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New
Year’s Resolutions Revisited / February 2007 Justus
Morgan |
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By now
you have had a month to keep or break your New Year’s resolutions. I
purposely waited to write this article until February to underscore the
importance of goal setting regardless of the time of year. In
financial planning, as in most things in life, it is much easier to attain
success if you have an idea of what success means in the first place. One of
the purposes of financial planning is to assist people with sifting through
endless amounts of information in order to make financial decisions that are
consistent with their life goals and objectives. This, of course, begs the
question, what are your life goals and objectives? A series
of questions I ask all new clients were originally created by a fellow
financial planner, George Kinder (rhymes with tinder) to get to the heart of
what his clients were trying to achieve in their lives. Instead of the usual
responses you often hear and see (more money, bigger house, nicer car, etc.),
I encourage you to sit down and spend a half hour answering the following
questions either alone or with someone else: 1. Your great aunt Martha passed away and left
you $100 million dollars. What will you do with it? How will you live your
life? What will change? 2. This time instead of great aunt Martha
passing away (so take away the $100 million), it is you who go to the doctor
who then tells you that you only have 5-7 years left to live. How will you
change your life? What will you choose to do in the amount of time remaining? 3. Since you’re a prudent person, if a doctor
told you that you only had 5-7 years left to live, you would seek a second
opinion except that this time, the doctor says instead of 5-7 years left to
live, you only have 24 hours left. What regrets would you have? What dreams
will be left unfulfilled? As you
progress through the three questions, you may have the same response for
several of the questions. This is a good indication that this area of your
life is not as fulfilled as you would like it. It’s amazing how many people’s
answers don’t necessarily involve spending more money (even answers to
Question One) but just rearranging priorities. In my career as a financial
planner, I have heard a variety of responses to these questions that cover a
couple of broad themes ranging from traveling to spending more time with
family to making a change in one’s career. Other
times, you may not have an answer to the questions because you are satisfied
with your life. I encounter this response with older clients who have lived a
fulfilling life already. This is great news and their goal then becomes
protecting their ability to continue to live a satisfying life as long as
possible. I don’t
purport to have the answers to any of these questions because the answer is
unique to each of us. As Galileo once said, “All truths are easy to
understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” This
exercise is dedicated to the discovery process which lays a foundation of
values that will ultimately lead to improving your financial wellness. Justus Morgan is
Vice-President of Financial Service Group, Inc., a registered investment
advisory firm in |