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Resilient Parents, Resilient Wallets?
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You’ve heard us talk before about the long run. We are all about the long run at 228 Main! Goals with their longest reasonable time horizon benefit from the space to flourish, in our opinion.

The way we and our families weather challenges might say something about our resilience—the capacity for “getting back up again.”

In fact, some research suggests that approaches to parenting may be related to future financial benefits for families and communities. It seems life costs more later for children who don’t have a chance to learn resilience.

How can parents help? The research suggests that the factors that matter most are how parents respond to their children and how parents set expectations and make demands. Together, these two forces help people learn and grow in a safe way.

Consider relationships you’ve witnessed in your life. Maybe you’ve met folks who “had every advantage” but were never challenged as children, or maybe people who had demands put on them as children but didn’t receive the feedback to feel safe enough to stretch themselves.

It turns out “sensitivity”—that is, responsiveness—in relationships can contribute to a person’s sense of stability. No matter one’s financial standing, a sense of stability can have impacts on our financial success: we may make very different decisions when we feel less confident about the future.

We don’t choose our first families, but I have a feeling we can help each other develop resilience at any point. Clear feedback and meaningful expectations? They may be tools to stronger relationships—and more resilient wallets.

Clients, we’re here for the long haul. Thank you for joining us.

Call or write, any time.

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Play the audio version of this post below:

Resilient Parents, Resilient Wallets? – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

This text is available at https://www.228Main.com/.

For You and With You

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“People rarely need to hear our conclusion,” writes Adam Grant about advice-giving in the Smarter Living newsletter. “They benefit from hearing our thought process and our perspective.”

Grant is an organizational psychologist, but even without working at his level of research, we have felt the truth of these findings. You’ll notice that our posts don’t typically promise “the right answer” or “the most perfect approach.” And it’s not because we’re the most humble organization in the world, either.

But imagine if an advisor made all the calls for you or claimed they had discovered a one-size-fits-all solution. Sound convenient? Probably would be—for them.

We could insert a cliché at this point about how it’s about the journey and not the destination, but maybe it’s more mundane than that. It’s more like math class: if you don’t show your work, it’s hard for others to have confidence in how you got there, and nobody involved learns or gets as much perspective.

Giving “good advice,” for us, is a process that we and you must navigate together. What are the goals? That’s all you. What are the possible ways to get there? Together, we can lay out some options. How do we proceed? Well… we’ll need to figure that out.

Grant says, “The most useful advice doesn’t specify what to do.” It helps folks “clarify their priorities.”

We do this work for you—clients, you’re the heart of it!—but we actually need your help to do it with you.

If you’d like to talk more about this or anything, call or write.

It Really Is All About You

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Time is finite, limited, for everyone. We have diligently restructured how we take care of business for you over the past few years to create more time for our key activities. One of those key activities is talking to you, one on one.

Two years ago we were preparing a total makeover of our communications program. In the 21st century, thoughts can emerge from our fingertips and travel at the speed of light to the screens of your computer, tablet or smart phone. The instantaneous aspect of new media is nicely complemented by the permanent archive of our philosophies, methods and views at 228Main.com—available anytime, anywhere.

If we get the same question twice or need to tell the same story twice, we figure a lot more people have the same question or should hear the same story. So we put it out there for everyone.

We also write about case studies, retirement concepts, financial planning issues, the economy, investment strategy and tactics. Topics in the news also get our attention, particularly when there is context we would like to add.

Bottom line, if we think of something that has a chance to improve your financial position, we are going to write about it. It might be a story or a parable or a bit of history or biography.

Each one of you is unique. Some pay attention to our daily comments and features on our Facebook page, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Others ignore all that, but read our blog posts. At least one client already knows how we think, and doesn’t need any more. And a few read everything in every venue.

We get a lot of feedback from our colleagues—but we are writing for you, not them. What would you like to tell us about our blog or social media activity? Are there topics we aren’t covering, but should? Are you getting anything out of it? Do you feel like any time you spend reading our stuff is well spent—or wasted?

Email us or call if you would like to let us know how we are doing.

Meanwhile, if you aren’t connected to daily commentary but wish to, you can bookmark https://twitter.com/MarkLeibman even if you are not registered at Twitter. Or ‘like’ our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/LFNEWS. Or connect on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lfnews/. We look forward to hearing from you.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.