Portfolios
For decades in my work as a financial planner, the word “portfolio” meant only one thing – a structured collection of investments. Sometimes called diversification or a balanced investment approach, portfolios have two main features. They help to manage risk – not...
Just in case
I want to lead an intentional life. I want to decide what I want to do and then do it. It doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, I am just too ambitious and expect to do way more than is reasonable. Other times I get distracted. Being a “learner” usually works out well for...
Preparation
If you’ve decided to work on a really, really important goal, how do you respond to it? Consider the story of Winston Lord, the Ambassador to China and speech writer for Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. Kissinger asked him to write an important speech about China,...
Pessimism
Is your glass half-full or half-empty? Does your answer depend on your circumstances? It was only when I read Heidi Grant Halvorson’s 2010 book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals that I came to understand some of the advantages that pessimists have in reaching their...
Learning
For months I’d been working on an idea to use my skills and background during my retirement years. I knew that I wanted to use group coaching to help clients on their own retirement journeys. But I couldn’t quite figure out how I was going to do that. The pandemic was...
We all met at a party
The party was for 500 of us on Zoom. It was a social event during the first week of class, so that we could get to know each other. In the Zoom meeting we each rotated from one breakout room to another, fifteen new people at a time. We introduced ourselves. We told...
My Covid
On December 14 I tested positive for Covid 19. I’ve had absolutely no symptoms whatsoever over the past two weeks of my quarantine. I learned a lot. Lesson 1: When the diagnosis was unexpected, it was shocking. I was barely out of my apartment for many months. I had...
Disruptions
Covid 19 has been an enormous disruptor for most people in the entire world – a change from what we’ve been doing and perhaps expecting to do. The normal expectation is that we’ll have a linear life – that we’ll keep going in the same direction as in the past and...
The Future
Will you have enough money for your retirement? Well, it depends on what you want to do in retirement and what that will cost. But there is more to the question than that. There is a numerical approach to answering this question. When I was a financial planner, I...
MY TRIBE
The pandemic is an excellent time to build your tribe. It is easy to feel isolated now when we are physically separate from friends and relatives. The isolation may motivate us to take action. Historically, a tribe was a community related by geography, genetics,...