When you complete a two-dimensional maze on a piece of paper, you can solve it as you go, allowing your eyes to go ahead of your pencil and working from beginning to end without too much back-tracking.
When you walk through a three-dimensional maze where the walls are higher than your head, there is no such thing as solving as you go without back-tracking. Back-tracking is solving.
Life, and the financial decisions it requires, has nothing in common with 2D mazes and much in common with 3D mazes. And beyond an innate sense of direction which few possess, the two things that will help you “solve” the 3D maze are: 1) A fixed reference point or two that is constantly visible above the walls of the maze (in life, these would be values, priorities, and faith imperatives), and 2) The doggedness to keep not quitting, to keep iterating and trying new pathways.
Life is hard enough, but when we try to make it a 2D maze, not only will we be constantly frustrated by the unpredictability of the world around us, but we will also tend to get stuck in the same places in the maze.
Meaningful Returns 