about this.

I worked in an office briefly a few years ago and we had a young lad who used to come in wearing an ironed shirt and then a jumper. It was a really hot day and he was sitting there with his jumper on, and everyone was going, “Oh, you must be sweltering. Why are you still wearing a jumper?”

In the end, he had to confess that he had a V-neck jumper, and he’d ironed the collar of his shirt and the little bit around his V-neck jumper, but he hadn’t ironed the rest of it.

Tom: Yeah, I’ve been there before. I wear a lot of jumpers in the winter for that exact reason.

David: Right, okay. Great advice then for those that don’t like ironing. And if there’s anybody out there who confesses that they do like ironing, I don’t believe you.

The Fisherman Parable Explained

David: Right, okay. Chris, let’s go back to this parable you were telling us about.

Chris: So there’s a famous parable about money and happiness. Are you familiar with the parable of the man fishing on the beach?

David: Well, I’m not sure. I don’t think I am, but tell me more. Tomo, do you know it?

Tom: Yeah, I know it. Mainly because you shared it with me many years ago. Like most things that I repeat in this world, it is basically a copy from somewhere else.

Chris: Can you tell us about it? Can you explain it, Tomo?

Tom: Yeah, I don’t mind explaining it, or at least I’ll try.

There was this chap lazing on the beach, sipping a beer. He’s fishing with his rod propped up beside him, and he lives in a grass hut on the shore with his family.

A businessman comes up to him and asks the fisherman, “How many fish have you caught?”

And the fisherman replies, “Three. Enough for my family for supper. I’m going to go and have a siesta soon.”

So the businessman replies, “You know what, you could catch a lot more fish if you tried a bit harder.”

And the fisherman says, “Well, why would I do that?”

And the businessman says, “Because as well as having fish for yourself and your family, you’d have more that you could then sell for a profit.”

The fisherman replies, “Then what would I do?”

And the businessman says, “Well, with that profit from the sale of the extra fish, you could buy a boat. Then you could catch even more fish and make more profit. Then you could buy yourself another boat and pay someone to go out and fish for you.

“After a while, you could have a whole fleet of fishing boats catching and selling loads of fish, making lots of profit.”

And the fisherman replies, “Then what would I do?”

“Wow,” the businessman says, “you could use the profit to perhaps build a nice bar on the beach that can then create more profit. You can use that profit to build some hotels. And within a few years, you’d be a very wealthy man.”

And then the fisherman asks, “Then what would I do?”

And the businessman says, “Well, then you could be so wealthy you wouldn’t have to work at all, and you could spend your time lazing on the beach, sipping beer and fishing.”

Chris: So, David, what do you reckon that parable is all about then?

David: Well, I have heard that before, actually, now that I hear Tom telling it so beautifully, may I say.

It’s mixed messages, isn’t it? It sounds very simple: just stay on the beach fishing all the time and your life would be very, very happy.

But we kind of know that in reality, that might be all right for a while, but that probably isn’t going to pay the rent. It’s probably not going to keep a roof over your head. And at some point, you’re going to have to go out and do a bit of work in order to give yourself a comfortable life.

So yeah, I find it a little bit confusing.

I think it’s also pointing out that the things that make us happy are not the things that cost a lot of money.

Chris: Yeah, I think they both sound about right to me.

The thing is about this parable, which I’ve heard many, many times over the years, I might surprise you: I don’t wholly agree with this parable.

David: Hang on a minute, Chris. Is this the moment you reveal that the entire financial well-being thing you started is all a sham and just designed to make you rich?

Chris: Well, if that was the case, David, it certainly hasn’t worked. I can promise you that.

You do see that, I have to say. There’s one particular book in the whole well-being industry I read which purports to have the secret to happiness based on Buddhist principles. At the end of the book, it advertised an app.

I thought, well, that’s interesting. I’m going to have a look at this app. The app was a programme to follow to be happier, et cetera. When I went to download it, I discovered it was $99 a year. Not very Buddhist, really.

Tom: I think like anything, the happiness industry is definitely a thing. So many books which promise to share the secrets of how to be rich are out there and are trying to earn a dollar off of it.

David: Yeah, I’ve got a plan actually to get rich quick. I’m going to write a book called How to Get Rich Quick.

Tom: No, we’re right. There are a few of those out there.

Why the Parable Is Too Simple

Chris: So look, this fisherman parable is quoted quite a lot. You just need to Google the term to find that it’s mentioned on loads of websites.

David: Yeah, I think that’s probably where I’ve come across it in the past. But tell us why you’re not keen on it then, Chris, because I thought it’d be just your thing. It seems to suggest you don’t necessarily need to be wealthy to be happy.

Chris: So I do a lot of talks and webinars and what have you on financial well-being, at conferences and so on. And I sometimes get challenged by somebody who says it’s all very well me saying that money isn’t the source of happiness. But what about those people who don’t have anything? Surely money makes a big difference to them.

David: Well, that’s a fair challenge, isn’t it? But then I don’t think we’ve ever suggested that money can’t be used to generate well-being in all of the episodes of this podcast. We’ve just been examining how.

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for saying that, David. I’m very sensitive to this point.

It’s easy to come across very patronising if you say that money doesn’t bring well-being. Of course it does. If a homeless person was given a flat to live in, of course that would increase their well-being, wouldn’t it?

David: Well, it would, but this surely chimes with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which we’ve looked at once before. Which episode was it, Tom?

Tom: Episode 113.

And I would also add, I think this chimes in with the episode we did — 125 — on this idea of universal basic income.

Chris: I reckon, David, after all these 10 years’ worth of podcasts, Tomo’s known to have a photographic memory. I reckon you could pick any podcast and ask him, he would instantly know the episode number.

David: Yeah, we’ll do that in a future episode. It’s Quiz Tomo.

Tom: The beauty of being remote and online is you don’t know what I’ve got on my various screens as research in advance.

Chris: If you don’t have security, shelter or food and drink, then clearly some money is going to bring you well-being. But as you go up Maslow’s hierarchy, up that pyramid, and you get to creativity and purpose, money not only has less and less impact, it can actually get in the way.

So to suggest, as the parable would seem to, that the fisherman would be happier or just as happy as he is with nothing but a boat and a fishing rod seems to me a little bit simplistic.

David: Yeah, so here’s an opinion. When he’s poor, the fisherman is encouraged by the businessman to build up a business in order that he could become wealthy enough to laze on the beach.

And the fisherman’s point is that he already has that life. But it’s not really the same thing, is it?

Chris: In what way?

David: Well, for one thing — just stick with this — if the sea is stormy and he can’t go out fishing because it’s dangerous, or there’s a random shark loose, he won’t have anything for him and his family to eat.

But if he’s got his business with pensions and savings and financial security, then he still eats, no matter what the weather or what the shark proliferation is.

Tom: Yeah, that’s a brilliant point, David.

It would be foolish for us to say that money doesn’t make you happy or bring you well-being, as Chris touched on. For example, having some financial security gives peace of mind. Again, we talked about this at length in those episodes we just mentioned.

This is one of the reasons why one of the first things that people should do when they start having a little extra income is to put away for an emergency fund.

There was a study of well-being done in the workplace which shows that people value having enough money for emergencies in the savings account more than they valued receiving a bonus from work.

Real-Life Examples of Financial Wellbeing

Chris: All right, so let’s see if we can find some similarities between our fisherman in this parable and some real-life examples.

In preparation for this, I asked Tom to have a think about a client that he deals with at Ovation who is leading a most joyful life, and to try and summarise what is bringing them that joy, that well-being.

Tom: So I’ve got a couple. I did only just have one, but one really sprung to mind from some work I’ve been doing very recently with someone.

The first one was absolutely living this life. They were working in a high-stress job, and they were an intensive care nurse. You can imagine that was quite life-and-death moments all the time, and that stress was really becoming overbearing.

Something that they love is nature and wanting to have a slightly slower pace of life, quite frankly, and taking that stress away.

So now, through the power of working out how much is enough and what you need, what your security levels look like, we were able to figure out that they could leave their job. They now volunteer at a local wildlife trust several days a week, really getting in touch with nature and supporting an organisation they care about.

Another one really, really only happened in the last few months. We were talking at length with this individual about how they were spending their time. They weren’t getting a great deal of joy from that work, but they adore music. And they are a very accomplished pianist. I think grade eight — I believe that’s quite a high level.

They wanted to look at whether music could be the next career for them. It didn’t necessarily have to be all about salary or anything like that, but they had this passion. We actually worked out that they can stop working, and they’re going to go back to university and take up a music degree and follow that passion for the next few decades of their life.

So just some examples there where people can really stop themselves and think: right, what do I want to be spending my time doing?

David: Well, A, both of those are really quite moving, really, and very impressive.

But what I found really interesting is that in your explanation of each of those people, the one thing you didn’t mention was how wealthy they are.

Tom: Yeah, no, I guess I didn’t. And that’s the really key part: first figuring out what makes one happy. You want to try and strip away the discussions around money.

I think George Kinder in the last episode talked about just asking life questions first. They’re not particularly wealthy. They’re okay to be able to make these decisions. They’re in an okay position. They have enough to do what they want because we took time out to look at what makes them happy and then figured out: do they have enough to be able to do that?

Chris: As you know, I coach people who are facing transition in their lives, or after that transition, and I help them to work out what’s going to bring them well-being.

The common factor I see quite a lot between these people is that their sense of well-being comes from all the things that we’ve talked about in this podcast over the last 10 years: kindness, giving, having meaning and purpose, quality of social relationships and family bonds as well.

However, how these principles apply to each person is different, which is this “know thyself” phrase that we’ve always used, that key principle we talk about when constructing a financial well-being plan.

Start With Happiness, Not Money

David: Now, dragging us back to the topic is one of my many roles on this podcast. So how does this relate to the fisherman’s parable, Chris?

Chris: It’s a parable about money. The businessman tells the fisherman that he would be happier if he were rich. And so the message of the story is that the fisherman is just as happy with no money.

And yet neither of those are absolutely true.

The clients that Tomo’s described all have homes and enough income for food and leisure. They’re not rich, they’re not wealthy. And I guess the point is that the route to well-being doesn’t start with money.

David: Wow. Now there’s a controversial statement. But surely financial well-being, within the context of this podcast, is all about money.

Chris: It is, but it’s not the starting point. It’s about the relationship between money and happiness.

So I would argue that any book or story about the relationship with happiness and money should start with happiness, not with money.

There’s a very popular, very good book called The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. I think it’s an excellent book and I would recommend it. There are lots of interesting things in it.

But I do think it has a great weakness, which is that it’s all about money. The psychology of money should surely start with what makes us happy, and then we apply money to those principles.

David: I get it. Now, can you illustrate this with an example?

Tom: Yeah, I will try. I think when we take on new clients, they’ll be working with other financial advisors or wealth managers.

David: I’m sorry to interrupt, but can you define what a wealth manager is and how that’s different from an advisor or a planner?

Tom: The term wealth manager usually refers to a firm that provides investment advice. Larger wealth management firms may also have financial planning in them, but the phrase wealth manager generally focuses on investing.

David: Thank you. Tomo, you may proceed.

Tom: So when we take on a client from another financial advisor or wealth manager, they often bring in a summary of their finances. Or perhaps when we first meet, they start telling me about their money, about their pensions, about their investments.

That’s because their advisors have been encouraging them to put money away to achieve financial security, which is good. Having our money work sensibly is important.

However, we start by talking to them about their lives and about their future. What brings them joy? What might bring them joy in the future?

We put the spreadsheets and investments to one side, and later we then construct the cash-flow forecast to see if this future we’ve discussed — this future of well-being — is achievable, and work out how we get there.

For most people that I meet, they’re encouraged to work hard to achieve financial security, but people don’t tend to talk to them about what that will give them when they actually get there.

There’s a well-known saying in the financial planning world, which I’ve used myself often, which is that we need to work out how much is enough.

And I think we’ve come to realise through this podcast and at Ovation that the question “how much is enough?” isn’t really sufficient. It’s more: how much is enough, and for what?

What Would the Fisherman’s Financial Plan Look Like?

Chris: So Tomo, if this fisherman were to approach you for some financial planning advice, what would you advise?

Tom: Okay. So first of all, I’d ask him about the things that bring him well-being and what is worrying him.

In his case, well-being probably comes from the purpose of fishing in order to provide for his family, spending time with loved ones, and spending time in the sun by the sea, sipping on his beer and all of that.

But what might be worrying him is whether he will be able to weather periods of not being able to go out. You mentioned it, David: not being able to go out and fish, not being able to feed his family.

So I might ask him if he could do perhaps a couple of extra fishing trips a week, sell that fish, and put the money into an emergency account. That would give him that little bit of peace of mind should there be any sticky points that don’t enable him to do his daily fishing.

David: Oh, Tom, after many sessions of financial advice with you, that sounds very familiar and reads very true.

Conclusion

Chris: So look, just to conclude, two things.

The fisherman parable is interesting. It’s got us talking. The point that it makes — that being rich is not essential to being happy — is a good one. I’m just suggesting that perhaps it’s not quite as simple as that parable suggests.

And number two, I’m now going to go off and form a band called Random Shark.

David: Brilliant.

I think that’s been very interesting because parables like that pop up all the time. And at first listen, you kind of go, “Oh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.” But when you drill down to it a little bit, it’s a bit more complicated than that, as life so often is.

Anyway, I hope you found our musings and ramblings of some interest and of some help, and also that you’ll join us the next time for another one in our series of Financial Wellbeing Podcasts.

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