In this episode I walk through why I believe viewing yourself as a steward of your wealth rather than an owner is helpful. Furthermore, I walk through why you should be preparing the next generation for the task of properly stewarding your resources while you are living! Also, I ask if there are experiences that you want to invest in while you are living and reap the experiential rewards of learning and growing right along with your heirs.
In this episode I walk through why I believe viewing yourself as a steward of your wealth rather than an owner is helpful. Furthermore, I walk through why you should be preparing the next generation for the task of properly stewarding your resources while you are living! Also, I ask if there are experiences that you want to invest in while you are living and reap the experiential rewards of learning and growing right along with your heirs.
Music by bensound.com
Josh Klooz :
Hello and welcome again to the Wisdom and Wealth podcast. I'm Josh Klooz, as always, your host of this podcast. In the last few episodes, we'd taken a little bit of a break from our normal content and we had covered some special topics, but before that time, we covered the questions of how do you prepare yourself to interview your financial advisor or a prospective financial advisor. What are some of the questions you should be asking of them In transitioning from that process? I want to look more at questions you should be asking yourself, more importantly, questions that your advisor and your team should be guiding you through, shepherding you through. There's typically numerous answers to the questions that I'm going to go through in this series of podcasts, but I want to focus on what we call, in the industry, discovery, because it's very important. It differentiates a lot of what we're doing, why we're doing it and how we respond and how we take care of different clients.
Josh Klooz :
Your life is very unique. I'm a firm believer there are experiences in your life, there are resources within your life that will cause you to view life differently and to view the resources that you have in a different life. There are experiences that you have that inform the decisions that you make. If I'm guessing what those experiences are, it leaves me a little bit behind the eight ball when it comes to trying to communicate with you, trying to understand your perspective and how to guide you as we walk down life's path. In starting out, I find that it's always helpful to let people understand where I come from. As an advisor to them, I view myself as a steward. I don't view myself as the owner of your assets. Obviously I don't view myself as the sole person and in charge of them, so on and so forth, but I am responsible that they are invested for their best use. I also find that this perspective is helpful even in my own personal life when I view even my own resources that I invest on my own behalf. I don't view myself as an owner. I view myself as a steward. If you'll bear with me for a moment, I want to unpack why I find that that's helpful.
Josh Klooz :
When you view yourself as the owner of something, there's a certain amount in my own life of maybe I'll call it entitlement that creeps in. With that sense of entitlement, which I find is unhealthy for myself, you find yourself falling prey to the fear of losing, the fear of losing something. But if you view yourself as simply a steward that is trying to ensure that resources are allocated properly and that they're allocated wisely, it gives me a certain level of freedom to view what I do, it gives me a certain amount of… responsibility, but yet it doesn't place things that are beyond my control in my own power. Right, it doesn't. Let me fall temptation to that tendency or that line of thinking. Now I've got a very theological bent to why I believe this and I would submit to you that it doesn't require us to agree theologically for you to see the value in the framework, the mental framework, of why we view resources in that way. And another reason why I believe this is because I don't get to take any of this with me. If it's a financial resource, if it's an asset that I deploy you know, a home, a piece of real estate, a farm, a ranch, whatever the case may be I don't get to take it with me when I'm gone. I'm gone, you know.
Josh Klooz :
I'm reminded of the Russian literature and the name escapes me of what the story is. But you know, it's basically the short story of how much land does a man need? And at the end of the day he says you know, he needs about four by six or four by eight. You know, at about 10 feet down. And what the Russian author is all Russian literature is, it's a little bit morbid. He's saying hey, you know, we don't take anything with us and we're going to leave this earth at some point, we're going to die. So the point being with stewardship of our resources is we can't take it with us and we're going to have to give it to someone else at the end of our lives.
Josh Klooz :
So when I say you know who owns what you have, I'm asking for a framework of hey, maybe it's more helpful not to view ourselves as the owners of what we have, but the benefit. But we are the recipients of it. We want to be responsible, we want to be careful with what we've been given. But along with that comes the implied task of we need to figure out who this resource or these resources are going to next and we need to make sure that they're prepared. What do they need, what? How can we help them? So when you ask this question who owns what I have? It's a helpful question to wrestle with.
Josh Klooz :
And the next question again being is the next air prepared? Is equally as important, because I find that there's this tendency within the marketplace that leaves airs unprepared and I would submit to you that often I'm not going to say always, but often that comes from a perverse incentive within my industry of an insecurity that hey, if we prepare the airs for receiving this new resource, the money's going to leave and we won't be able to manage it and therefore we won't benefit from managing the money. So there's like this inconsistency where financial advisors don't feel pressured or don't feel any urgency to prepare the next generation because they're afraid that assets will leave, or they'll simply say you know, hey, I'm not going to be here, I'm older, I don't have a dog in that fight. Someone else will have to figure that out. I think that's the wrong perspective ultimately, and I think that the other question that I want clients to ask so first remember, stay with me here, who owns your resources is the next air prepared? The next question beneath that is are there experiences whether it be from an investment perspective or a experiential perspective that you could start investing in and reap the experiential benefit and the instructional benefit with your airs while you're still living to a small degree?
Josh Klooz :
I am a huge fan of helping clients dream about what they could possibly do. I don't want them to come to me and think that all I'm capable of doing is helping them construct a cash flow. I'm also capable of helping them understand that, hey, if you wanted to support and one of your future airs today by helping them buy a business, by helping them change careers, by helping them go into the mission field, whatever the case may be, I should be able to help you construct a plan that would tell you what you could do and what effect that would have on your financial plan. I never want people to forgo rich, meaningful, purposeful experiences today in the name of sending a dollar amount an equal dollar amount to everyone once they're passed. I want people to derive as much joy as they possibly can from their resources while they're still alive. That is one of the pieces that I'm incredibly passionate about. So I think that gives you, hopefully, a lot to think about.
Josh Klooz :
So far, and again to recap, I want you to think long and hard about who owns your resources. For myself, personally, I've been gifted a lot. I've been blessed with a lot, from not just a financial opportunity perspective, but a time perspective, an educational perspective. The next question I want you to ask is hey, are your heirs prepared for the next step, so they prepared to be the next steward of your resources? Lastly, are there experiences that you could be investing in today that would reap both a financial and an intangible reward for you and your family, or you and your heirs? Thank you so much for your time. As always, I'm open to any thoughts or questions you may have. Please, if you may like and rate the podcast, and as that helps us reach additional listeners and serve additional listeners, know that I'm always wishing you and your family continued truth, beauty and goodness on the road ahead. Have a great day.
