There is a powerful reminder that often surfaces when life feels overwhelming: You have survived your worst days, and you are stronger than you think. A.A. Milne put it like this: “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” When we apply this simple truth to our financial lives, it takes on a profound meaning. It is incredibly easy to feel financially fragile. Our brains are literally wired for […]
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50 to 80 might be our most productive years
We have been culturally conditioned to view retirement as a hard finish line. For most of our lives, the narrative suggests that the moment we reach our late fifties or sixties, we are supposed to quietly wind down. We are taught to view this era as a long, uninterrupted retreat from the world. But what if we have it completely backward? Thanks to modern medicine and a focus on our healthspan, many of us are entering […]
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Your balance sheet isn’t a life purpose
It’s not uncommon to speak with someone who believes that we spend decades of our lives looking forward to the day we can finally stop working. We build our financial plans, calculate our retirement numbers, and dream of a life with no alarm clocks or urgent meetings. This is a common cultural assumption. But what happens when the permanent holiday actually begins? In “Good Money”, John Coleman explores another pillar of human flourishing: meaning and purpose. […]
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The engine and the compass
Over the last few weeks, we’ve explored a completely different way to look at our wealth. We’ve considered an approach that looks at the mechanics of flourishing, rather than the inner workings of the stock market. We have stepped away from the spreadsheets and the investment graphs to ask what actually makes a human life go well. We have talked about our health, our relationships, our character, and finding our own benchmark for contentment. But as […]
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Funding your healthspan
It’s completely natural to obsess over the numbers on our investment statements. We track the growth, review our asset allocation, and carefully project how long our capital will last. This is good practice and solid foundational planning, but it’s not the whole story. What if, in all our careful calculations, we are overlooking the most critical asset of all? Carrying on from our recent blogs, based on John Coleman’s “Good Money”, we are reminded that financial […]
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Investing in social wealth
We often dedicate the best, most energetic years of our lives to building a fortress of financial security. We work long hours, take on additional responsibilities, and sometimes miss important family milestones, all in the name of providing for the people we love. It is a noble pursuit, driven by a deep sense of care and responsibility. But what if, in our quiet rush to build that financial security, we are accidentally sacrificing the very relationships […]
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Funding your life satisfaction
It’s so easy to look at our budgets, our financial planning and our risk products and ask questions about what we have and don’t have. But what if, in all this planning and evaluating, we miss a crucial question? What if we don’t simply ask what we have, but remember to ask what it’s all for? In his recent book, Good Money, John Coleman challenges a core assumption of modern finance. He argues that we have […]
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Holding up the mirror
The mirror of our bank statements: Aligning our wealth with our values Have you ever noticed how increased access can actually create more anxiety and worry? It’s wonderful to be able to text someone in our family and make sure they’ve arrived safely. But what happens when they don’t respond? The temptation to keep checking the phone can keep us on the edge of our seats! This same habit has seeped into many other areas of […]
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Conversation, not isolation
We tend to model our lives, and our financial plans, as a straight, uninterrupted line moving upward and to the right. We assume that our income, our capacity, and our circumstances will remain relatively constant, simply growing steadily over time. But life is rarely linear. It is cyclical. It operates in seasons. An accurate graph could look more like hills and valleys than a steady incline or staircase. There are seasons of aggressive accumulation, where you […]
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How strong is your financial plan?
Two key goals of a financial plan are to help you grow what you have, and help you protect what you have. This is why conversations about financial planning should pay attention to your short-term cover. Everyday insurance is a critical piece of your long-term wealth strategy and helps ensure the perimeter around everything you own is secure. In some ways, building wealth is a lot like managing a sports team: you need both an offensive […]
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