Welcome! 

Welcome to Life | Wealth Blog, where we integrate money with life. We advocate using your money to support your life, rather than using your life just to make money. Goals, dreams, vision and values come first. What do you want your life to look like? Then determine which investments, insurance, trusts, etc. would be helpful in helping you attain your vision for your life. Money makes a horrible master, but a wonderful servant.

What exactly is Life Wealth Integration?

Integrating your money with your life is easier than it looks. I advocate using a discovery/implementation process I first learned from The Legacy Companies. Visualize a horizontal line we’ll call the Planning Horizon. Think of above the line as life and below the line as money, or wealth. Above the line is your vision and mission for your life, the values you hold dear, your goals and objectives. Below the line are the strategies, tactics and tools used to achieve your vision and goals. Strategies, tactics and tools include investments, portfolio asset allocation, retirement plans, estate planning, insurance, and all the stuff that dominates most conversations when considering “Wealth Management.”  

Now visualize a vertical line that intersects the Planning Horizon and creates four quadrants. Use the four quadrants to help you ascertain your vision for your life and how to structure your money and resources to support your life. The upper right quadrant, quadrant 1, is Personal Discovery. It’s above the line, so we’re talking about a process of discovering your vision, mission, values and goals for your life. You only have one life to live on this planet. Please live a well thought out, purpose driven life. Only after you have a firm grasp of what you want your life to look like do you go below the line. Now move to bottom right quadrant 2 and explore options of what you need in the way of financial solutions to achieve your life goals. Think of Q2 as Creative Solutions.  

After thinking through what avenues you wish to take in support of your goals, move left to Q3, Strategy Implementation. Now you are ready to implement that growth portfolio, contribute to your Roth IRA, buy some insurance, make the charitable donation, or sign that Revocable Living Trust. All these endeavors are strategies, tactics and tools used in support of your life goals. They are not an end to themselves. Once implemented, it is imperative to monitor and review your decisions and compare the results against your life vision and goals. We are now heading back above the line to Q4, which we might call Results. Are we getting the results we desired? Are they moving us towards our vision and goals? If some aspect of our earlier decisions is not supporting our life goals, we need to revisit that. Spend some time in Discovery, reviewing your goals and what is working or not working, and why. Then explore Creative Solutions and make necessary adjustments with a revised Strategy Implementation. Over time, see if your Results are moving you towards your goals. Repeat as necessary.  

By using this visual construct, you are moving in a clockwise fashion starting with Discovery moving through Solutions and Implementation, and ending with Results. Note that you are always starting and ending above the Planning Horizon, in the life space. You are using your money as a tool to enhance your life.