The 3P’s for Financial Professionals – Passion

One of my favorite questions to ask financial professionals (private equity professionals, investment bankers, and asset managers) is how they define wealth. For some, their answer is largely defined by the strength of their balance sheet or the variety of assets they own. Others characterize it by metrics of their personal success or by the quality of the relationships in their lives. Personally, I find that wealth can include a variety of definitions: financial well-being, individual and family health, and the freedom to focus on your interests.

Determining what wealth means to you and your family is one of the key building blocks to living a full life, allowing you to build off a foundation of core values and a guiding principle toward where you invest your time, energy, and assets. More importantly, allowing yourself to pursue what you are passionate about, both personally and professionally.

Discussing our clients’ passions plays a significant role in our life planning exercises. As their personal CFO, it’s our goal to make sure we’re incorporating those passions into every meeting and game plan by using the following framework:

1. Identify

This may be easier said than done but choosing and prioritizing your passions will require some introspective thought and can differ for everyone. Community service, coaching, spending more time with your family, or extended travel are great examples. It’s also important to understand that as life changes, your passions may change as well. Maybe you’ve been solely focused on your career and planning to start a family next year or are on the verge of retirement and exploring new hobbies. All of these are important variables in creating and executing a plan to achieve those goals with peace of mind.

2. Plan

Once those passions have been prioritized, we utilize our step-by-step planning approach and strategize on how we can best accomplish them. For example, we work with a professional whose priority is to take his family on a sabbatical every three years. To accomplish this, we need to track savings metrics, spending goals, and proper management of funds that will be utilized for the trip itself. We also want to know the long-term impact of these trips based on cost. Will it affect your other retirement savings goals and potential retirement date? What are you willing to give up to take those trips at the frequency and cost you desire? In each case, we strive to present every potential scenario and solution for our clients. Hopefully, this will give them the freedom to pursue their passions as they see fit.

3. Adapt

While we hope that every client has the opportunity to pursue their passions without issue, they also need to be flexible and willing to make concessions in other areas of their lives if necessary. As we all know, life can sometimes get in the way and throw us a curveball. In these instances, our planning and other solutions can help keep your passions front and center.

We encourage you to start brainstorming what your passions are and bring those to your next meeting with your BDF team. In our next blog, we’ll continue to expand on the 3 P’s for Financial Professionals with our thoughts on Perspective.