Stop for a moment and think about those things that are important to you. Having trouble? Someone once told me that if I showed them my checkbook they'd show me what was important to me. Now I question this method. Much of what I truly value in life cannot be found by reading my bank statement or credit card bill. I find peace and refreshment from being in nature, for example, yet that can't be found by looking at any ledger. Some of my fondest memories are of sitting around a table playing cards or Board Games with friends. You wouldn't know it by glancing at my investment portfolio or find it written in any of my personal files. Are the best things in life really free? When we talk about values, it invokes a meaning with a deep focus on someone's core being. However, economists and finance professionals spend much time and effort trying to place economic value on certain ethereal items. Accountants try to place value on a corporation's accumulated goodwill. Equity analysts try their darndest to come up with a method to accurate price the value of a stock. Nobel prizes have been awarded for groundbreaking work on pricing models for options. Actuaries spend their days analyzing mountains of statistical data in order to properly price insurance policies. Even the value of our money fluctuates due to global economic pressures. Why is it so hard to value some things? Because these are made up things. That's right; much of finance is based on reifying abstract concepts and placing a monetary value on them. Of course, that isn't to say that an insurance policy or option contracts are bad things. Of course they serve a useful purpose. But if your life is spent chasing things solely based on their monetary value then in the end you may find it is quite an empty pursuit.