goals

The Doing Gets Things Done: We Are Planning for the Plan!
photo shows a person in silhouette jogging up a hill toward a flag

Many things are made by combining some of this, some of that. In our work with you, for example, we combine some information about your life now with a vision to get us ready for the future. Here as another new year begins, our thoughts have turned to plans and planning—and the nuances therein.

A typical New Year’s resolution is a sweeping, major goal: write a book, finish a 5k race, lose this many pounds. They tend to skip a few steps. It’s about the accomplishment, not the accomplishing.

But it could be more effective to plan a tiny step, something to execute now.

Write a page.

Walk around the block.

Eat a nutritious meal.

And if we focus on accomplishing a tiny step, then another, then another, those steps may compound into major accomplishments.

You might recognize the idea at the heart of this formula: habits are the practical foundation in shaping the person we want to become. Writing one page, then another, then another. If it becomes a daily habit, you may end up authoring a book.

Likewise, it’s easier to save something every payday than it is to worry for years about the fortune you will require for retirement. We can invest by automatic monthly deposits, for example, instead of having to think about it every time.

When we can make our habits automatic, they become a lot easier to maintain. (We don’t stop and question whether and how and when to brush our teeth each day, right?)

The planning moves you closer to the plan; the doing gets things done. Wisdom? Nonsense? You decide.

When you are ready to work on your plans and planning, we’ll be happy to talk with you about the steps that may help you get there. Email us or call.

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What Do We Mean by "Plans" and "Planning"? – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

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

65+ and Single

 

photo shows a person in silhouette sitting on a mountain ridge

While a lot of retirement planning information seems to be aimed at couples, statistics show that large fractions of those in the 65+ demographic are single. Pew Research reports that 21% of men and 49% of women in that category are single (i.e., not married nor living with a partner). 

Some are single by choice. Others were not planning to be single in retirement but are, due to death or divorce. When decades-old assumptions about our future become obsolete, it can be disorienting. My work has given me the opportunity to learn from many of you in that position.  

Adjusting our long-held plans can be a mixed bag. More than one person has expressed to me the joy of answering to no one but themselves, having the freedom to make decisions without debate. A year into widowhood, another person sold a home of thirty years and moved, expressing the sense that the new place was truly theirs. It was the only dwelling they’d ever chosen solely for their own reasons. 

My wife and I were nearly a decade into a snowbird lifestyle when she passed. I thought I would always live in Florida at least part-time, as we had been. After being adrift by myself for more than a year, the clouds parted and I saw an answer I never anticipated: I came back to Nebraska as my full-time home. 

And then again, others remain in the homes that had served them in life as part of a couple, because the same dwellings continue to serve them well. 

Adjustments are often needed in many parts of our lives. Recreation and hobbies we enjoyed as couples may not work for us as singles. Our decisions about work may change. How we eat, exercise, and travel may shift as well. 

The pain of sudden surprises like death and divorce remind us that life is always a mix: joy and pain. On the worst days, it pays to remember the duality—there are two parts to that notion, and joy and pain aren’t whole concepts without each other. 

When these periods of transition arrive, it seems pretty universally helpful to have someone to bounce ideas off of, to review plans and planning with, and to talk decisions over with. From a practical standpoint, the loss of a partner often means losing the person with whom we used to talk things over. It’s a sensation many people have told me about.  

All this is to say, clients, you can talk to me. I’m here to listen when you need to kick an idea around, or rethink something that needs to change because circumstances have changed. Been there, done that – we are all on different journeys, but I’ve been on some of those same roads. Email me or call whenever you might need to talk. 

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Play the audio version of this post below:

65+ and Single – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

This text can be found at https://www.228Main.com/.

Seek Perfection or Change Perception? What My Travels Taught Me

I had the great joy of heading on a trip south recently. Vacations can be tricky business, can’t they? Sometimes these breaks are a highlight for the whole family, a chance to reconnect with a partner, or a major outlay from the entertainment budget each year.

The meanings we bring to vacation can hoist the expectations. We might tell ourselves (and those around us), “You’re going to have fun whether you like it or not!”

So what did I learn on my winter vacation?

I stayed in a classic Florida hotel in a charming location, adjacent to a marina, on the water. Seeing the fish jumping and the birds fishing, feeling the sea breeze in my hair again and the sun on my face, it was lovely. Except.

Except the walls of the hotel room were quite thin. Conversation and TV sounds came through from one side, snoring from the other. It was hard not to focus on those noises. My perception was the hotel was not up to modern standards: it was not acceptable the way it was.

Then I downloaded an app for my phone, a white noise generator. In two minutes, it was as if those other noises weren’t getting in anymore. I only heard the soothing sounds of a waterfall coming from the phone.

I woke up well-rested and realized that the phone app had, for all practical purposes, thickened and insulated the walls of the hotel room. It turned a flawed vacation spot into a near-perfect one.

The lesson of the stay in the old hotel is that sometimes, we need to be intentional about changing our perception so we can change our reality. We didn’t choose the world we were born into, but we do choose how to focus our attention, where to direct our response, and thereby, how we experience and shape our world.

Clients, when you would like new ways to focus on your world, please email us or call.

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Play the audio version of this post below:

Seek Perfection or Change Perception? What My Travels Taught Me – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

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

The Cost of a Shortcut
photo shows a tunnel through brambles

You’ve heard us say it before: we are not a sales organization. Instead, our aim is to try to grow our clients’ buckets. 

As such, you don’t hear us bragging about our “monthly numbers,” our quotas, or other short-term goals. We’re all about the long term. 

Does that mean we don’t have an edge? 

We’ve been thinking that maybe the stuff we skip is part of what helps us focus. Plenty of businesses right now—inside and outside the financial world—are working hard on getting folks on board. We get pop-ups offering 20% off our first purchase… once we sign up. We see ads for that special welcome gift… once we sign up. 

Notice anything? These deals are aimed at the business’s short-term goal (getting you on board). They are not necessarily about your long-term wellbeing. They want you in the club, but once you jump in, it’s usually on their terms. 

We love a bargain or a good deal as much as the next person… but we also know our worth. Our time is valuable. Our resources are supposed to be tools for working toward our goals. We believe the same things are true about you, our clients. 

A shortcut, a leg-up, or priority treatment—they only matter if they’re heading the same direction you are. Otherwise, you may be accepting a shortcut to a dead-end. 

Clients, want to know more about what this means for you? Reach out when you’re ready. 

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White-Knuckle Dreams
photo shows wooden chairs on wooden deck on a wooded lake

With decades in the financial industry, it’s been interesting to work alongside some friends and their families for years. I’ve gotten to witness many of their big milestones—and share mine, too.

Some goals have changed over time. It has happened in many different ways. Births and deaths can shift priorities. Sudden windfalls can open up opportunities and goals that once seemed unthinkable.

One quality connects a lot of the most successful goals: they stay flexible.

Is it cheating to say that a goal that changed is still a win? Well, was the birth or the death or the sudden windfall “cheating”? These questions are sort of beside the point. If life is change, a flexible mindset is the winning one.

It’s easy enough to mistake tension for focus or drive. But tense muscles don’t work as well as pliable ones. A marathon runner who cramps up, a surgeon who forgets to breathe—those are not success stories in the making.

We’ve loved getting to help clients meet those huge, lifelong dreams, of course, but there’s no romance in a dream that swallows you up. You can’t white-knuckle your way to your dreams.

We think it’s possible to set our sights high and roll with things along the way. That’s why we put so much stake in the plans and planning that go into your financial situation.

And it’s why we enjoy the work so much. Giving shape to dreams can be as thrilling as seeing them through—in fact, you can’t get there without it.

Clients, when you’re ready to talk about this or anything else, let us know.

What’s a Win?

photo shows a person with a hat and ponytail sitting on a cliff's edge

Maybe you’ve seen this type of picture on social media lately: the family perched on big rocks in the hillside or an orange sunset over the shoulder from the peak of a mountain. Plenty of our friends and relations have been enjoying more of the great outdoors in the past few weeks. Some have even been inspired to hike for the first time!

Those majestic views are such a treat, even experienced vicariously through my screen. But they had me thinking about those hikes and the challenges they pose.

Say you were planning a hike on a new trail. Maybe a two-mile trek would be a reasonable goal: challenging given the terrain, but totally possible. Yeah, it could actually be exciting to push yourself and make that happen! Two miles of work, the corresponding exercise endorphins, and gorgeous views?

That hike would be a win.

So you set off. After feeling the initial burn, you settle into a rhythm and are enjoying yourself. Maybe there’s more to gain here than you expected.

At the end of your planned route, you still feel like you have gas in the tank: on a whim, you travel on for two more miles.

You can’t believe it! This is farther than you’ve ever hiked in your life, more steps than you could ever have imagined! It is totally thrilling.

You check your watch. Time to head back, you suppose, but what a ride! It’s only once you look up that you realize what you’ve done. The gas in the tank was supposed to be for coasting back to comfort and safety.

Your reasonable win has become a burden. Your resources are low; it’s hard to enjoy what you did accomplish because of how little you’re left with now.

Mistakes like these aren’t always deadly or catastrophic—but they can certainly harm your goals and your wellbeing. For investors, the instinct to throw everything in on the way up (and up and up and up!) can mean that much harder of a fall when the reality sets in.

What’s a win? If you set your terms going in, you may be less tempted to risk your goal for some moonshot you didn’t need in the first place.

Clients, remember: we are all about your goals. If you feel them shifting or want to talk, call or email any time.

It’s a Whole New Ball Game

picture shows sunrise behind dewy grass

Millions of us are living through new experiences. The global pandemic has affected many aspects of daily life. Sportscasters and others have used the expression “It’s a whole new ball game” to describe suddenly changed circumstances.

It seems apt now. The rate of change—and the stakes—in this pandemic can feel overwhelming and disorienting. And yet we wonder…

We humans start out knowing nothing about anything, right? Babyhood was a whole new ball game, along with getting teeth, walking, going to kindergarten, making friends (and enemies), and all the other developments in our lives.

So how is it that we have each managed to adapt and deal with this lifetime of ever-changing circumstances, coped with each and every “whole new ball game”? What lessons are there as we each deal with our current set of changes?

Some of the answers might be found in our own pasts, the things that have taught us perspective. Maybe the answers are in our goals and priorities: they could guide the way through. No matter what we each face now, the overall challenge of change remains.

We might revise the old saying and conclude, “It’s always a whole new ball game.”

Clients, if you’d like to discuss this or anything else, write or call.

Thoughts and Destiny

pic for Thoughts and Destiny

Our thoughts become words; words, actions; actions, habits; habits, character.

What we “do” for work is sometimes hard to describe. Often, it starts in the mind. Either we have a hunch, or a client wonders, “What if…”

Soon, we’re writing or talking about it. We’re acting on our plan. We’re integrating the change into the overall vision. And we’ve done it! We’re working our whole, integrated system.

Simple enough, right? Deliberate motion.

But it starts with planning, taking those thoughts and arranging them in the direction of our goals.

Lately, we’ve been thinking about that series of relationships. We’ve seen the sentiment posted above in many forms over the years, and we found out that versions of that idea have been ascribed to various poets and teachers for hundreds of years (not to mention Lao Tzu, Margaret Thatcher, and even the Buddha!).

Maybe the credit ought to be shared after all, because we think there is treasure of wisdom in this notion. If we could condense the chain, it would be this: planning is the attempt to shape your destiny.

Planning is agreeing to take your ideas seriously enough to examine them. Planning is a decision that your life will no longer be a thing that happens to you.

Planning is “opting in” to your life.

Clients, there is no one path we’re prescribing here. But we are firm believers in helping you work toward your goals, and geez are we geared up about it.

Whether it’s a thought from your head or a question for us, we’d love to hear from you. Write or call anytime.