Planning & Responsibility
The wicked stomach flu that has been going around hit our house hard this past month. I’ve been the only one to escape its wrath.
For the week that Anne was out of commission, I got a trial by fire in what she does on a daily basis. Without her, the wheels fell off the tracks quickly. One day I made three trips to the school. Once you do that, there really isn’t much else you can get done. Another day was a trip to the ER, two trips to school, and soccer practice.
Personal Financial Responsibility
This is a repeat of my inaugural letter last year. We’ve had a many new subscribers so I thought I’d share this to celebrate the start of baseball season.
Clearly defining the purpose helped Moneyball redefine baseball.
Financial Review - Spring Cleaning Our Finances
Spring Break is this week. I thought it would a good opportunity to review this letter from last Spring:
My wife is pretty ruthless about throwing things out during the year. Our kid’s toys accumulate. Our storage closets accumulate. It’s hard to keep up.
The same happens in our finances. Over time we tend to accumulate monthly payments, different types of accounts, and financial products. But how often do we grab a metaphorical garbage bag and get ruthless with our finances?
Personal Financial Planning
We recently hosted a market update for our clients. It turned out to be a timely discussion on the state of the markets.
We went through examples of a few market downturns. They’re usually short lived, are normal, and it is rewarding to have a long-term outlook on our investments.
Business Succession Planning
This has been making its way around LinkedIn lately. Bravo to whomever put together this profile. (I’ll give anyone born before 1972 the opportunity to google this.) Now that we’re on the same page, why is a financial advisor writing you about Tommy Boy?
Big Tom nearly cost his posterity everything he built because of poor estate and business planning.
Financial Responsibility
Over Christmas break, Cora and Drew were looking to earn some money on their own. Cora wanted to repay a friend’s kindness by taking her out for a cupcake and juice. Drew has his eye on a Batman toy.
We had recently read the Tuttle Twins series, about twins that learn life lessons about economics, entrepreneurship, and the law.
Financial Planning
Last year, I was in a training seminar. We started with a goal-setting exercise. The idea was to think about experiences we wanted to have, places we wanted to visit, impossible challenges we wanted to conquer, and rewards for ourselves if we accomplished our goals.
Most of us have a list of things we want to do one day. But we might not have a purposeful plan for how to get there. It’s easy for our daily commitments and obstacles to overtake our list.
Financial Review
I hope you’ve enjoyed my biweekly updates, stories, strategies, and news items. Here is a year in review. Please see the bottom of this email for an index of this years letters.
Personal Financial Planning
This past weekend some dads from our school took our daughters camping. We of course roasted marshmallows for s’mores. As the girls held their marshmallows over the fire it reminded me of the famous Stanford Marshmallow experiment. It was a study on delayed gratification.
The researchers would offer a child a choice: one marshmallow now or two after a period of time, usually about 15 minutes.