Achieving financial fitness is really about prioritizing the most important things in your life: family, freedom, and time. Those are the essential priorities that fiduciary advisors can have a direct impact on—giving you time and freedom back to do the things you enjoy with the people you love.
But let’s not ignore the elephant in the room: the cash and the creation of wealth.
The fact is that time and freedom come with the fruits of your labor. That is, money doesn’t buy everything, no, but it sure does come in handy when your passion is treating your extended family to a two-week jaunt to the Swiss Alps or Hawaii, or weekends away together as a family.
The flip side of not having or making enough money, as we know, is spending too much of it when you have it. That is, just because you make a lot doesn’t mean you can live life like queens and kings and spend, spend, spend.
To get my point across, let’s take a page out of my earlier book Reinvent Rich to help your teenage children become millionaires. The process starts with developing discipline in work and savings at an early age. Then, have a chat about muffins.
I like blueberry muffins, but it doesn’t have to be a muffin… insert your kid’s favorite breakfast pastry or Starbucks latte of choice. Spending $7 bucks or so a day might sound trivial to you, but in the end, it’s costing you and them dearly. If your kids invested that $7 a day in a pre-tax retirement account averaging 8% annual returns, they’d be millionaires in their retirement years.
The lesson? Make your own muffins or coffee for pennies on the dollar and enjoy the fruits of your labor as your wealth grows.
Now, I’m not trying to rap you over the head, but you need to be smart, make good choices, and do the things that provide you the financial security and flexibility you deserve. The metaphor remains the same though… DON’T fall prey to the muffin!
While we certainly provide our clients with simple tips like the muffin example, as you work to improve your financial fitness, know that a good fiduciary can help you with all aspects of your finances. Here are just a few of the more complex ways a fiduciary financial advisor can help:
- We can help you make more money—through wise investing and asset allocation.
- We can help you manage your finances—looking carefully at your spending habits and helping you make tough choices (do you really need five cars just because you like one for every season, plus an extra?).
- We can help you work through family conflicts—the very situation where so many financial fights originate and fester.
With 30+ years of working with families, I have seen it all (and our experience is all about helping you avoid the mistakes we’ve seen being made). I have seen great successes, I have seen great challenges, and I have seen comebacks that are more dramatic than ones on ESPN documentaries.
While fiduciary advisors can do a lot of the tough work, the ultimate responsibility still starts and ends with the client. Are you ready to get started?