One important aspect of parenting is learning what your kids really mean when they say something.
For instance, Amos often says that he wants a hot dog. But that doesn’t mean the same thing to him that it probably means to you.
When he says he wants a hot dog, what he really means is that he wants a hot dog bun. He has no use for the actual tube steak. And he doesn’t just want a hot dog bun, ideally he’d like you to put peanut butter and jelly on that hot dog bun.
So when he says he wants a hot dog, he’s actually trying to tell you that he wants a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
You can see how you might end up with an unhappy five-year-old if you just took his “I want a hot dog” statement at face value.
My conversations with folks sometimes require a similar nuanced understanding of certain phrases. More often than not, people don’t really say what they mean. One example would be this phrase that I hear a lot:
“I’m not ready to retire.”
That can mean different things to different people and if I don’t push for a deeper explanation, I could make some bad assumptions about what they’re really trying to convey. Here’s a few possible translations:
“I love my career.”
Sometimes people really just like their job and have no desire to stop going to work every day. They might be in a financial position that they could have retired years ago, but they just love what they do.
“I need to wrap up some loose ends at work.”
Maybe they like the idea of being retired, but they first have a work project they want to see through to completion. Or maybe they want to be sure that their replacement has been hired so that they can train them for a few months.
“I’d be bored if I was retired.”
Some people are genuinely worried about what they’ll do with their time once they retire. They might not exactly be passionate about their job, but it seems better than just sitting around the house with nothing to do and nobody to talk to.
“I don’t have enough money to retire.”
Maybe they have an intimate understanding of their finances and know that the money they’ll need for the retirement they want just isn’t there and they need to keep going for a while in order to retire and live the way they want to live.
“I have no idea where I stand financially so I might as well just keep working as long as I can.”
This one is probably the most common. Until they’ve gotten professional help, most people just have no idea where they really stand. And so it seems like the easiest solution is to just keep plugging along indefinitely in hopes that one day they’ll feel confident enough to walk away from a paycheck.
Each of these translations requires a different conversation. For the “I love my career” guy, we need to talk about plans for how things will look if he’s suddenly unable to work because of health reasons (or because his employer decides it’s time for him to go). For the “I don’t have enough money” lady, we need to look closely at the numbers and see if she’s operating on some bad assumptions and she’s actually in better shape than she thinks.
Of course, these principles are true in everything—not just parenting and financial planning. If you’re the one talking, try to be as precise as possible with your language. And if you’re the one listening, ask the right questions to get to the heart of what someone is actually trying to say.
And whatever you do, don’t put peanut butter on a hot dog.