Inspiration for Chance favors

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I’m going to begin by telling a little story and tie it all in…

My dad owned a financial services and insurance agency and I can remember him coming home late many nights from an appointment in his suit, with briefcase in tow, and saying to my brother and I, “go to the window.”

We’d run to the window in our living-room, close our eyes and open our hands. He’d surprise us with a pack of Rolo’s or a Chunky Bar…we’d barely be able to contain our excitement.

It makes me laugh just thinking about it. (BTW, this is the same window through which I saw Santa Claus and the Easter bunny, who I swore hopped over our garage one Easter.)

Making the sale

I wonder if he gave us the Rolo’s when he made the sale and the Chunky bar when things didn’t exactly go his way? I’m going to have to remember to ask him one of these days. (I guess you can tell which of the two candy bars I preferred.)

Either way it was always exciting to “go to the window” and I will always associate those fond memories with his business trips. Go figure 25 years later I’d be following in his footsteps.

My dad is now semi-retired but still works in the business because he enjoys it. He now specializes in LTC (Long term care) insurance, helping people his own age to understand the importance of that product. Now, the reason I’m bringing all this up is not to focus on my father, but to clue you in on what inspired me to write this blog.

All the right reasons

I saw my dad helping people his own age and getting a lot of satisfaction out of doing it. It got me to thinking… who’s helping people my age?

I realized that people around my own age, alot of my own friends, who have good jobs, were in need of good planning advice and a bit of encouragement. It seemed that no one cared about this segment of the market! So I decided to do some anecdotal investigating.

Straw poll

I asked a few of my friends (and acquaintances) a couple of different questions to see what kind of responses I would get:

• Do you know what a Roth IRA is? Some knew, some thought that they knew
• Do you have a Roth IRA? A few had Roth’s but were in the minority, some were not eligible to make a contribution but didn’t know it.
• Are you aware you can convert a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA? Even fewer knew about this
• Do you know much about the investments choices you made in your 401K? A common response was “I think so”
• Do you review your choices periodically and re-balance your portfolio? A common response was “not really”
• Have you done a formal financial plan? No
• Have you done some ‘down home’ planning? No one knew what that was, which is understandable since I coined the phrase. Go to ‘down home’ planning page to learn more

I think you get the point much like I did. So I wanted to help change this ‘ignorance is bliss’ attitude that’s out there, hence, ‘chance favors the prepared mind’ was born…

Tags: Inspirations