Is your vision 20/20?

Robert A. Valente, CFP®, AEP®, CEO, Managing Member, RAV Financial Services LLC

Here we are in December approaching the end of another year. My parents were correct when they told me that time goes by faster the older we get. It’s funny how time just slips by, and I often struggle with the passage of time. However, as I get my hands around the concept of time, it is not time I want to control; it’s controlling how I spend my time that’s most important. We start the New Year with a list of resolutions hoping that 2013 will bring a different outcome, streamline our goals and aspirations, and free up our time. Ironically, we believe that by making resolutions, these changes will automatically occur.
How does one affect some meaningful changes in the New Year? To get prepared, make a list and identify items in these general categories:

  • What do you want to stop doing?
  • What do you want to start doing?
  • What do you want to continue doing?

Leave yourself room in each category, and then narrow down the choices to a few that you can successfully manage. Now that you have these entries on the lists in front of you, ask yourself what would you do with your time if you only had seven years left to live? What items are important? What items are imperative?
As you look at those items on your lists and you contemplate these questions thoroughly, do you feel your items on the lists coincide with the central core of your life’s purpose for the next seven years? Will the items on your lists achieve your purpose or are you just creating more items for your “to-do” list?
This illustration merely touches the surface of the inner work each one of you needs to pursue to make financial and life planning a thoroughly meaningful experience. Most people have only experienced the transactional dimension and walk away with no long-term meaningful solution. The transaction may have been only a temporary Band-Aid to the problem. The root of the problem needs to be addressed to complement your inner emotions, attitudes, values and purpose beneath that surface transaction. When those underlying emotions and purposes are identified and vocalized, the purpose then clarifies the choices.
In my definition of the world of personal financial and life planning, the transaction side of the equation overshadows the client-adviser conversation. The transaction driven-process is akin to where the adviser draws his convenient “arrow” from his quiver to solve your current problem. In today’s vernacular “I have an app for that.”
The purpose-side and value-side of the conversation is rarely entertained. The purpose-side involves the qualitative components of your wealth management journey. Wealth management and life planning is much more than just dollars and cents. Typically, people expect dollars and cents to dominate conversations they have with a wealth adviser, but when it comes to life planning, topics of discussion extend to matters far more personal than money, addressing your deepest life dreams and goals — and how to make them a reality through sound financial planning.
When developing a life plan with your RAV adviser, there are a few key factors that must come into alignment: mutual trust, understanding and working with a wealth adviser who has the integrity to tell you whether your current reality can support your future dreams. But you, as a client, also bear a large responsibility in the life-planning process — particularly if you long for a future that looks very different from your current reality. Investing time and energy in the discovery of your purpose and intention will make the journey more relevant and more powerful.
Vision and purpose go hand-in-hand. Vision is the definition of your tangible and intangible goals. Purpose drives your outcome, interrelated within your goals and objectives. So where do you want to be in 2020? Decide today to embark upon an experience where your purpose and vision are at the heart of your life-planning journey.
It is interesting in this age of technology that we want and can have immediate access to all types of information. Access to your innermost purpose takes a little longer to uncover, and it is essential to the personal and business financial and life-planning experience. Only then will you feel fulfilled in the outcomes of your decisions and choices.
So make a decision that by January 2020, your personal and family vision will be clearly 20/20. Hopefully, this will give you a time frame to unearth your inner destiny, so that a strategic financial and life plan will incorporate your unique values into its outcome.
You don’t have to wait to find a financial and life-planning firm. For more than 30 years, RAV Financial Services has been working in partnership with those individuals and families who understand that the road from success to significance is achieved by interweaving purpose, values, and intention into their financial and life-planning experience.
Wishing you a happy holiday and a healthy and prosperous New Year.
Robert A. Valente, CFP®, AEP®, is CEO and Managing Member of RAV Financial Services LLC. He can be reached at (216) 831-4900 or [email protected].
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