Best Week In A Long Time

I’ve conducted a number of annual financial reviews with clients this week and it has been one of the best weeks in a long time.  No one will try and convince anyone that the uncertainty and the fear that’s been prevalent over the last two years is gone, but the comments and attitudes expressed by my clients this week have left me feeling extremely optimistic and positive.

Maybe one of the positive outcomes of recent struggles and difficulties will be a collective alteration to our priorities.  I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog post (http://wallfinancial.blogspot.com/2010/09/today-vs-yesterday.html ) how many clients have been reexamining where they spend their money, how they spend their time, what they feel is an important financial example for their children, etc. 

Label it how you want, but I have recently thought that it is best described as a return to genuineness.  A more reasonable level of consumerism, a more reasonable set of investment-return expectations, a more reasonable use of credit, and a more focused and intentional allocation of income (i.e. more closely following a budget) are probably good long-term goals for each of us and collectively as a national economy.  Perhaps these forced new habits will become habits by choice as we begin to see more tangible evidence of their benefits.

So when conducting annual reviews this week and I hear things like “we are very happy”, and “we really didn’t realize how much control we really had”, and “we never knew how great it would feel to be completely credit-card-debt free”, and “we are a lot more prepared for the future”, it gives me confidence that lessons learned the hard way will leave us better off and happier. 

What This Blog ISN'T

The  most common questions I get via this blog usually look like:  “Why don’t you give more investment tips?” and “How does any of this relate to me?”. 

“Why don’t you give more investment tips?”

1.       I don’t know you, so I can’t say that you should be investing.

2.       Tip: be wary of “tips” from people who don’t know you or your situation.

3.       There are literally millions of other web sites giving investment tips and the world doesn’t need another one.

“How does any of this relate to me?”

1.       Maybe it doesn’t.

2.       I believe most people want to be happier financially and these are just my thoughts on starting that journey.  Maybe one of them motivates you, too.

3.       Unless money is your idol, I believe gentle reminders that finances follow a happy life and not the other way around might be a positive influence.

Give Hilariously

Someone I admire coined that phrase to describe his commitment to giving his time and money away.  How many people laughed/scoffed at pronouncements by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that they intend to give their fortunes away?  How many people who didn’t laugh instead said “that’s easy for them to do because they are billionaires?”

My friend is definitely NOT a billionaire and yet he and his wife have given a lot of their hard-earned (and sometimes very scarce) money away every year of their 35 years of marriage.  How many people would laugh at that? 

Some people give because they feel there’s an opportunity for their God to work through them in positive ways.  Others give because they feel a moral obligation to share.  Others give because they feel that philanthropy outperforms government/political options.  Others give because they are angry at inequality and injustice. 

In my last post I shared how I often find people living in ways that are not in alignment with what they would describe as their priority in life.  The good part is that at least the priorities are there in the first place!  What is equally encouraging is that almost everyone I work with has a desire to give something away to people they believe are not as fortunate or not as blessed.   I think this is no small phenomenon and one worth more than just an “ah, that’s nice”. 

So maybe it is a little funny to be challenging ourselves to give money away after/during one of the most uncertain economic times in 80 years.  And maybe it’s funny to think that even small amounts can make a difference in someone’s ability to work ( www.kiva.org ).  And maybe it’s funny to think that $1/day can pay for medicine and clean water and food and education ( www.worldvision.org ).  And maybe forgiving the poorest nations’ debts to the world’s wealthiest is funny, too ( www.one.org ).

We Say A, We Do B

I feel the most important part of my job is helping people get at the heart of their life’s motivations.  Why do we work?  Why are we planning for the future?  Why do we save for our children’s college education?  I think that understanding motivation is the most basic and beginner-level requirement of being a good advisor.

Most every person I meet quickly tells me that their primary motivation for all of their work and saving is for the love of their family.  Most every person I meet says that they want to provide for their family, to give them opportunities, and to deliver safety and security.  But then I get to take a closer look at exactly how people are actually living and then the real work begins.

Most people I meet with aren’t living like they are pursuing their own motivation.  This is what I see more often than not:

Expressed Motivation	Behavioral Reality
I work for my family’s security	I’m miserable at my job I’m a total grump at home
I save for my kids’ college opportunities	I’m not home for dinner much and don’t see my kids
I want to teach my kids good lessons & habits	I keep adding to unnecessary credit card debts
I want a closeness with my spouse	We never do anything together
I want retirement-years free time with my spouse	Our money + other stresses are hurting our marriage now

I am certainly no touchy-feely counselor or preacher for exactly how people should live and I have no expertise or recipe for making everything work perfectly.  But I have been blessed with many clients who trust me to help them with their financial planning.  This means I get to help them identify what they want and then work alongside them over the years to help them achieve it.  This blessing and experience has showed me how often we all occasionally lose sight of what we desperately want to believe are the most important things to us.  I wish it were less common, but it is what I see.

So ask yourself first “What are the most important things in my life?” and then take a look at two things: 1) your checkbook, and 2) your calendar.  Is how you are living working toward making you happier?  If not, the good news is that there is nobody stopping you from making a change!

Nevertirement/Retirement Checklist

Not always received favorably, you’ll recall my prior post advocating a Nevertire plan vs. a Retire plan (http://wallfinancial.blogspot.com/2010/09/nevertiree-vs-retiree.html).  No matter your opinion on that, planning for the future regardless of whether you want no-work, or passion-work run very similar parallels for the majority of the time people maintain careers.  When you are 30, for example, your habits of saving for future goals really don’t hinge on whether or not you want to stop working altogether at age 65 or start leading bike tours at REI.

So whether your dream is to retire completely, partially, or not at all, here is a Nevertire/Retire Checklist that might be helpful.

When you are in your 30s:

• Build an emergency fund.  Do you have at least 6 months worth of cash?
• If your employer offers a 401(k)-type savings plan, use it!
• As your salary increases, so should your 401(k) contribution.
• Look for other tax-advantaged ways to save.
• Understand risk, but think growth-focus.

When you are in your 40s:

• Be disciplined with how you pay for things (debt vs. cash) and boost the emergency fund.
• Get real.  This is when many get their first shock saying, “I really need THAT much to retire?”  Better to know now than later.
• Keep it simple.  If you have 2 old 401(k) accounts, 3 IRAs, 2 brokerage accounts, consolidate what you can to make it easier to follow.
• Are you allocated correctly for your risk tolerance, age, goals, etc?  Many folks need some serious rebalancing.

When you are in your 50s:

• Get real (again).  Keep a close eye on progress toward goals.  What needs to change?  The sooner you act, the better.
• Get an idea for how you will derive income in retirement.  Do you specifically how it is going to work?  Understand the details.
• Are you allocated correctly?  Might be a time to reposition your investments and rebalance again.

When you are in your 60s:

• Most folks have a specific plan, so general advice probably isn’t wise.  All actions need to support your plan.

Why Are You Talking To Me?

A woman asked me last week for my reasons why she should hire me and I told her that I didn’t think that she should.  What was missing was her reason for why she was meeting with me in the first place.  I didn’t think it was justifiable to lead her toward an engagement without her being the driver as to why she needed it.  

I go to my physical therapist instead of using webmd.com because I want my shoulder fixed when it is injured.  I use my CPA instead of filing my own taxes because I want my returns to be accurate.  We cannot be experts at everything and for the most important things in my life I am happy to place much of the work in the hands of an expert whom I trust.  But, I am not vague in why I am using them as my expert. 

The woman I met with last week told me only that she wanted to be sure she was “headed in the right direction”.  When I asked her where she wanted to go she wasn’t able to answer.   It isn’t necessary to have the answers as that’s the reason why experts exist in the first place, but it is necessary to have the questions.

So be intentional with why you’ll be hiring a financial planner.  I advocate intentional living many times in this blog and it should be no different when deciding whether or not to use a financial advisor.   

 

I think these are good reasons to consider hiring a financial advisor:

• We want help creating a plan to reduce our debt and increase our savings in order for us to be able to afford to pay for our kids’ college. 
• We would like to retire from our current jobs at 65 and start an online distributorship for local farmers and we need a plan for how to get there.
• We want help figuring out how to be less concerned about the fluctuations in our investment savings accounts as we age and become less tolerant of risk.
• We want to downsize our financial commitments and move downtown to a condo, so we need a plan for how to do that.

 I think these are not good reasons to consider hiring a financial advisor:

• We want someone to tell us if we’re doing the right things.
• We want our investments to do better.
• We want someone to watch our backs financially.
• We need to save for retirement.

Be more protective, possessive, and demanding of what is important to you.  Give specific reasons why you are hiring someone and I’m guessing you’ll get better advice and a much more valuable relationship.

Bandwagon Jumpers

Firms in the investment advising industry are changing their tunes a bit lately.  When times were “good” they spent millions on advertising trying to convince you that you’d be wealthy beyond your imagination.  “Just wait until you retire and wow! what a great life you’ll have sailing on your yacht all day. “

Now that consumers have been through a bit of a rough patch have you noticed that more and more commercials from investment firms have toned themselves down?  Now they are telling you that they’ll make it easy to convert the 401(k) from your lost job into an IRA, or that they’ll help you plan a much more reasonable retirement so that at least you’ll be comfortable. 

So the message from them seems to be that during times when they want to sell unreasonable expectations that your $4,000 investment in your IRA this year will become $1,000,000 in just 15 years, they’ll be there to help you believe that.  And during times when you have unreasonable fears that you can’t accomplish anything financially, they’ll be there to help you at least with the paperwork when you lose your job. 

Barf.  Instead, why don’t you choose to work with someone who is going to send you a consistent message?  Personally, I like the one where we say that we’re going to know you well enough to understand what you want and to be courageous enough to tell you the truth about you getting there.  That used to be rather unpopular when we told people to tone down their expectations as their portfolios kept jumping up.  But we kept saying it and believing it and working at it. And now it is rather unpopular to tell people that the personal pursuit of financial happiness is possible.  But we’re going to keep saying it and believing it and working at it.   

Nevertiree vs. Retiree

The reality for most families is that they cannot/will not save enough money during their working years to afford a completely independent retirement.  The realities when some people reach 65 look different than the dreams they had when they were 35.  That’s because inflation is a too-powerful influence on spending needs, the investment markets’ performances are too volatile and unpredictable, we are all living longer in retirement, and our consumption of goods and services inhibits high savings rates during our working years.

So it bums me out when I hear of retirees’ disappointment that their retirement years aren’t as they expected.  What I ask them when they tell me this is “what would you have done differently”?  Some people say that they’d start saving more earlier in their lives, which is great.  But even more people say what I think is the best advice for retirement planning.  They say, “I’d have followed my dreams”.  They would have chosen a different career.  They would have taken more risks.  They would have traveled more.  They would have tried different things. 

We can benefit from their experience.  This isn’t New Age woo-woo stuff, this is about you deciding how you are going to live.  Physically, spiritually, and financially.  There is no magic in planning your finances and there are only so many options for paying for a current and future lifestyle.  None of them are easy.  But it is no harder to plan your finances around living how you want than planning it to blindly follow a path that everyone tells you is “right”.

So I’m calling on people to stop planning for this:

·         Get a job. 

·         Hate the job. 

·         Save 1-2% of income. 

·         Can’t wait for retirement. 

·         Retire. 

·         Depend on Social Security and government programs.

·         Eke out a living for 25 years at just above the poverty line.

And instead, start planning for this:

·         Find a passion and pursue it as a means of earning a living.

·         Don’t save amazing life experiences for tomorrow.

·         Consider your investment portfolio as a depot for savings, not depending on it as a magical panacea for all of your future financial needs.  Because it won’t be.

·         Be a “nevertiree” where your engine of earning an income never shuts off.  Quit one job for another, work only 10 hours per week, start a business, make wooden toys, sell stuff on the internet, etc.  Just never quit.

Sharing Blessings Thru Finance & Economy

One of our most precious freedoms in the U.S. is the freedom of enterprise and the access to financial markets that leverage hard work and creativity into a way of life and standard of living that is unprecedented anywhere else in the world.  If you need a mortgage for a house, or a small business loan, or insurance, or a checking account, most all of us can get one.  Imagine for a second if you couldn’t. 

Did you know that 2.1 billion people live on less than $2 per day?  If that was you, how would you help yourself fight your way out of poverty?  How would you start your own small business?  How would you buy seed to start a farm?  How would you buy a cow to produce and sell milk? 

Fortunately, there are many different organizations and companies across the world that help people do just that – help themselves.  They do it by basically taking our great system of finance and economy and shrinking it into smaller points of access.  Where there is no economic system to support those who want to work their way out of poverty, the prolific (and growing) microfinance industry provides tiny loans and other financial products that help people get themselves out of despair.   

Microlending is not a handout.  Loans are required to be repaid and reports delivered to lenders and investors just like we do here in the U.S.  Microlending help is designed to help those who help themselves.  Want to learn more?  There are many fine organizations out there but www.kiva.org is one of the best and one of the easiest to follow and then help (you can support loan requests for as little as $25 and then you’ll be given progress reports on their repayment).  Here is my latest involvement as an example of ways that you can make an impact in someone’s life:

Magdalena Agsunod is from the village of Arcon in the Philippines.  She is 52 years old, is married and has seven adult-aged children.  To make a living, she owns and operates a general store, selling a variety of different products in the local community. She has been engaged in her business for over ten years and earns approximately $115 a month for these activities.  In 2008, Magdalena joined ASKI (a non-profit aggregator of micro loans) to gain access to financial services to help improve her living situation and ability to engage in business activities. Magdalena had been granted and has already successfully repaid a previous loan of 9,000 PHP (Filipino currency) from ASKI. This previous loan was used to purchase additional products to sell.

Magdalena is requesting a new loan of 11,000 PHP which will be used to purchase additional products to sell. This will be her 5th loan from ASKI. She plans to use the additional revenue generated from the business to financially support immediate members of her family.

The Danger of Retirement Planning

One of the ways I earn a living is by recommending that people save money for future goals.  So it might seem a bit incongruous to write that I believe that some people use retirement planning as a rationalization for life-experience avoidance. 

I meet with people who seem perfectly willing to be miserable in their jobs for 40 years because they believe they’ll be “living the dream” once they turn 65.  My problem with that way of thinking is that planning for retirement and living a great life until you retire should not be mutually exclusive.  Of the people I’ve met who are already retired, those who had a fulfilling pre-retirement life are having a fulfilling in-retirement life and those who had a crummy pre-retirement life are having a crummy in-retirement life.  Why is that?  Because the habits, choices, and judgments we make over six decades make for very strongly-entrenched personalities.  So if you believe that your retirement years are when you’re finally going to live differently and like you’ve always wanted, how do you expect to accomplish that? 

Good retirement planning doesn’t start with determining a targeted future sum of money that you want when you turn 65.  Good retirement planning starts with creating the habits now that lend themselves to living a lifestyle that you want for your entire life.  The only way I know how to do that is to start acting today like you want to live tomorrow.  So do you want to live a great retirement?  Then take this free retirement-planning advice:

1)      Find something you love to do so that retirement isn’t such a desperate yearning.

2)      Establish healthy eating and exercise habits now so you live longer during retirement and enjoy it as a healthy person.

3)      Don’t let your “bucket list” fill up too much.  Start crossing things off your list now.

4)      Travel.  Anywhere. 

5)      Decide that life experiences are worth more than dollars.

If you can do these things then you’ll be committed to proceed to the next step where you’ll build the financial component to support the lifestyle that you want to live.  Financial planning itself is not the objective, it is just a method of supplying you with the worldly means of pursuing happiness.  So if you choose how you want to live, we’ll help you with the plan for paying for it.

Lessons From Prague

My wife and I just returned from a trip to Prague, Czech Republic.  Beyond the fact that the city is beautiful, historical, and unique, we found it very impactful to meet and talk with local residents who have experienced living in conditions we only have read about here in the U.S.

Visiting the old Jewish Town and touring some of the monuments to the tens of thousands of local citizens who lost their lives in camps during WWII was gut wrenching.  Nothing makes history more “real” than standing in places where things actually happened.  There is an unfortunate history of repeated religious persecution over hundreds of years and it kind of numbs your brain a bit pondering how people can do things to each other that just don’t make sense.

On the other side of the coin, it was inspiring to be taught how much progress and improvement has been made in Prague having been released from the grips of communism only 21 years ago.  Our local friends described for us the ways they were educated in school, their lack of religious freedom, their lack of access to even basic things like ketchup, and their inability to design and control their own occupations.  We were shown the very few buildings that looked run-down with broken windows and blackened walls and our local friends told us that all of Prague looked that way just 21 years ago.  Now, most every building is colorful, cared for with great pride, and demonstrates a level of art and engineering that is such a strong part of Czech heritage.

The reason I mention this is because it really reminded me how lucky and blessed we are to have opportunities that some people just never get.  Most of us are taught that we can achieve whatever we want.  Most of us have access to opportunities that we can forge into tools to achieve our self-defined success.  Most of us have the luxury of planning for the future and living as we please because our basic needs and safety are provided for.  Travelling to beautiful Prague showed me how precious this is and it motivates me even more to be more in control of how I want to live so that I take full advantage of the opportunities just laying at my feet here in the U.S. 

Today vs. Yesterday

Someone asked me the other day what is different today “in the investment world” than what we’ve been used to in the past. Someone armed with facts, figures, charts and graphs could probably talk for hours describing and defining how these times are different than most other times in our history. There are lot of things different in how much cash is sitting on the sidelines, how companies are waiting for additional changes from Congress before hiring, on competitive global currency positions, etc. The list would be long.


But what I find most fundamental in “today’s investment world” is the change seen in the individual investor and this is what interests me most. More fascinating to me than how the equities market is valued relative to interest rates is how your behaviors are affected by current conditions and your belief in the future. Answers to questions about financial confidence and hope are much different now than they were 10 years ago and how those answers affect decisions over levels of consumption and savings are astounding and very consequential!

One of the most striking things I see when talking to people is how different their goals are now than what they were just a few years ago. It’s hard to define in general terms an overall attitude shift but words like “more conservative”, and “less debt” and “more realistic ideals” and “more control”, and “more lifestyle balance” are very common ways that people describe their new attitudes about what they want in their financial lives.

I personally do not believe that there is a “good” or a “bad” in this kind of shift. What I think is most important is having a strong sense of what is important to you at the present time and making sure that you feel that your financial plan supports your attitudes and what you want to accomplish. Most all aspects of your life require periodic changes and reinvention and your financial plan is no different. One of our favorite jobs is meeting with people to ask “What now? How do you want to live?”

San Francisco Trip

San Francisco is one of our favorite cities in the U.S. and we took our daughters there for the first time a few weeks ago. We took advantage of our enrollment in our airline’s mileage plan and used two of our annual companion fare vouchers and waited until they offered screaming deals on airfare from Seattle to San Francisco. Our total air travel cost was about $350 to fly the four of us round trip because we waited for the right deals!

We then had a special free night’s stay at our hotel earned through the points that we’d built-up over a couple of years which meant we stayed three nights for the price of just two. We’ve found that it is so much cheaper (and at times much faster) to take the BART train from the airport and it saved us a huge amount by not paying for a taxi (not to mention the savings vs. having rented a car and paying $50 per night just to park).

We took the girls to Alcatraz, which is still an absolute must when you are there. Be sure to book your tickets early as they sell out much more than a week in advance. And be wary of offers outside of the official ferry company because the cheapest tickets were directly through the ferry service contracted with the US National Parks.

We also took a bike tour from the wharf, across the Golden Gate Bridge, into Sausalito, and back across the bay on a ferry which was a great way to quickly see more of the city and to see the sun when the downtown part of San Francisco was fogged-in. And Trip Advisor (www.tripadvisor.com) provided us with three tremendous dinner locations with very reasonable menus and prices. Eating breakfasts and lunches with what we bought at fruit stands and at markets was so much cheaper than restaurants and we’ve saved so much money on all of our travels by not sitting down to eat except for at dinner!

We love the feel and the sights of San Francisco and we had a great time being together as a family for a three day getaway which did not cost us much money.

A Full Life

I have great admiration for people who seem to be making the most out of life and I enjoy reading stories of adventurers and those living “non-traditional” lives. Like the family who sold everything and is biking from Alaska to the southern tip of Chile. Or the family who builds schools in Afghanistan. Or the twin accountants from Colorado who are trying to ski each of the world’s 7,000-meter peaks. Or Laird Hamilton, the guy who surfs all the time.


Not all of us want to live just like that, but we each have the same opportunity to live just as fully. If you could design your own full life, what would you do with it? With whom would you spend it? Do you have a tugging in your gut that is telling you that you want to live differently? Whatever that may be, that is your adventure.

How badly you want to be in control of your own adventure and how you want to define it is up to you. How you are going to accomplish it financially is how we can help. Here are some of our clients’ personal adventures that we’re helping with:

• Funding a foundation to help loan money to women business owners in India
• Transferring to China for 2 years
• Downsizing the home, the credit cards, the consumption, the commuting, etc.
• Taking a 2 month sabbatical and train-hopping through Europe
• Purposefully moving back to a one-income household

Making sure all wheels of your financial life are turning at the same speed is important, but only if it is working toward something that is meaningful to you. Whether it involves managing money, developing a savings plan, outsourcing for a will, or overseeing the structuring of debt, we are sure we can help you live the adventurous life that you want. You dream it, we’ll plan it.

Non-profit of the Month: Renton Area Youth & Family Services

Our non-profit for the month of August was the Renton Area Youth and Family Services (RAYS). Our $250 monthly donation to a local non-profit was made to RAYS last month. In addition, we give $5 to the monthly non-profit for every referral we receive from our clients, so thank you! Who is RAYS and how did we learn about them?


The mission of Renton Area Youth and Family Services (RAYS) is to strengthen the lives of children, youth and families by restoring hope and stability in the face of emotional conflict, substance abuse and poverty. In partnership with the community, RAYS transforms the lives of kids and families through comprehensive counseling, training and support.

Mark Bratton, owner of BlueLine Communications (http://www.bluelinecommunications.net/) and President of the RAYS Board of Directors, is a great friend to Wall Financial and is perhaps the Puget Sound’s leading expert in copywriting and communication strategy. Through him we were attracted to RAYS. Says Mark , “I was initially drawn to support RAYS because of their mission, but it was the amazingly talented and dedicated people who are working every day to fulfill that mission who made me want to become more deeply involved with the organization.”

RAYS has served the greater Renton community for 40 years and is proud to have recently received the Business Excellence Award for Best Non-Profit from the Renton Chamber of Commerce. To learn more about RAYS, visit http://www.rays.org/ or contact Jolene Bernhard at 425-271-5600.