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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milestones
White-Knuckle Dreams
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.
When I’m 64
First Light
Each one of us remembers some new beginning. Perhaps your first thought at seeing the phrase might be of a first day of school, or first kiss, first day at a new job, new relationship, life in a new neighborhood, or something else.
Beginnings are all about potential, anticipation and excitement: a journey on roads we’ve not traveled.
I often take walks in the first light of dawn. The quality of the light in that hour can be magical, whether in the village of Louisville or the banks of the Platte River, along San Diego Bay or Michigan Avenue or in Pinellas County, Florida.
But the meaning of first light is more special to me than the beautiful scenes it might envelope. First light is a new day dawning, another step on a path never before taken. It is fraught with potential, anticipation, and excitement. Each day is a beginning.
This perspective may be helpful to move forward from past hard times, or to change things we would like to change. But it can also be useful as we seek to strengthen new habits or build on recent successes. Whether things are going well or poorly, a beginning is a chance to reset.
What new beginning excites you? Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.
Anniversaries
We balance our attention between the moments in which we live, and the longer term over which we plan for the future. Anniversaries are a natural place to pause and take stock.
My 63rd birthday approaches. This may not seem like a particularly important number, but for me it is. My father and my eldest brother both passed away at age 62. Getting older has never been a problem for me; it is key to my intention to live a long and productive life. I am trying to do what I can to extend the string of birthdays so I can indeed work to age 92.
The 25th anniversary of my affiliation with LPL Financial comes later this year. It has always seemed like the right choice. With the challenges that we have had to work around in recent years, the flexibility and effectiveness of our partner LPL has become vital. In particular, full support for 21st century communication has helped us make a digital presence a key way to deal with periodic separation in time and distance.
Speaking of partners, I will celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary with the really important one this summer. In a life filled with good fortune, I count alphabetical order as a special blessing. On the first day of freshman year of high school, I found my assigned locker right next to Cathy Livingston’s.
You play a huge role in my long range plans: you are why I want to work to age 92. To say I am having a good time would be an understatement. While enjoying the moments as they pass, I’m also looking ahead to ways to build an organization that can better serve you, on a more sustainable basis.
Back to work! Thank you all, for everything. If you would like to talk about anything, please email us or call.
Happy Anniversary!
Leibman Financial Services (LFS) was born in August, 1996. It was the culmination of nearly twenty years of prior experience in virtually every aspect of financial services. August 2016 marks the 20th Anniversary of our founding.
While the twenty years before LFS covered a wide range of insurance and banking and investment and benefit products, LFS was intended to focus very tightly on helping people manage their money to get where they wanted to go. This is why we are in business.
And what an incredible twenty years it has been!
- We were fortunate to be aligned with the independent broker-dealer LPL Financial. LPL provides the platform, resources, and expertise we need to provide state-of-the-art services to you.
- We were fortunate to land our facilities at 228 Main in beautiful downtown Louisville. It’s a great place to do business.
- Most of all, we were fortunate to be able to serve so many wonderful people. We are privileged to help with many of life’s most important topics.
A milestone is a natural place to look back and look ahead. We are excited about the future, for a number of reasons:
- The gap between expectations and reality as it unfolds is where investment opportunity lives—and we believe the gap is historically wide right now.
- We have the largest and most capable staff we’ve ever had, to do the work we need to do for you.
- Our range of offerings is expanding to better pursue the diverse needs and circumstances of our clients.
- Our communications program expanded dramatically over the past year, with a complete library of our philosophy and methods at 228Main.com and daily commentary in three ‘New Media’ venues.
- The founder is intent on working to age 92, and feels better than ever about being able to do so.
A heartfelt ‘Thank You’ to everyone. We are looking forward to the years and decades ahead.
A Time to Reflect
These are exciting times. With a birthday approaching, I am halfway to 120 years old. It is a natural place to stop and reflect on the journey so far, and the path ahead.
Twenty years ago, I was planning the concept that turned into Leibman Financial Services. At its heart, the idea was to build a business whose success depends entirely on the success of clients. After two prior decades of working with money in most of its forms, the experience and preparation were in place. The interest and passion was there. All we needed was people who would entrust us with their hard-earned wealth and well-thought plans.
Then you showed up. Thank you. The work is gratifying beyond words. And that leads to the next topic, the path ahead.
I plan to work to age 92. Two of my oldest friends, now gone, worked to that age in their own businesses. They were vibrant and active and happy in their later years, a good model for me.
It is amazing how a cherished objective can shape your actions and choices. I often say it is almost embarrassing to be learning so much at such an advanced age. But this is just lame humor. The need to keep learning and adapting and to stay current with developments in the economy and the markets and the business, and to get the resources and people in place to serve your needs, and the constant search for investment opportunities…all of this is invigorating. I feel like I discovered the Fountain of Youth.
The future is not guaranteed to us, in any sense. We can plan a big retirement party for the year 2048 when I turn 92. But we can’t know that any one of us will be there. So we would also like to extend another invitation, for something a little sooner.
If you would like to have breakfast with me at B’s Diner in Louisville, or lunch at the Main Street Café, just call the shop. We are scheduling through mid-July, so there are plenty of slots. The coffee’s always on, too, so if another time would suit you better, we can do that. Thank you all, so much, for the decades–past and future.
Make Sense of Your Financial Planning
If you go searching for financial planning help, you will find a great many tools at your disposal, from online calculators to professional financial planners who can help you chart a course for your future.
Whether you’re using online tools or seeing a professional face-to-face, the logic they will use is often the same. First, they will sit down and total the major expenses you expect to face over your lifespan: paying off debt, marriage, childbirth, kids’ college, new houses, retirement, et cetera. Then they divide the grand total of your expenses over the number of years you expect to live through to pay them off, adjust it for compounding interest, and arrive at a target percentage of your income that you should be saving each and every year of your life in order to afford these major milestones.
Often calculations like these will give you worrying results. This arithmetic often tells you that you must put aside an enormous amount of income into savings or else you will never be able to afford to retire.
Fortunately, there are a couple of crucial flaws in this reasoning that may provide some relief. Young couples often stay up late worrying how they’re going to pay for a house, kids, college, and retirement, and the answer is simple: you’re not paying for all of those things at the same time. As we advance through our lives, new expenditures come up and old ones go away. When you buy a house, the money you were setting aside for a down payment turns into money you set aside for kids. When you send your kids off to college, the money you were setting aside for them turns into money you set aside for retirement. You don’t have to save for all your big expenses in advance: your cash flow (which will tend to increase as your earning power grows with age and experience) will help accommodate different expenses at various times.
Don’t get us wrong: saving more money is better than saving less money. But it’s important to remember what you’re saving money for in the first place, so that you can spend money on the things you want and need in life. Call us if you need any help making your plans and planning work.
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.
It’s the Journey, Not the Destination
When we think about our lives and plans, milestones are a useful concept to help organize our thoughts. In ages past, the mile markers on the roads of the Roman Empire let travelers know of the progress of their journey.
The same is true of the milestones in our lives: birthdays, anniversaries, graduations and retirements are points on the journey, not the destination. The road continues on, after we reach each milestone. They are memorable accomplishments worthy of celebrating, a natural time to reflect and take stock… but not the destination.
Thus it is with our business anniversaries. We’ve been at 228 Main in beautiful downtown Louisville for fifteen years, as of November 1st. Larry is wrapping up one year in our shop already; Greg will soon mark his sixth anniversary. Next year, our firm marks twenty years in its current form.
But we measure our progress by the people we’ve helped. The staff, systems, experience and resources we put together to do our work for you more effectively are our true milestones. Hiring a third member of the team, having a dedicated staffer to help with the technology clients use, building out our 24/7 communications in the New Media, allocating more time to research and portfolio management: these are the recent milestones we care about.
In other words, our true milestones are the ones that help us help you make sense of your journey.
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