We wear many hats with the families we work with… crunch numbers… find gaps, overlap and risk… create plans and options… give advice…. counsel…. motivate… quarterback among CPAs, attorneys and other advisors. We help people through the best of times and the worst of times. We listen to what is said and even what isn’t said.
Then when after all our best efforts, when we watch someone do something or not do something we knew would hurt them or their family, we struggle to make sense of what just happened. We ask ourselves…is there something that we did wrong or could have explained better to help them make a better decision?
Why do people say, “No, Not yet,Later, or Oh well, I’m going to do it anyway” even when it is detrimental to the spouse or the children they love dearly.
Imagine…
- a young mother who was waiting to make enough money to get the perfect permanent life insurance policy, so she turned down a term policy and died during a flu epidemic, leaving behind her husband and two small children.
- a couple ten years away from retirement who knows they need to save every penny, but because they couldn’t save that much, saved nothing over the last year - and missed out on potential market gains of 21.14%.1
- a young father saying not yet to a one hundred dollar per month life insurance policy and dies on the way home in a car wreck.
- thinking it would never happen to me yet becoming paralyzed, leaving your wife with little to no financial support as she has to wash you, wipe you, feed you, and take care of your three children.
- dying without a will leaving your wife of thirty years with only half of the retirement money you worked so hard to save together.
- losing 40% of every penny you saved to the IRS because you did no planning.
- your children never spending another Christmas or Thanksgiving together because you didn’t plan and thought your children would be different.
- one of your children putting their career on hold and their children on the backburner just to physically take care of you because it would never happen to you.
- liquidating all your investments at the bottom of the market in 2009 because you were scared you would run out of income.
- your life’s work (a business you built from the ground up) being torn up by your spouse’s new husband and his attorneys, your children’s spouses and their attorneys, and people you have never met and their attorneys just because you wanted perfect.
Dad has always said you can only help people that want to be helped. We just hope you want to be helped. Don’t wait until everything is perfect to do something. Done beats perfect every time!
- S&P 500 Price Index with dividend reinvestment 2017.