You’re not a pessimist. Rather, it’s how you learned to view the world in law school. Your credo goes something like, “First, find the downside,” as you represent your clients’ best interests. It’s why they engage you.
It’s wonderful to have a meaningful career, a fulfilling home life, a busy social calendar, and ample assets, right? Then again, we all have days when we wonder why everything has to happen all at once. And that’s just in our personal lives. Simplicity is a virtue for all your personal and professional pursuits; it certainly applies to your financial interests.
At the end of the day, it’s not as much about the money as it is about what your wealth is worth to you. In financial terms, what your money is worth to you is referred to as your marginal utility of your wealth – i.e., not whether additional wealth might be achieved, but whether it needs to be. Would additional wealth impact the quality of your life in a meaningful way?
There is a potent mix that lets you build a sturdy safety net so, should worse come to worst in your career or business, you can preserve your human capital and live to fight another day. At the same time, you retain a concentrated degree of higher-expected return holdings, so you can still expect to accumulate additional wealth toward achieving your long-term goals.
A best practice for preserving your personal wealth is to harness the powers of diversification and asset allocation in your investment portfolio. But, while it’s common to consider your personal and business planning in isolation, you’re actually best served by blending them within your planning mix.
Most of us spend plenty of time thinking about how much our wealth matters to us. Have you ever stopped to consider the reverse: How much does your earning power matter to your wealth? To put that in financial terms, when is the last time you or your advisor have factored in your human (labor) capital when managing your financial capital?