Three Wishes

Why Wishing Is No Substitute For Financial Planning

Saly A. Glassman

“Be careful what you wish for.”

We heard this as children, but we did not have the context to contemplate how it could have useful meaning for us. This lesson is about understanding consequences and taking responsibility, which we could easily have dismissed as “adult issues.” After all, didn’t we blow out the candles on our birthday cake and “wish” for something special? No one told us to “be careful,” just as we were savoring our birthday “wishing” moment!

My favorite fairy tale for this lesson is called The Three Wishes. If you’ve never heard the story, it goes like this.

A woodsman and his wife are living in the forest, and they’re down to their very last cent. Starved for cash, they are completely out of food and hope, when they are magically offered three wishes from a genie, who bursts forth from a lamp they were about to sell for their next (and maybe last) meal. In desperation, the husband wishes for a string of sausages thirty feet long. Horrified at what she views as a wasteful wish, the wife wishes the sausages were attached to his nose! Needing to undo the damage, the couple has to use their third wish to detach the sausages, and they are left with only their sausage string and miserable existence.