I Quit Coffee
What coffee abstinence and financial planning have in common.
For the true coffee connoisseurs, few statements are more provocative than the title of this article. If this is you, you are my kind of people. I’ve been drinking coffee regularly since I was at least 17. My wife and I even roast our own beans and brew our coffee using either an espresso machine or a pour-over. Not like the barbarians still using Mr. Coffee drop pots.
Coffee wasn’t just a habit for me, it was a passion. It was so bad that I would even bring my own coffee to work and refuse anything brewed from a pre-ground mix out of plastic container. I still consider the latter to be justified. It’s uncivilized.
It became apparent that families’ financial circumstances changed enough to justify additional life insurance. The realities of raising four children can have such an effect. Being the responsible father, husband, and advisor, I applied for more life insurance.
For the first time in my life, my underwriting results did not look perfect. Naturally, Katherine, my wife, goes into shaman mode.
So, we dig further and have my GP run an extensive blood panel to see what’s going on. One issue is that I drink too much caffeine and my very knowledgeable physician has some not so popular things to say about coffee and my coffee consumption, in particular. Blasphemy!
That was my first reaction, at least. Then I listened to his rationale and understood clearly that I had a choice. I can change my habits to improve my health, or remain on course, wherever that may take me. Since I failed to thoroughly hide all the evidence from my wife, I made the wise decision.
Such is the case with financial planning. Your life is a series of moments punctuated by course shifting and often difficult decisions. Oscillating financial circumstances make precise goal planning impossible. Yet we are told by the financial gurus to “plan for our goals” and “failure to plan is planning to fail”.
What are financial goals anyway? How about we just do the best we can and call it a day. While ignorance may be blissful in the moment, making decisions without a modicum of education can lead to dark places.
Things happen and we must react. I just found out one of our advisors died in a diving accident at age 52 this past Friday. How do you plan for something like that? While you can buttress your finances against this possibility, it would be impractical to focus solely on a single outcome.
It’s also impractical to plan for every contingency. Life would be all planning and no doing. “Planning” is a primer word poorly selected to initiate conversations around what’s most important to you.
Whatever this is, I can guarantee that money influences it in some way. Your “financial plan” should function as a pathfinder, pointing you in the direction that aligns best with your values when one of these pivotal life changing decisions arises. It’s not a high-fidelity projection of your future. That is entirely unknowable, and no amount of Monte Carlo simulations will add focus.
While my doctor didn’t come out and ask what’s most important to me, it was mutually understood by the presence of my wife that longevity was of more than a mild interest. Out of this axiom ensued his advice which was concise and actionable.
Winnowing the noise of life to reveal your mission is no easy task. If only it were so easy as the axiom for healthcare, “live longer”. Maybe this is the reason why the cheap, impersonal financial providers haven’t put me out of business. To function as a pathfinder, we need to start with these fundamental questions:
What is important to you?
What does money mean to you?
What do you want?
Who do you want to be?
If you have a general idea what the answers to these questions are, you might have a shot at defining who you are as a person. Then, and only then, you can have a functional “financial plan”. A pathfinder is useless if there is no path to find.
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.
Securities offered through LPL Financial LLC. Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory Services offered by National Wealth Management Group LLC, an SEC Registered Investment Advisory and separate entity from LPL Financial LLC.