long term planning

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/.

Birthday!

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One of my most cherished goals in life has been to get old without being old.

The first half of that is marked by having birthdays. These are signs of progress. Some people I knew do not have birthdays any more, and I wish they would. Getting older is a good thing, especially compared to the alternative.

The second part, not being old, is trickier. The plan to work to age 92 is surely part of the equation. While some of my peers are coasting toward the finish line, we are focused on the decades ahead. We work on figuring out how to serve you more effectively, how to be better. This plan is giving us a sense of vibrancy and growth one typically finds in younger people.

My birthday is coming up. Here is what it means, in years: 28 more years until retirement. Save the date: May 27, 2048. We are going to have a party.

The mindset is one piece of it. I won’t detail the other pieces. They are boring, and everyone already knows them: the five things you try to be healthy at in order to live a long time. In this new, more boring phase of life for me, I have time for those things.

Please note, I am not prescribing this working lifestyle to anyone else. I may have been dropped on my head as a child, I don’t know what makes me think this way. It goes back a long way. Good thing so many of you retired younger than 92, or plan to, so I have work to do!

A debt of gratitude goes to you who employ me in this gratifying work. The plan will not pan out without you.

(We are planning to hire more younger-generation people. You will not need to worry about declining capacity on my part.)

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

For Those Close to Our Clients

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We believe there is an edge in playing the long game, and thinking long term. This applies to life and investing and planning, in our view.

In our work for clients, there is often a legacy aspect to it. Financially independent people tend to leave assets behind for loved ones or subsequent generations. This means that from time to time we find it necessary to work with a trustee or executor or beneficiaries or heirs of a client.

So those left behind face a lot of new things, and often need to try to gain a feel for what we are all about here at 228 Main – decide whether we are trustworthy – at the same time. Clients sometimes tell us they hope their children will listen to our counsel, and hope that we will be there to work with heirs.

Recently a client expressed these kinds of wishes, and the hope that her children would get engaged with us, and perhaps use their inheritance wisely.

This makes sense. We all want the best things to happen. Our work is not finished until we have done what we can to make the best things more likely.

Here’s an idea that can help you and us improve the odds of success in this legacy work. Provide us with the email addresses of your children, heirs, trustees, executors, and other interested parties. We will add them to our weekly email newsletter list. By reading the blogs and watching the videos, others can gain a sense for what we are about. Convenient, on their schedule, people have told us it is a great way to get acquainted.

We don’t have time to bug people on our list, and it is very simple to unsubscribe. Nobody will get unsolicited spam or phone calls as a result of being on the subscriber list.

So if you are a client wishing to acquaint others with our work, please get us names and email addresses so we can add them to the list. If you are receiving emails from us and don’t know why, this is it. Unsubscribe if you would like, you’ll get no hassle from us. We are busy trying to grow the buckets entrusted to our care.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

Important but not Urgent

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On the advice of a speaker at a conference, I am in the process of re-reading Stephen Covey’s classic book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. This 1980’s staple of business literature is surprisingly timeless.

One of Covey’s theories is that time management is really self-management. He suggested that all tasks might be categorized according to urgent or not urgent, and important or not important. Those things that are both urgent and important must always be handled: production, emergencies, project deadlines.

But many important things are not urgent:

  • Building relationships.
  • Increasing productive capacity.
  • Looking at new opportunities.
  • Planning.
  • Recreation.

On any given day, these non-urgent things might be ignored without huge cost. But in the long run, the time we spend on them might be a key indicator of success, health, and happiness. A balance between production (urgent and important) and taking care of productive capacity (important but not urgent) may be a hallmark of sustainable enterprise.

This seems to apply to our personal lives as well as business. (If we are doing it right, we lead integrated lives – being the same person off the job and on the job, anyway.) Many things that give us a chance for a longer, healthier life are important but not urgent.

Working on your plans and planning, whether for retirement or estate planning or whatever, falls into that ‘important but not urgent’ category as well. Easy to put off, not a big cost to ignore for a short time, but with a huge impact on long term outcomes.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

Content in this material is for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

 

Taking Stock

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One of the things we do periodically with you is take stock. Having a periodic review helps us stay in touch with what is going on in your life. It’s also a good time to review your holdings, the economy and the markets as well. The items to discuss fall into these two basic categories.

  1. Planning – connecting your money to your life.
    1. Cash flow needs, saving, spending and lifestyle.
    2. Thinking on retirement.
    3. Plans for residence, if any, moving or major remodeling.
    4. Estate and trust considerations.
    5. Other objectives, special considerations, taxes.
  2. Investing – your portfolio and the markets.
    1. The role of volatility in long term investing.
    2. Risk tolerance discussion.
    3. Time horizon review.
    4. Our assessment of opportunities and risks.

Of course, we spend a lot of time working with you when a money question comes up. You can ask us anything, any time. If we don’t know the answer, we’ll do our best to find it.

Clients, if things are happening we should know about, please email us or call. Otherwise, we’ll be in touch by and by.

Navigating Life

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I have never been what they call “an early adopter.” Even at the dawn of the personal computing age, my strategy was to figure out where the leading edge of technology was, and take two steps back. So it may not surprise you to know I am fairly new to the world of smart phone navigation.

The way those systems work reminds me of the way we approach life here at 228 Main:

1. Start where you are.
2. Proceed by way of your plans.
3. Arrive at your dreams.

When the phone maps a route for you, it never says “Gosh! There are a lot of problems where you are. It’s too far to go! Maybe you should wait for a better day to go.” It simply takes your location and starts to make plans.

Once underway, if you get off course, the phone figures out whether it is better to go back the way you came, or take a new route to the same goal. One way or the other, it wants you back on track. It won’t let you go mile after mile the wrong direction.

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will do. So one of the basic requirements is knowing your destination.

When we think about our work for you, there are many similarities. We begin by understanding where you are, your starting point. We invest time in learning your goals (or dreams), helping you clarify them if necessary. Where you are, where you want to go: it is about the same as using your phone to navigate.

Then we do the work. Sort out the best path to get you to your dreams. Check in and monitor it to make sure you are still on course. Provide midcourse corrections if needed. And communicate continuously with you.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

Letters to our Children #4: Create Your Own Adventure

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Narratives, or stories, are how we understand the world and our place in it. They may play a powerful role in helping you form and reach your major aims. For example, my own narrative about working to age 92 has given our enterprise a vitality and dynamism that those coasting toward retirement may lack—among other benefits.

While your story is highly personal and unique, we often see these three patterns:

1. Younger clients are often aiming at building financial security, establishing homes and careers, within the longer term goal of becoming financially independent.
2. Some of our clients are retirees whose narratives involve being a good steward of their wealth, enjoying life by living modestly but well, and aiming at leaving a legacy to succeeding generations.
3. Others are more focused on travel or other things that were not possible during their working years, and having the cash flow to comfortably support those things.

The foundation of your narrative is your core principles, or what you are trying to do with your life. When your story connects with the most fundamental thing about you, it may be more likely to become true. What are the three most important things in your life?

Where and how do you want to live? What role will family play in your activities? How will you spend your time? Will you work at something you enjoy for pleasure in later years? Is entrepreneurship in your future?

You do yourself a big favor when you realize that life is your own adventure. You can create it.

Sometimes your story has to change because life happens. One chapter ends and a new one begins. We are almost never done with new chapters and new stories. Resiliency and adaptability, making the most of what you have to work with, are useful additions to any story.

Clients, if you would like to talk about your story or anything else, please email us or call.

Life in Four Dimensions

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Kurt Vonnegut wrote about a race of beings who could see in four dimensions. The fourth dimension is time. “All moments, past, present, and future, have always existed, always will exist.” They could look at different moments from the past or future the way you and I might look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains.

This is an interesting way to think about the work we do together with you, planning for the future. It requires us to see the future we want, and do what is needed to make that plan potentially become reality. People in their working years need to see ahead a decade or two or three, and envision the future.

Our investment process relies heavily on history, being able to see the past. Most conditions in the economy and markets repeat from time to time in one form or another. We can better understand these things when we know what has gone on before. In other words, seeing the past may provide clues that help us in the present.

The Vonnegut quote contains an implication with which we strongly disagree. The idea that the future is already set implies that nothing we do matters.

In fact, our whole philosophy is that the choices we make are crucial in shaping the future. There are many things beyond our control, but we control our actions. We do not control the future, but we can work to make the best things more likely to happen.

Putting this all together, we can formulate our own idea about life in four dimensions: learn from the past to shape the future we desire. When we work together, we have a better chance to pull this off.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this, or anything else, please email us or call.

Change is Changing

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When we think about our lives, our work, and our leisure, it seems evident that the pace of change is accelerating. This is not a new idea. A 1970 best-selling book by Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Future Shock, first brought this idea into public consciousness—they argued that the rate of change was overwhelming for many people. The future was coming too quickly. And since then, things have only gotten faster.

A speaker spent time talking about change at the recent LPL Financial national conference. One of the lessons of change is that knowing about it is not good enough, but instead, “You have to do something about it.”

We think about the evolution of the economy and the markets, the changing face of law and regulation, industry trends that affect us, and the unfolding needs of you, our clients. There are many sources of change!

Knowing that adaptability is the new superpower, as White says, we also think about how we survive change, or better yet, thrive in it. How do we “do something about it”? The answer, for us, has a number of parts.

• Focusing on your wellbeing helps us sort out what we need to do in seeking to improve your position in the years ahead. You know our theory has long been the better off you are, the better off we will ultimately be. Looking at change through this lens brings clarity about what we need to do.

• Planning to work to age 92 has perhaps given us the perspective of a younger, more vibrant enterprise. When others might be coasting toward retirement, seeking an exit, we are gearing up and planning for the decades ahead.

• Having a sophisticated institutional partner like LPL Financial is a boon. It feels as if they are creating the future of digital communications together with us. They are at the leading edge of new media in terms of support and training, in our opinion. Few colleagues employ these tools to the extent we do, to keep our connection to you.

The unfolding future, change and all, feels as if it were built for us. We like having the same story for everyone. Communicating at the speed of light is good for you and for us. And it is as gratifying as ever to work with you as you strive toward your goals.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

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