Where Are You Going?

Today's Newsletter:

• My Latest

• Where Are You Going?

• Things To Consider (When You Don’t Really Know)

• A Money Question

My Latest

You might have noticed (hopefully you did) that The Advisor’s Playbook has been a bit sporadic this summer.

Well, good news is I am back writing it twice per month. The reason for the sporadic nature is one excuse and one good reason.

My excuse: I have been spending a lot more time making YouTube videos. It has been fun, frustrating, and progressing (slowly). GO SUBSCRIBE!

My good reason: Moment is in a better place than ever, growing faster than we could have hoped. That is awesome but also takes additional time to continue to deliver the best solution for our clients.

Alright well both of those kind of sound like excuses but either way, we are back!

My latest is one of my favorite YouTube videos to date, it dives into a planning situation we see come up quite a bit.

You can check out the video here. 

Where Are You Going?

I am always thinking ahead. I think it comes from my combined life experiences of never knowing where I would be next with baseball to having four kids 8 and under.

My life has been and still is full of unknowns.

Yet each time there I am always trying to determine which way the next path will lead even when I can’t see over the hill yet.

That thought got me thinking about our clients and the fact they face the same situations.

They are either:

• Building a business

• Entrenched as a key employee

• Finding their way in pro sports

Sure the entrepreneur has his vision for the business, the key team member sees the next promotion, and the athlete has visions of getting the call-up. Yet each time, the path to get there and often the end outcome looks far different than what we first thought.

I mean take me for example. If you had told 23-year-old me that at 33 years old I would be in my fourth year of entrepreneurship…I would have said, “You have the wrong guy.”

So that got me thinking if the path we take is often different than the one we planned for how should we plan in the first place?

To me, it all comes down to one word, optionality.

You don’t want to get to the end of the road to realize there is only one path left and it is a dead end.

No, no, no you want to plan so that the path gives you the option to continue on, turn left, turn right, or just do a 180.

Today I want to talk about money moves you can make to create that optionality.

Let’s dive in!

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Things To Consider (When You Don’t Really Know)

Spending

The first question most curious people ask when they see someone financially “successful” is how much money they make.

Yet what if I told you they are asking the wrong question, or at least they are when it comes to planning?

A better question is what is the gap between your lifestyle and your income?

Let’s remember our frame, how do we plan when we don’t know where the path will lead?

Well, it starts with making sure there is a healthy gap between your lifestyle and your income.

The reason it is kinda simple, it creates optionality.

Consider this:

• Person A makes $500,000 yearly and saves just 5% of their income.

• Person B makes $500,000 yearly and saves 20% of their income.

A few years later they both decide to cut back on their main thing to spend time elsewhere.

Person B can do that no problem but person A is stuck…they have no optionality.

See how it is more about the gap between lifestyle and income than just income alone.

Diversifying (Not Like You Think)

Everyone thinks about diversification as an investment concept.

It is but it applies to more than just your investment portfolio.

It applies as much to how you invest as what you invest in.

Consider this:

• You are a business owner but never built wealth outside of it.

• You are a key employee but never sold a single stock option.

• You are an athlete but never networked outside of sports.

You are all in on one path.

Now before you tell me about some success story you know, I get it.

There are certainly people who have gone all in over and over and over again and won the game. Heck check the Forbes Billionaires list, it is full of them.

What it doesn’t show is that for each billionaire, there is a minefield of failed all-in bets.

What if instead you:

• You started investing a percentage of profits outside your business.

• You sold some of that high-flying company stock.

• You took a meeting with a business leader.

If the plan works you win.

If the plan doesn’t work you have options.

What you don’t get is to the end of the line and see a dead-end sign.

Aggressive Patience

You need patience to let a plan come to fruition.

You need patience to build wealth.

Yet, it doesn’t mean do nothing.

Let me explain in the context of planning for your future.

My dad spent the better part of three decades building a business. One of his dreams was to buy an RV and drive around the country with my Mom. So, they made plans for it.

• They saved

• They planned

• They executed

Yet what no one knew was my dad’s path would be full of unknowns. You see just a few years before they were going to embark on this, he got sick.

Like really really sick and ended up passing away.

The lesson that taught me was your plans are great but sometimes you shouldn’t wait.

So how do you show patience to let the plan work while also not waiting?

You get aggressive with it but not to the point of ruining the plan.

Take this example:

If instead of waiting to log one RV mile until my parents were fully retired and bought one, they took a yearly RV trip.

They rented one, checked a few places off their bucket list, and started living with an aggressive patience.

That week (and the cost) would not have hindered the long-term plan. It would have also created optionality in case the plan didn’t go well…as planned.

Patience doesn’t have to mean doing nothing, sometimes it can mean taking a bit without eating the whole thing.

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You can have the best plan in the world.

But let me tell you a little secret…when you get to the end of that plan chances are it will look different than it did at the start.

That is ok.

It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan. In fact, I think it means we should plan more. but also give ourselves options.

Optionality to be able to accomplish what we want in a world that is full of unknowns.

Until next time my friends!

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A Money Question

Do you have optionality?

Zoom out 5 years, what is your perfect outcome? What are you spending your time on, working towards, and saving for?

In those plans are you giving yourself optionality for the unknown? If not consider how you can.

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3 Ways I Can Help You

💰 Schedule an introductory call with Moment. We help athletes, entrepreneurs, and key employees build and protect wealth.

📹 Check out my YouTube channel. A safe place to get smarter with your money.

📷 Interact with me on Instagram. Where I provide bite-sized daily content to level up your money game.

Moment Private Wealth, LLC is a Registered Investment Advisor, located in the State of Missouri. Moment Private Wealth provides investment advisory and related services for clients nationally. Moment Private Wealth will maintain all applicable registrations and licenses as required by the various states in which Moment Private Wealth conducts business, as applicable. Moment Private Wealth renders individualized responses to persons in a particular state only after complying with all regulatory requirements, or under an applicable state exemption or exclusion. Nothing in this content is intended to be, and you should not consider anything in this content to be, investment, accounting, tax, or legal advice.