Hunting or Gardening?

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To successfully build wealth, you must make many small calculated decisions over a long period of time. You are growing a garden that will feed you for the rest of your life. You cannot expect the market to immediately provide you abundance. If it appears to do so, it will likely take it away with similar immediacy. You cannot hunt, you must slowly garden with care.

To successfully accomplish the task of wealth creation takes a great deal of backbone. You may turn on the television and watch pundits rave about financial products and opportunity with the enthusiasm of excited children. You must tune that noise out of your life. There will always be a stock that is momentarily soaring. There will always be a neighbor that appears to be wealthier. There will always be a friend with a great success story about a stock that has made money. NO. You are watering your garden and waiting to harvest.


Real Life

Interacting with families and attempting to truly understand their financial goals and accomplish them requires attention to detail. It requires serious emotional control and long-term planning. This work is not about buying the latest trending stock. This in not about outperforming an index every quarter. This is about slowly and consistently growing a households’ wealth so they can be unconcerned about financial issues.


The Future

Are you thinking about the cost of college for your children? Are you thinking realistically about how you can retire? Are you planning for how you will transfer assets to those that you love to enrich their future? Presumably, yes you are if you are reading this article.


Time

The sooner you set things in motion to accomplish these goals, the more achievable they become. Being an investor in securities tends to work in your favor over a long period of time. The sooner you plant your garden, the sooner it will grow. Grow it will, until you may question how you got here. Small choices made early lead to large outcomes.


All this being said about gardening – If you live in Michigan like I do, I can’t recommend planting a non-metaphorical garden in the winter. I have read that seeds won’t germinate in snow, ice, or frozen ground. Your luck may vary. Have a great day!


-Zac

Photo: Lynn Barr