NWP Monthly Digest | March 2021
I’ve been afraid of changing ‘cause I’ve built my life around you.
But time makes you bolder, even children get older, and I’m getting older, too.
~Stevie Nicks, Landslide
Stevie Nicks wrote that great song in Aspen, Colorado in 1973. She was struggling with a very difficult decision in front of her on whether or not it was time for her to go back to school or to continue on in a toxic relationship with Lindsey Buckingham and their dream of becoming successful musicians. She was 27 years old at the time and legend has it that it took her only five minutes to write it. She was tired of struggling and being poor, and it was taking a toll on everything in her life.
My mother loved that song. I always remember the lines above choking her up when she would think about her kids getting older and how she was getting older every day. Long before my mom was diagnosed with cancer, she knew things were moving faster in her life than she wanted them to.
Partially because I’m just built this way, and partially because my Mom and Dad’s emotional sensitivity has been passed down to me genetically (and in droves), I catch myself getting teary-eyed when certain songs come on the radio and Landslide is no exception. It’s funny to me because the song’s real meaning has very little to do with why it makes me sad…it’s just those lines above that get me.
My oldest is 17 years old and finishing up his junior year in high school, my daughter is closing in on 15, and my youngest son turns 13 this summer. My wife and I have done everything in our power to make their life happy, their home safe, and their futures bright. We’ve built our lives around them and I feel the burden of that clock ticking away a little bit faster every day. It doesn’t make me unique, as I know a lot of you feel that way, too. And the crux of the situation is that if my wife and I are truly successful as parents, they will continue to grow up, perhaps earn a degree, and become strong and independent individuals that have no need for that safe and warm home again. There is something about that little tidbit that is just too ironic and cruel for me these days.
Early in my career and when my children were very young, I traveled. A lot. I was gone from Monday evening to Thursday night about three weeks a month (sometimes more). I was building a successful career, saving for retirement and college like I was supposed to - doing all of the things I thought grownups were required to do. Looking back on it, it burned me out. I’ve had numerous bouts of anxiety and depression, and I know a lot of that stemmed from feeling like I was doing something that didn’t have a whole lot of impact on the world and I was missing bits and pieces of very important moments of my children’s lives as they were growing up. I wasn’t unhappy, but I wasn’t satisfied with what I was doing.
I didn’t want that to continue, and I was fortunate that the industry and my wife helped me make the decision to start my own financial planning practice in 2017. While it was always something I dreamed of doing, I wasn’t planning for it in 2016 or 2006 or in 1996. But my life changed and we course-corrected. It’s been the most difficult thing I have ever gone through, but I will never regret the decision to do it.
Why do we do all of this? Why do we go about building our lives in one direction to ultimately have to shift gears partway through? I ask that question in the spirit of the age-old quest to find “the meaning of life”, but in a more modern sense.
What I didn’t realize early on is that being an adult requires you to make tough decisions like this all of the time. That, of course, is life. As we get older, we finish our education and begin jobs and careers, we date, maybe we get married or maybe we don’t, maybe we have children or maybe we don’t, perhaps those children grow up and go to college (very expensive colleges, by the way), divorces happen, career changes, “mini” retirements, unfortunate tragedies, big retirement…it’s all part of living and there is no right way to do it. It’s your life.
As financial planners, we work with our clients to identify what is important to them and what they’re building their lives around…and that is a constantly moving target. One reason that I believe almost everyone needs to have a good financial planner in their corner is precisely because life isn’t so precise. We work with our clients to understand what’s important to them and we create a model that allows us to make the very best guess that we can about their resources now and into the future and whether or not those resources will be enough to help them be satisfied (buy a new house, pay for college, retire, etc.). And I promise you that our jobs require us to help our clients find out what enough is and what being satisfied is far more than it revolves around a giant spreadsheet that models their income, expenses, and savings out into the future. We can never be certain what will happen next, but we can make plans and play the odds so that things don’t blindside us too badly.
Life will always be changing and require course corrections. We will continue to get older, our children will continue to get older, and we will continue to build our lives back up in a different direction when those changes occur. And that’s OK because that’s what it’s all about, anyway.
Noble Wealth Pro Tip of the Month
What do you know about cryptocurrency? Is it something you feel like everyone is talking about but you feel too intimidated to ask a question? Do you even know the right questions to ask? That’s OK, because you’re not alone. Even experts are having to re-learn things every day as the space changes so fast.
When the value of any asset goes from less than $1,000 at the beginning of 2017 to over $50,000 at the beginning of 2021, people will take notice. That’s exactly what has happened with Bitcoin, the most popular of the cryptocurrencies, but certainly not the only one.
Bitcoin, put simply, is a digital currency. It can be easily transferred from one person’s digital wallet to another. While it’s not super efficient in processing transactions like the US Banking system is, it can be used for that, too. Here’s a very famous story about the Bitcoin pizza guy. Most of the U.S. will ask, “what’s wrong with using cash or a credit card?” Admittedly, I have the same question.
We haven’t changed our stance much on Bitcoin (or cryptocurrencies in general). If you want to own some, we’re OK with that. But never more than 5% of your investable assets and it most definitely shouldn’t be money that you’re going to need in the next year or two because of the price volatility. If you’re speculating or just trying to get rich quickly, we’re going to need to have a longer conversation.
Still, I think everyone needs to learn and understand this space more. Here are some good resources for anyone looking to get a better grasp of cryptocurrencies.
Basic Primer on Bitcoin from Fidelity
The Hash Power Series by Patrick O’Shaunessy (Jeff’s personal favorite)
Tim Ferriss with Katie Haun - The Tim Ferriss Show (good working history of Bitcoin’s past)
Things We’re Reading and Enjoying
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World | by David Epstein (Book)
The #1 New York Times bestseller that has all America talking: as seen/heard on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Morning Joe, CBS This Morning, The Bill Simmons Podcast, Rich Roll, and more.
Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you’ll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.
What if it Doesn’t End Badly? | by Michael Batnick (Short blog)
Michael Batnick goes through the hardest question investors have to face - when will a bull market decide enough is enough?
The return on certain individual securities makes the overall stock market look like a savings account. Over the same time, Apple and Amazon have gained more than one thousand percent. Netflix more than two thousand percent. Tesla more than sixteen thousand percent. $10,000 invested in Bitcoin five years ago is worth $1.2 million….
So it’s no wonder that old-timers who have seen this movie before think that this one ends badly, like all of the others before it.
The Get Rich Portfolio | by Meb Faber (long-form blog)
I really love Meb Faber and his approach to looking at investing. The best part of this piece is discussing the different types of portfolios for different people and the risks they each would have to endure.
If we allow ourselves to let go of appearances, we’re all here for one simple reason…
More money.
“More money” of course is always relative. $100,000 in net worth places you in the global top 10%, but for many that would not last a hot minute. $1,000,000 vaults you into the top 1%, but for some, only Tres Comas would only suffice. Research has shown that regardless of how much money people have everyone always says they want more.
Until next month,
-Your team at Noble Wealth Partners
“There is nothing noble about being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is being superior to your former self.” Ernest Hemingway
