Have you ever thought about how gratitude could be a key part of your financial strategy? Ken Honda calls it “arigato money”, which we could call “thank you” money. When we are children, the very first lessons we learn about social etiquette revolve around two simple phrases: “please” and “thank you.” We are taught that gratitude is the baseline for healthy relationships. Yet, as we grow older and our financial lives become more complex, that fundamental […]
Continue readingAuthor: anthonyb@timslatter.com
Will you enjoy the journey?
There’s a traditional approach to financial planning that relies heavily on the maths of your money. A legacy expectation of discussing asset allocation, historic yields, and projected growth. Success can be perceivably forecast with the building of beautiful spreadsheets that show exactly how a portfolio should perform over the next few decades. But a spreadsheet has a distinct advantage over a human being: a spreadsheet does not feel fear. And this is both its advantage and […]
Continue reading
Keeping money in its place
We often look to our investment portfolios for ultimate security. We watch the markets, hoping the numbers will grow large enough to finally give us permission to exhale. This is so common; if you resonate with this, you’re not alone. But relying entirely on a bank balance, risk product or investment portfolio to provide your peace of mind can be a fragile strategy. They’re helpful, but need to remain balanced and in their proper place. There […]
Continue reading
The opportunity cost of ‘Inbox Zero’
Have you ever started off your day with the intent to mark off everything in your email inbox as ‘Read’? Sometimes, we have this perception that our emails need to be all read and sorted before we can move on to our next task. We are often taught to manage our time with the same rigour we use to manage our investment portfolios. We track our hours, schedule our meetings, and try to extract the maximum […]
Continue reading
Inheritance without instruction
When families who have spent decades building a substantial financial foundation sit down to talk about money, a quiet, often unspoken anxiety usually surfaces. As they look to the future, they worry about the impact their wealth will have on their children. Will the capital empower them to build meaningful lives, or will it remove their ambition and drive? It is a valid fear. The traditional approach to estate planning focuses almost entirely on the legal […]
Continue reading
Designing a frictionless recovery
When we build a financial plan, we naturally spend most of our time looking at the horizon. We focus on the big, exciting milestones: funding a comfortable retirement, selling a business, or leaving a meaningful legacy. We engineer our long-term investments to weather global economic storms. But in doing so, we often neglect the everyday potholes right in front of us. A burst pipe flooding the kitchen, a minor car accident on the school run, or […]
Continue reading
Why “enough” is not a Number
There is a subtle psychological trap that catches almost every successful person we meet. It is rarely discussed in financial textbooks, but it causes more anxiety than a market crash. It is the phenomenon of the moving finish line. It usually starts early in our careers. We tell ourselves, “I will feel secure when I earn a certain amount,” or “I will finally relax when I have this amount of money in the bank.” But a […]
Continue reading
Retiring to something
Have you ever thought about retiring TO something, not just from something? We spend our entire working lives focused on the mechanics of retirement. We build the plans, optimise the tax structures, and monitor the compounding. We plan meticulously for the day the regular salary stops. But we rarely plan for the day the alarm clock stops. For high-achievers, retirement is not just a financial event; it is a profound psychological transition. If you have spent […]
Continue reading
Asking better questions
When we sit down to discuss finances, the natural instinct—is to get straight to work. We want to be productive. Because of this, the conversation almost always begins with a variation of the same well-intentioned question: “How can I help you today?” or “What are your financial goals?” These questions come from a good place. They are rooted in a genuine desire to serve and solve problems. But in the world of lifestyle financial planning, we […]
Continue reading
The hidden gaps in your safety net
We spend a lot of time engineering our financial futures. We carefully allocate our assets, monitor our compounding, and build portfolios designed to withstand economic storms. But one of the most profound risks to a long-term financial plan has nothing to do with the stock market. It has to do with your health. When we review a financial plan, we often find a dangerous assumption: the belief that having “medical insurance” or access to a “national […]
Continue reading