Sometimes life’s big milestones arrive in a neat, straight line. And sometimes that’s just not what happens—or what we want to happen. How do we plan for a swoopy life?
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lifestyle planning
What If a Hunch Was as Good as a Plan? 🤔
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” A new school year is underway, but it’s not just children who feel like they have to have answers to the big questions.
New clients will on occasion visit our office with apologies ready: they don’t exactly know what they want or what they might need in the future.
And that’s okay. Plans and hunches and visions… It’s all welcome.
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Enjoying the Fruits of Your Labor
by Mark Leibman
We’re inspired by recent conversations with clients and friends whose plans, as they say, have come to fruition.
Fruition—the realization or fulfillment of a plan or project—scarcely begins to describe the satisfaction and joy we’ve seen.
What types of projects?
There’s recent retirees who downsized to a maintenance-free home, going to art festivals instead of pulling weeds, having more dinners with their descendants, and seeing more ball games. There’s the people going on that Alaska cruise or the tour of Italy. There’s the people turning hobbies into true avocations.
These are just some of the plans we’ve seen come to fruition for people we are close to.
A wise person once said that a plan is a dream put into writing. We are in the business of trying to make the arithmetic work for people who would like to try to make their dreams come true. We’ve written before about the best way to retire, and the point is, dreams are personal.
What are you trying to do? Where do you want to wind up?
One of the privileges of long experience in our work is seeing the realization or fulfillment of those plans made long ago. But life sometimes throws curve balls. So we’ve also seen adjustments made by people who would have preferred to avoid the need to adapt. Not everyone we love lives as long as we wished, health may be fleeting, and circumstances often present a mixed bag. Nevertheless, sound plans usually put us in better shape to deal with the unanticipated.
Money is not the most important thing in the world. But it is also true that our resources can buy us options we might otherwise not have. Wealth may free up our time, and time is what life is made of. Dreams and arithmetic working together may make the best things more likely.
If you would like to discuss your dreams and plans in greater detail, please write or call.
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When Life’s Not a Straight Line
Sometimes life’s big milestones arrive in a neat, straight line. And sometimes that’s just not what happens—or what we want to happen. How do we plan for a swoopy life?
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When a Hunch Is Good Enough: Invest Wisely, Spend Well (Whenever)
It’s a new school year for so many of our children, grandchildren, and neighbors. Maybe you’ve enjoyed the flood of perennial back-to-school photos. Some families have their children hold up chalkboard signs, to record the details—their new teacher’s name, their favorite color right now, and even what they’d like to be when they grow up.
I can’t help but imagine what surprises are in store for some of these little ones! Who among us could’ve known exactly what form of work would find us in the future? Bike courier, hotel manager, a director of photography who specializes in making food look good in commercials—did any of these folks call their shot as kindergarteners?
It’s an interesting question, and maybe we should keep asking it. What do I want to be when I… reach my next birthday? Or the one five or ten years hence?
What do I want to have in the next chapter of my life?
What doors would I like to keep open?
These might sound like daydreams, but even the hazy hunches of children can be revealing, if not instructive. Sometimes new clients visit our office with apologies ready: they don’t exactly know what their goals are, they don’t know what to ask for, or they can’t begin to imagine what will be possible down the road.
And that’s okay. Just like the question on those little chalkboards, a hunch is good enough. Memoirist Katrina Kenison wonders, “Who knows, really, where dreams begin?” Maybe we’ve been on a certain winding path since we were children. Maybe we discover what we’re about later in life. Maybe our circumstances change, and we get dealt a hand we didn’t imagine we’d ever be playing.
A friend of mine used to tell their children, “This is the plan… until it isn’t.” And that’s life, right?
It’s okay to settle on a general direction, even in your financial life. Growth, an eye on sustainability: these are worthy plans all by themselves. You don’t have to know the destination of every penny. Such a privilege means that you’re buying your future self some options. Resources bring flexibility.
You can always invest wisely, now; the “spend well” part can wait. And what a journey that will be! We’re glad to be here with you.
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Play the audio version of this post below:
When a Hunch Is Good Enough – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services
This text is available at https://www.228Main.com/.
Throwing Yourself for a Loop
Sometimes life’s big milestones arrive in a neat, straight line. And sometimes that’s just not what happens—or what we want to happen. How do we plan for a swoopy life?
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To Cheap or Not To Cheap: It’s Not Really a Question!
Remember Rich Uncle Pennybags? He’s the mascot from Monopoly. Top hat, monocle, sacks of cash. As kids, he might have been the cartoonish dream for some of us, the ultimate image of what “rich” looks like.
Obviously the reality is different, and our dreams mature as we do. Clients, in our conversations with you, it doesn’t seem like his life or image is the one you’re pining for.
But there is one surprising realization about the life of the “rich”: it is usually much, much less expensive to be rich than to be poor.
Why? Having money enables us to live more efficiently and avoid many painful financial pitfalls.
To begin with, credit may sound like a bargain—after all, you’re getting more money now than you otherwise could spend! But there really isn’t any such thing as “cheap credit.” If you are able to lay down cash for major purchases, you don’t just save on fees and interest: you may even be able to negotiate a better price.
If you are funding large items on a credit card, you are likely to wind up paying many times what they are worth. If you find yourself in a spot where you need to turn to high-risk credit in the form of payday loans, things get even worse.
There are other ways that having money allows you to stretch your resources out, too. Buying quality merchandise may take more money up front, but the alternative is buying shoddy products: if you find cheap furniture that falls apart every year or two, you’re still paying to replace pieces more often. You may save money in the long run by paying more up front. (Of course, care must still be taken to select your purchases carefully: higher cost does not always correlate to higher quality!)
Also, when you have a life of plenty you have the luxury of being able to shop around and wait for a better price. The rich get to be rich in time, too. Be a little choosy, not cheap.
These habits are ones that all of us can use to help us build and maintain our own wealth.
The wonderful conundrum that some have discovered is this: the less you spend, the more wealth you accrue; the more wealth you have, the less you need to spend.
Clients, write or call when you’d like to talk about what this means for 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.
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Play the audio version of this post below:
To Cheap or Not To Cheap: It's Not Really a Question! – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services
This text is available at https://www.228Main.com/.
Don’t Let Anybody “Should” All Over You
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Light at the End of the Tunnel: Good News toward a Vaccine
For up there is down; for day there is night. Sunrise, sunset. You’ve heard this from us before. It’s been challenging for many of us to apply this same awareness to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the earliest cases of the virus were detected this time last year, and many of us in the U.S. have been living much more restricted lifestyles since early spring of this year.
The changes we’ve made—limiting travel, exposure, contact, among others—have been a reasonable price to pay for the possibility of preserving the health and vitality of ourselves and those around us. And yet, it’s still been a long stretch. It’s had its tough moments.
But the sun keeps rising, we continue to count our blessings, and the latest scientific developments may help provide some hope.
Following a recently completed phase of a COVID-19 vaccine trial, the National Institutes of Health reported promising results, suggesting this latest “vaccine is safe and effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in adults.”
This isn’t a victory by itself, but it’s certainly an important milestone in the journey forward. Many partners are working together to figure out the logistics: how a vaccine would be produced, stored, transported, distributed; how its effects would be monitored; and how other areas might be affected as the vaccine takes priority. All that is to say… it’s complex.
But it’s not impossible. And it’s not forever. It may feel like we’ve been traveling through a long, dark tunnel. Here’s the thing about tunnels: they’ve got exits. It’s possible that things are dark and that we’re still on our way.
Let’s keep our heads up, toward that glimmer of light ahead.
Clients, when you’d like to talk about what all this means for you, your plans, and your planning, reach out.
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If These Walls Could Talk (About Retirement)
It’s generally a good thing when more cash is coming in than going out.
When our planned retirement income is greater than our expenses, we have the basis for a solvent retirement. The equation could be stated pretty simply: income > expenses.
The bigger part of our work and time and energy is devoted to striving to build your capital. More capital means more cash flow from your capital. We’re trying to get you access to the income you’ll need and want.
But lifestyle decisions may have a bigger impact on our finances, by way of expenses—that other side of our equation.
I recently decided to buy a different home, selling one I had originally purchased for a life chapter now ended. There is no sacrifice involved: the new place thrills me, although it is less than half the size of the old one. It actually feels like an upgrade to my quality of life.
The new place also features less than half the utilities, taxes, maintenance, insurance, and other expenses. Those add up to more than $1,000 in savings per month for me.
When downsizing helps you wipe out mortgage debt, that might improve your annual cash flow by thousands of dollars.
The effect of this lifestyle change on my retirement picture is amazing. Projected Social Security benefits cover a larger fraction of the budget. So a reduction in my need for income produces a much larger reduction in the capital I need to retire comfortably.
Reducing expenses means our money goes farther. Perhaps it means we can retire at a younger age or live with greater flexibility.
Clients, I still intend to work to age 92. And I’m looking forward to a new chapter where my living arrangements make more sense to me.
We are happy to talk with you about your retirement plans and planning, whenever you are ready. Email us or call.
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