A family vacation that stays within a set budget would satisfy the experience and financial criteria, and the client and their family members could also check the contribution box by performing volunteer service as part of their travels or by finding other ways to help people at their destination.
Once clients adopt this approach to financial decision-making, it’s remarkable how much more focused they become on their long-term goals and on involving family members and heirs in their financial choices. As an example, one of our clients got into the habit of making extravagant purchases that routinely impacted his long-term planning outlook. Once we walked him through this decision making model, he gradually came to see that these purchases were not bringing him the satisfaction or happiness he was looking for, and were, in fact, hindering his ability to leave behind the type of legacy he envisioned.
This framework can also produce teachable moments that help develop and strengthen connections between generations of investors from something as complex as the sale of a business. In one particularly powerful example, one of our clients found himself torn over the question of selling a large business that had been in his family for generations. He agonized over the decision until he discussed it with his wife and children using this basic quadrant approach.
When he realized that selling the business would not only make sense financially, but would enable him to pass on powerful experience assets through the increased time he would be able to spend with his family and contribution assets by enabling him to donate money to charitable causes, he finally found the reassurance he needed to move ahead with the sale. On the day the transaction was completed, our client brought his 12-year-old son with him to watch as the final documents were signed and his family’s thoughtful deliberations were translated into a significant financial decision with long-lasting effects for all of them. The transaction not only became a major event in securing the family’s financial future, but also became a valuable learning experience for our client’s son.
No matter how easy it may be to view financial matters in terms of pure dollars and cents—or ones and zeroes—the fact is that every significant financial decision we make involves a substantial human element. Our choices reflect our aspirations and our values at every stage in our lives, although we sometimes may not realize it. As financial advisors, our personal relationships with clients can enable us to help them recognize the priorities, hopes and underlying beliefs they are expressing through their financial choices, and how they can use a very simple model like the “Family Quadrant” approach to teach those core values to future generations.
As far as I know, there’s no app (or algorithm) for that.
Kyle Brownlee is a wealth manager and CEO of Wymer Brownlee, a tax and wealth services company based in Enid, Okla.