It is good to return to writing again, and to see the back catalogue of blog posts spanning more than a decade up on the website. The last few months have been a whirlwind of remembering how to operate a solo practice after all these years, setting up operations for my local community land trust, and parenting three teenagers.

The biggest change, by far, has been my switch away from Naviplan and to my friend Owen Winkelmolen’s planning platform Adviice, which allows me and my clients to work on the plan together. Instead of just a PDF of their financial plan, clients are able to see and interact with their plan on their own, making tweaks and changes along the way, and making it ten thousand times easier to revisit together in the future when life, inevitably, changes.

As always, I’m gearing up for a fall full of income planning meetings, checking in on portfolio sustainability, withdrawal rates, and any strategic tax moves that need to be made before the end of the calendar year. Some of my income planning clients have been with me since 2015, which feels simultaneously like ancient history and yesterday.

My profound thanks to those of you who have been with me for the last decade. Here’s to many more to come.

—Sandi

Ah, September. Simultaneously a month that includes the last delicious bits of summer, the first delicious bits of fall, and an almost irresistible urge to buy new binders... even if you don’t know anyone going back to school and haven’t used real paper in years.

Remember, September can be anything you want it to be. For me, it’s become an unofficial New Year, a time to evaluate how I’ve done with all the hopes and dreams I had for myself and my clients at the beginning of the year, a time to refresh and reset my goals, and a last burst of energy to get me through the (always-busy) fall income-planning season and through to the end of another year.

If you’re not in the habit of pausing to reflect on what you’ve accomplished recently, or are deeply uncomfortable with the very idea of celebrating your own success (whatever that might look like), I highly recommend that you consider building this into your regular life.

The truth is that we’ve all accomplished something pretty remarkable, just by continuing to show up after an exhausting 18 months of pandemic living. Parents of school-aged children faced with yet another uncertain school year are accomplishing the impossible every day... just by getting out of bed at this point, quite frankly. If you can find a way to celebrate yourself, even if it’s small (or big like you deserve), DO IT.

Well, here we are in the In-Between...again. That space between winter and summer, between hibernation indoors  and having fun outside, between “yay, the vaccines are here” and “now when do I get to visit my Mom?”.

Around here we recognize May as the time between the awful “Stressed & Bummed Out and I Don’t Know Why Season” that seems to last for most of January, February, March, and April, and our favourite “Dream State Goal-Setting Season” (aka the entire summer). It’s the time when the work gets done, and the liminal space between what has been and what’s on the way that we named our company after. 

It’s hard living in this space, particularly now. The pandemic has heightened our awareness of how much time we spend being uncertain. It’s very difficult to make decisions when you have only a vague idea of what might happen, when it might happen, or what the effect might be...but rarely all three at once. Each of us crave a simple formula that not only tells us exactly what to do, but promises us that everything will be fine if only we follow the right steps. 

As attractive as simple answers and surefire formulas for success might be (especially in the middle of the night when our deepest fears come out to play), I know that easy answers do us all a disservice. The hard work of living and making decisions in the middle of uncertainty, of defining your own version of success and moving towards it step by step, changing course as you go, is the only way we know how to live, and the only way I know how to serve my clients. 

I hope that as you move through this particular in-between season, that you see hope on the horizon, even if you have to squint a little.

This month, more than a year into a global pandemic, I’m thinking hard about family: those dear ones we haven’t hugged in far too long, those we will never hug again, and those who have been right next to us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 365 days and counting….and counting...

What Does Family Mean To You?

I don’t care even the tiniest bit about what anyone else thinks “family” means. I only care about what it means to YOU.

Family is, of course, a bit of a loaded topic, and your definition of what family is and what it means to you may have evolved significantly over the years, maybe even on purpose. Your family might include only your partner and kids, full stop. Or it might be a web of relations that includes elders, aunts, cousins, and nephews you’ve never even met (yet). You might have carefully chosen your family as an adult, or your definition of family might include the ancestors who came before you and the generations who will follow you. Your cat might be your family.

If you feel a responsibility to your family, whoever they are and whatever that responsibility means to you, I have excellent news: there are so many financial tools that you can use to care for them!

Common (And Not So Common) Ways To Support Your Family

The way you spend and save your money today is an immediate and probably kind of obvious tool you can use to live out your values. In fact, you’re probably already using cash out of your own pocket to feed and shelter at least one family member, and maybe even setting some aside for someone else’s future education or retirement spending.

Wealth transfer is also a common way to care for family members, perhaps by building up (or maintaining) a portfolio of assets that can be passed along to future generations. Investing in assets that will slow or repair the destruction of our climate is another way you can use your portfolio to live out this particular value.

You may have a business that you’ve created or one that was passed down from another generation. The legacy of that business might be incredibly important to you and your family. Structuring how (or if) this business transitions to the next generation is vital to business families, as are the deep and meaningful discussions, facilitated by a professional before you even start implementing solutions. This can ensure that the meaning that your family has built within the business lives on, even if it looks a little different in each generation.

Many people don’t realize it, but investing in appropriate disability and critical illness insurance is an extremely powerful way to care for family. A few years ago, we discussed this very thing in an episode of Because Money (skip to minute 36 to hear it), and came to the conclusion that neglecting your personal risk management planning is equivalent to informing your family that THEY are your disability insurance! They might be glad to step up...but if caring for them is a value of yours, you might not feel so hot about it.

I’ve said this many times before, but it’s worth repeating: planning for your own eventual departure is truly one of the most loving and thoughtful things you can do for your family.

Family Is Important… to Everyone

Family means some kind of thing to everyone. It might be a big deal, it might be a smaller deal, but it’s a deal of some sort. You demonstrate that value in the design of your own personal and business finances, one way or another.

I recommend that you don’t leave that up to someone else, or on the backburner for another day. Spend the time to review your approach to family, and understand exactly how you want to invest - or not invest - in it, as the case may be.

Monday, March 26

5:00AM

My alarm goes off, and I head downstairs for the best part of the day (the quiet part with hot coffee and no random Marvel movie questions because my son -- and everyone else -- is still asleep). I don’t often get up this early anymore, but I have two proposals to write for prospective clients and know I’m going to have a hard time focusing on writing them well between all of the meetings I have today. I spend about twenty minutes reading and then get down to business.

7:00AM

Lucy, my six year old, finds her way downstairs and wants to cuddle in my chair and read stories for a bit. How can I say no?

7:30AM

I add a few more details to my Weekly Success Planner, the document I use to document my successes over the past week, update the progress I’ve made on my goals for the quarter, and sketch out what’s happening for me in the coming week. While I’m in there, I add my notes to similar documents I use with colleagues in the Financial Planning Forum.

7:40AM

Upstairs for a shower, downstairs for breakfast, and all over creation (multiple times) to find library books, agendas, sweaters, and spiderman legos, and get the kids bundled up in appropriate outside gear for whatever combination of early spring weather they’re going to be outside in (Mittens? Running shoes? Winter boots with plastic bags inside them? I don’t even know anymore.)

10:00AM

Back from a walk with my Mom a half hour before my first call of the day (full disclosure, I thought it started at ten because I’m easily confused by calendars and that’s why we have Calendly), I start making notes for a six month plan update meeting later in the day.

10:30AM

Discovery call with a prospective client. I take loads of notes so I can write her proposal letter later in the week.

11:30AM

More prep time for my next client meeting. I grab some tuna salad I made yesterday and crackers to snack on since I might not have time for lunch.

12:30PM

Client update meeting. This is a client who had quite a few things on his action list, so we run through his progress on each and agree to reconnect once his tax return is filed.

1:30PMTurns out I do have time for lunch! I sit down with hot coffee and my current book, Snuff by Terry Pratchett. I’ve been re-reading them in order and am sad to be almost done with Discworld again.

2:00PM

Prep time for another update meeting. This client has been faithfully updating the spreadsheet we share, so I’m up to speed really quickly.

2:30PM

Another discovery meeting with a potential client.

3:30PM

Seth and the kids are walking in the door just as I finish up my call. Oscar yells “hello!” so loudly that I can hear it in my office with the door closed, so it must have been a good day. Seth and I work away in the kitchen getting ready for supper (let’s be honest: he gets ready for supper and I empty the dishwasher and get coffee ready for the next morning).

4:25PM

Client update meeting. He’s sped through the action list we created as part of his financial plan, and only has a few questions about rebalancing his accounts, so we’re done quickly. We agree to touch base again once he finds out some key information from his lawyer that will affect next year’s plan.

5:00PM

Supper with the family and a glass of wine with Seth while the kids talk about their day.

6:30PM

Plan presentation meeting with recently retired clients. This is the second plan I’ve done for these clients in three years, and it goes really well until we both realize I inserted a cash flow table from the wrong scenario into their report. I promise to fix it tomorrow and we schedule a second meeting to discuss it for Thursday.

8:33PMI

join our monthly Financial Planning Forum call three minutes late, which throws me off. There’s already a great discussion going on about one of our members’ new financial planning program that's in beta right now, and we use most of the hour talking about the data-gathering process and how to make it easier for everyone involved.

9:30PM

It’s been a long day, and Seth isn’t feeling great, but neither of us can resist watching the season five premiere of Silicon Valley.

10:15PM

Bed. Thank goodness.

Tuesday, March 27

6:00AM

My alarm goes off at a more normal time for me when I don’t have urgent work to finish up, and I head downstairs for hot coffee and to read my way through the articles and blog posts that might make my Monthly Great Reads. I share a few things, but nothing stands out enough to add to the list.

7:00AM

Lucy’s up first again, and we read a few of her favourite story books before anyone else gets up. Seth is going with Jupiter on a school trip this morning, and I’m heading to Barrie to work for the day with one of my best friends, so there’s a bit of a line up for the shower.

8:45AM

Breakfast is cleaned up, and Seth is going to walk the kids to school this morning, so I pack up my computer and jump in the van to head to the Barrie Public Library.

9:20AM

I’m fifteen minutes away from the library and the phone rings. It’s school, and Oscar’s hit his head pretty hard in the playground. Usually Seth is the guy on call for this kind of thing, but he’s on that field trip, so I turn the van around and head back home. I get to listen to a new fintech podcast and re-listen to our Because Money episode on Caring for Aging Parents, which is turning out to be my favourite episode of all time, so the hour and a half there and back isn’t a complete waste.

10:30AM

With Oscar settled in at home (looks like it might be a concussion, so we’ve got an appointment booked with the Nurse Practitioner in the afternoon) I get to work on correcting the report from last night’s client meeting.

11:00AM

Lunch with Oscar. It’s nice to have some time alone together, although I’m still a little worried about his head. He manages to ask roughly four million questions about The Legend of Zelda in thirty minutes, so he’s probably fine.

12:30PM

Updates to a cash flow and debt repayment plan for clients I’ve been working with off and on for a few years. I think it’s ready to go, given their new net income and balances, but I want to review it one last time before I send it.

1:30PM

At the Nurse Practitioner’s office. Oscar doesn’t have a concussion. Hooray! Lollipops all around.

2:00PM

Back in front of the computer, I wrap up the last of the new plan explanation and send it off, and then make a few changes to the book review post that’s due to publish today.

3:30PM

Seth and the kids are home, so I turn on my headphones to some random ambient noise channel and start answering the emails that have piled up so far today. There’s a long one with some new information for a current client, a few updates for a client who’s just got his homework in and is ready for me to book prep time, an email introducing another advice only colleague to a prospective client of mine who sounds like a better fit for her expertise, plus a whole raft of follow up emails to prospective clients I’ve talked to over the past few weeks.

5:00PM

Supper. Seth made baked potatoes with broccoli. Oscar begs for half of mine like he’s starving.

6:00PM

The kids are playing some kind of strange game with rules only they can understand, and Seth still isn’t feeling great and is resting on the couch, so I sit down to start writing this post. Thank goodness I started tracking my hours, because I can barely remember this morning...let alone yesterday.

7:30PM

Have tucked the kids in bed just in time for my last call of the day, another prospective client meeting, which goes really well. I’m looking forward to writing this proposal, although I just realized that my normal proposal writing block falls on a holiday this week, so if I don’t write them on Thursday they won’t go out until next Wednesday. Ugh.

8:15PM

The meeting wraps up a little earlier than I had booked it for, so I tell myself I’m going to put on my PJs and go downstairs...right after I update my Positive Focus for next week...and answer one last email...and reorder a few tasks scheduled for Thursday in my calendar…

8:45PM

Done for the night. Mix up a gin & tonic with Seth and mean to read for a bit before bed, since it’s No TV Tuesday (like Taco Tuesday, but --alas!-- fewer tacos)...but we got halfway through my favourite Doctor Who episode¹ last night so we cheat and finish it up.¹ “Silence in the Library,” if you’re wondering

Wednesday, March 28

6:50AM

A slow start this morning, but I manage to get about twenty minutes of reading in before Lucy turns up with an armful of books to read. There’s a great article from Jonathan Guyton about retirement planning in my feed, and I share it with an awkward sports metaphor before jumping in to Wild and Over in the Meadow.

9:45AM

A slow start to work (I’m sensing a theme here), since I had to stop in at the school office to make sure Oscar doesn’t do anything likely to result in another head injury...today, anyway. Today’s project is a Foundation Report for new clients who hope to retire in two years. I review my notes from our Discovery Meeting a month ago before jumping into work.

10:45AM

I’m halfway through the portfolio review when I realize I need to get in touch with Doug Runchey if I want to calculate my client’s CPP benefit. I quickly scrub the Statement of Contributions to get rid of any personal information and send it to Doug, along with the retirement and benefit claim date scenarios I’d like him to calculate.

12:00PM

I manage to join our last Financial Planning Forum call for March on time, and we have a rousing discussion about family planning after one of our members brings up a planning scenario he’s working on. I fully nerd out over how fun it is to talk shop with a group of smart, engaged planners.

1:16PM

Our call goes a little late after we get on the topic of networking with other professionals and how hard it can be. Once we hang up, I realize that I didn’t have lunch yet, so I eat some crackers and cream cheese while I wait for a fresh pot of coffee. That’s totally lunch, right? Right.

1:30PM

Back at my Foundation Report. I spend a good hour and a half exercising stringent scenario control, since the lesson on what happens when I don’t is just a little too fresh to be comfortable. I get through their current cash flow, estimate their necessary and discretionary expenses in retirement, compile their asset allocation from the Morningstar XRay data, start developing their retirement timeline, and draft most of the clarifying questions I want to ask in our meeting before I start losing focus. By then the kids have walked in the door, so I take a break to give them all a squeeze and start fielding Zelda questions again.

5:00PM

I’ve been pecking away at a few more details on the Foundation Report, but trying to focus is a losing battle and I finally give up, just in time for supper.

6:30PM

It’s back on the phone with my clients from Monday night. We go through their corrected report -- thankfully I didn’t screw anything else up, sheesh -- and finish up after a good two hours. I start sneezing and coughing halfway through...so, great.

8:15PM

Doctor Who and bed with a box of tissue. Oh, and a bit of bourbon.

Thursday, March 29

5:45AM

Feeling fine (because mothers don’t get to be sick for more than 12 hours at a time), I get to work on the Foundation Report while my brain is as fresh as it’s going to be today. I work steadily until 7, when Oscar springs out of bed and immediately starts quizzing me about who my favourite character in Zelda is. (Isn’t there just a little green guy in Zelda?) I evade his questions by aggressively reading books at him.

9:11AM

I send two invitation emails to planners who are thinking of joining the Financial Planning Forum. They’re both at really interesting stages in their respective careers and I hope this is the right time for them to join. Right away one planner calls me to talk a little more about the Forum, and we have a good chat about what she’s working on and what’s important to her right now.

10:15AM

Back to my client work. I’ve received Doug’s CPP calculations, so I start constructing the two retirement date scenarios I’m going to present in our meeting on Monday. There are still a few key pieces of data that I’ll need from the clients, but I’m feeling really good about the way this plan is shaping up and excited to talk about it with them.

3:18PM

Uh, I was so focused on the plan that I forgot Seth wasn’t going to be home to pick the kids up from school and I was supposed to do it. I’m alerted to this fact when Jupiter walks in the door crying because she didn’t know where we were. We rush across the street to school and I gather up Oscar and Lucy and bring them home. I mean, I knew I was absent-minded, but this takes the cake. Cake, hmmm. I think I forgot to eat today too.

4:00PM

Seth is back, so there’s an adult in the house again. I retreat to my chair and start writing up the proposals from my Discovery calls on Monday and Tuesday.

6:30PM

Late supper, kids in bed quickly. I’m feeling the effects of all that focusing and my brain is tired.

7:30PM

I spend a few minutes finishing one more proposal letter, and then get into my PJs and start updating this post, which is - I fear - novel-length and interesting only to my mother...maybe...if she was really bored.

9:18PM

B-E-D. So much bed. Maximum bed.

Friday, March 30

It’s a holiday, and since I’ve not historically been great at taking time off, I try really hard today. Without the benefit of my time tracker, it’s hard to know precisely what I did when, which I’ll count as a win for vacationing. There’s definitely some sleeping in, a late breakfast, a round of Legends of Zelda and a walk in here somewhere.