The Golden Telescope. Doug McLarty

Gary paused.

      “And what?”

      “I made some bad stock picks.”

      “Well, there are always ups and downs on the market, right? It’s a long game.”

      “Right. But these were unusually big downs.”

      “Like how big?”

      “My portfolio went from $1.2 million to $700,000 in a year and a half.”

      “Wow,” said Mike. “You’ve got a real knack. You should write a blog about investing.”

      “I was on a roll for a while,” said Gary. “Got a few good tips and was up 12 per cent. But then I had a run of bad luck.”

      “Why are you managing your own stock portfolio?” asked Mike. “You really have time for that?”

      “Sure. Why not? You know Tim Donaldson?”

      “The high school teacher?”

      “Yeah. He told me about this investment strategy that he said couldn’t miss. He had made something like 10 per cent a year for the past four years, while the market was bouncing up and down.”

      “But just because he did okay for a while doesn’t prove anything. Maybe he was just lucky.”

      “I don’t want to be one of those losers who get single-digit returns,” said Gary. “Might as well put your money in a savings account.”

      “Single-digit returns are pretty boring,” said Mike, “compared to blowing half of a million on day trades.”

      “Listen, don’t repeat this to anyone. Don’t even tell Sandra. Jennifer doesn’t know and I’d rather she didn’t find out. I don’t want her to worry.”

      “You don’t want her to worry, or you don’t want to have to explain why you lost an amount of money equivalent to the price of a small airplane?”

      Gary ignored the question. “I suppose you guys don’t have any money concerns at all,” he said.

      “I don’t,” said Mike. “But Sandra does. She makes a killing but she still acts like we’re still in university scraping together our cash from part-time jobs.”

      “It could be worse,” said Gary. He was trying to stop thinking about his investment portfolio, but it kept popping back into his mind.

      “But we don’t have to live like that anymore,” said Mike. “We’ve been talking for years about buying a cottage, but she says we can’t afford it. It’s ridiculous. How can we not afford it? Our neighbours bought a summer home last year. A summer home! The wife doesn’t even work.”

      “Is she not keeping you in the manner to which you’ve become accustomed? I’ll call her and tell her to buy you some flowers and a box of chocolates, maybe take you out for a nice meal or send you for a day at the spa.”

      “It’s not just about me,” said Mike. “I want the kids to be able to enjoy the cottage while they’re still young. There’s no point when they’re teenagers. You wouldn’t believe what she makes, but she doesn’t think it’s enough.”

      Gary had a rough idea of what radiologists earned. One or two of them had filled out credit applications to buy high-end vehicles at his dealership and it briefly made him wish he had listened to his mother’s advice about medical school.

      “You should have more than enough money to buy a cottage,” Gary said. “Just do some of the math for her, walk through it together and she’ll see.”

      “It’s not that simple,” said Mike. Gary didn’t understand what it was like talking to Sandra about money. “Anyway, it’s not the end of the world. I’m sure once we get a bit further ahead, she’ll feel a bit more comfortable. I just want to make sure she and the kids get to enjoy life now and not just some day in the future.”

      “That’s what Jennifer has been saying to me about spending more time in Florida,” said Gary. “We should be enjoying ourselves now.”

      “I’ll tell you what,” said Mike. “Why don’t we have Jennifer talk to Sandra? It might not solve your problem, but it could help fix mine.”

      INTRODUCTION

      We meet couples like Gary and Jennifer and Mike and Sandra all the time — people who are successful professionally, but struggling with family decisions about cottages and private schools, plus financial matters like investments and insurance. As business owners and professionals, they’re juggling a set of competing objectives and complex circumstances, trying to balance immediate family needs with the long-term goal of financial security and retirement.

      Look at Gary. He’s successful in business, and together with Jennifer, has a wonderful family. He’s earning a great living — more than $400,000 per year. He started a car dealership 20 years ago and he’s worked hard to build it into a business that is now worth several million dollars.

      Gary and Jennifer have four kids aged 17 to 31, two of whom are working in the car dealership with him. He’s a few years away from retirement, and he and his wife have the capacity to achieve many of the dreams they’ve been working toward for years.

      But Gary isn’t making long-term financial decisions based on his unique circumstances as a business owner and the specific goals he has for himself and his family. He’s not working with a comprehensive financial plan. And he’s not relying on trusted advisers to assist him in the process. Instead, he’s acting on whims, like picking stocks based on something he reads in the newspaper, sees on TV or hears from a friend. He’s making a lot of decisions on his own, often without good advice. And in some cases he acts on bad advice, whether that comes from a friend, a colleague, or someone in the financial services sector who’s trying to sell him something. He’s like someone trying to lose weight based on the latest fad diet that he read about in a magazine.

      Sandra, meanwhile, has a different set of concerns. As Gary guessed, she earns a lot of money, about $550,000 a year, as a radiologist. But as her husband Mike pointed out, despite her significant income, Sandra faces a lot of competing pressures that cause her to worry about having enough money for both today and the future. She wants to give her kids the best possible start in life, meaning she and Mike are considering private school, not to mention other expenses like family vacations, summer camps, and extracurricular activities, many of which are not cheap. Sandra is also supporting her parents, who just moved to Canada from their home in India. In addition to her kids, and to some extent Mike, she now considers them her dependents as well.

      And while she has a good job with lots of security, Sandra worries about saving for her future because she has no pension. With the health-care industry in flux, she’s concerned about job security. There are no guarantees that she will always earn what she brings in now.

      Sandra’s anxieties lead her to take a fairly cautious approach to everything to do with money. Her investments tend to be very safe. She saves as much money as possible every year, shielding it in investments that are difficult to liquidate so that she and Mike aren’t tempted to access them for home renovations, trips or other lifestyle expenses.

      Although Gary and Sandra are fictional characters, we bet you can relate to one or both of them. As a professional or the owner of your own business, you juggle all the tasks of managing your career and your bottom line, plus all the other demands on your time and energy, including family.

      You probably get tremendous satisfaction from your work. And one of your biggest motivations for working so hard is to ensure that you create as much value and income as you can for yourself, and especially for the people you love. Yet you probably spend most of your time building your business or practice and very little time figuring out how the proceeds of your hard work will help you achieve your long-term goals.

      How would you answer the following questions?

      •Have you figured out the best way to extract income