Effectively Navigating The In-Between Phases Of Life And Work

Sometimes we do get ourselves stuck, but other times we simply find ourselves marooned in the in-between—where the present feels more like the past, but the future is uncertain.

People talk a lot about finishing an existing project or starting a new one, but how can we effectively navigate the seeming wasteland between them? Whether or not we choose to be in this space, it can be uncomfortable and it is often unproductive. It’s as if we find ourselves treading water—personally, professionally and financially. But by effectively navigating these in-between phases in life and work, by releasing the outcome and exercising proactive patience, we can keep moving forward.

Maybe you’re rehabbing an injury and are out of the game or the season. Maybe you’ve sold your house and temporarily are crammed into an apartment while you’re building your new dream home. Maybe a long-term relationship has ended and you’re taking time to heal before considering coupling again. Heck, maybe you’ve gotten the first vaccine shot and are awaiting the second!

One of the most common—and challenging—in-between scenarios, however, is occupationally oriented. I spoke with a great friend and amazing professional this past week who runs her own business—but she’s in the middle of a lengthy interview process for a job that could be really stinking awesome.

The new job, if offered and accepted, would initiate a massive amount of change for her and her family. They’d have to move—and they already live in the best city in the world, for goodness’ sake—but her husband and three children are all on board for a new adventure if that’s how it breaks.

There are several meaningful pros to accompany that monumental con, though. Most notably, the job would vault her visibility within her industry, compounding her already impressive credentials, and position her as a national authority in her realm of expertise.

But the whole process of wrestling with this possibility began months ago. First, she had to come to grips with the possibility herself; then she had to communicate that development to her husband, whose work would remain in their current locale; then they had to see if the kids were on board; and only then did she really seriously consider this option.

And throughout it all, the “Will they pick me?” stress continued to build and build. The first interview. The call back. And now, a scheduled third interview. Oh, and running the business she already owns.

Most of us have been through some version of this and many other in-betweens—or we will be in the future. But as she recently brought me up to speed on the process and progress, I could feel my own stomach tighten. So I asked:

How are you managing being in the in-between?

Curiosity: The Most Important Trait For Financial Advisors

I had it all wrong.

Early in my career as a financial advisor, my goal, even more than gaining clients, was to gain knowledge. I was operating under the assumption that bringing knowledge where it is lacking is an advisor’s primary value. But while a certain degree of knowledge is a prerequisite, of course, I eventually learned that knowledge is ubiquitous—readily available with a few keyboard taps—and that it can even be counterproductive when sub-optimally applied.

Fortunately, I graduated from that oversimplistic belief to a more nuanced one in which I found greater confidence. I determined that sound judgement was actually the most important trait for an advisor. It was the ability to apply knowledge, to help clients make a this-or-that decision, that was really where an advisor could demonstrate his or her worth. 

How To Be Unhappy But Successful

“Are you measuring yourself in the gap or the gain?”

No, this isn’t a question pitting retail clothing against laundry detergent. It’s a question posed by Greg McKeown, the author of the essential book Essentialism, in his recent 1-Minute Wednesday newsletter.

Your answer matters, both in the way you approach money and life—but especially money.

“Gap thinking means looking at the distance between where we are and where we want to be (or comparing ourselves to what other people have achieved),” said McKeown. “Gain thinking means looking at the progress we have already made.”

For example, I had breakfast Friday morning with two friends, both of whom have experienced degrees of success in their professional lives that I could argue dwarf my own. That’s where my head would be if I was a gap thinker, anyway.

If I was a gain thinker, however, I might relish the fact that these dudes thought highly enough of me to give me a seat at the table…or at least that I was in good company for a free breakfast at a great restaurant!

As a financial advisor for a couple decades, I can tell you that the #1 question I’ve been asked by clients is some version of, “So, how am I doing…you know…relative to your other clients in similar situations?”

It’s not because these people are overly insecure or emotionally needy. But money—and, in many ways, financial planning—breeds gap thinking. Dollars, cents, credits and debits make it so easy to create a seemingly tangible success scorecard.

Perhaps you’re familiar with Lee Eisenberg’s book from several years back, The Number: A Completely Different Way To Think About The Rest Of Your Life. He recalls a regular-rotation TV commercial at the time (that may still be running in some form today) for a big financial institution where you see people walking down a busy street, each with a dollar number hovering over them.

This is the type of image that the very nature of money makes it hard to avoid.

It’s not an entirely unhelpful notion to quantify our financial security in the form of a single number, despite the risk of oversimplification. But such thinking leads us very quickly to comparison, which many years ago Teddy Roosevelt accurately declared to be “the thief of joy.”

How Much Impact Does The President Have On The Market?

The question of whether or not the U.S. President or a particular party has an impact–positively or negatively–on stocks, bonds, unemployment, inflation, the deficit, and GDP growth–has been flying around like crazy. But especially in the midst of a contentious election cycle, it’s never been harder to find clear answers.

But take a glance at this interactive chart that enables you to click on each U.S. President going all the way back to 1929 to see what the major market and economic indicators looked like for each presidential cycle. I think you’ll find that it’s conclusively inconclusive:

So, should you consider changing your investment plan ahead of the election?

Short answer: No.

And here’s the slightly longer answer from one of the brightest investment people I know (and a darn good guitar player), Jared Kizer, CFA, Chief Investment Officer, Buckingham Wealth Partners:

How To Survive The Election

Everything coming at us right now is purposefully designed to unsettle us. We have to work to be settled in an environment like this. Here are three simple steps you can take to find peace in the midst of the chaos, and likely help others around you do more of the same:

1) Control Your Inputs.

A friend told me yesterday that he needs to replace the screen on his brand new, fancy-schmancy, big-screen OLED television. You know why? Because the banner running across the bottom of the screen of his news channel of choice has scorched itself into the screen. I didn’t even know that was possible.

Turn off Fox News. Turn off CNN. The former has a daily show called “Special Report,” a phrase that was once reserved for something that was Earth-shattering news, and the latter has a daily show called “The Situation Room,” which used to be an actual place in the West Wing of the White House reserved for the most serious of situations are discussed.

Financial Advisors: How To Talk To Clients About Politics

The last time I put a presidential campaign sign in my front yard was 2004. We lived on a small court, and we had just moved in that September. One of our neighbors was another young couple, but the other two families had lived there since the houses were built in 1960.

My political convictions were (and are) important to me, but one day, as I pulled into the court and saw the sign, it struck me that while it may have been a bridge to one neighbor, it could almost certainly be a stumbling block for another. I hadn’t even met all my neighbors in person yet—did I really want my vote to be the first impression I made?

I pulled out the sign, and I haven’t raised another since.

Politics sign
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Sometimes I have to pinch myself, because as a financial advisor, my job is to meet people, learn about what’s most important to them, help them articulate those values as intentions and goals, and then help create and follow a plan designed to reach them. What a gig, and what a privilege!

One of the greatest gifts of my 20 years and counting in the business is the wide variety of people with whom I’ve been able to engage. While you might tend to think that there is a stereotypical financial advisory client, my experience has been anything but uniform. From teaching college students—one of the best educations I’ve ever received—to advising individuals and families, it’s the striking differences between people that have left an indelible mark on me.

Sure, aside from the college students, they all had something in common—they were blessed with means sufficient enough to hire someone to help in its stewardship—but that’s where the similarities stopped. And their political proclivities have ranged across a vast continuum.

Especially over the last decade, and increasingly over the past four years, I’ve also seen these political opinions manifest as convictions so gripping that I’d describe them as visceral. People seem increasingly concerned with the potential for politics to shape their lives externally, and these concerns are so deeply internalized that I can see, hear and feel the weight of them in the faces and voices of my clients.

These feelings seem just as strong across the political spectrum. It’s not uncommon for us, as advisors, to have a conversation with someone who is convinced that their livelihood is doomed and the very fate of our nation sealed if so-and-so wins only to find, in the very next conversation, that another person is convinced of something equally cataclysmic if such-and-such wins.

So what are we advisors supposed to do? How do we navigate these intense emotions with our clients? And how should we navigate the opinions we hold, knowing that our convictions are rarely, if ever, going to be entirely aligned with those of our clients?

The Non-Conformist’s 4-Step Education Savings Plan

It’s become almost passé to bemoan the exorbitant cost of a college education and the collective debt burden, now over $1.6 trillion, resting on the shoulders of U.S. students and parents.  While it’s true that college tuition has risen at twice the rate of inflation, many academic consumers refuse to recognize their complicity in skyrocketing costs.  Indeed, educational institutions charge what they do because we’re willing to pay for it.

Yet a perplexing antinomy exists—a college education can be excessively expensive, holding students and their benefactors financially hostage for decades, or it can be surprisingly inexpensive.  Case in point:

Harvard Vs. Harford

Without accounting for any financial aid or scholarships, a student could trade one semester of Ivy League education for a four-year undergraduate degree from any number of excellent state universities.  Specifically, if a student, living in Harford County, Maryland, were to commute from home to Harford Community College for two years and then commute to Towson University for the second two years, the total cost of tuition and fees—for an entire undergraduate degree—would be approximately $27,826 by my calculations, based on 2020 published estimates.  That would buy you just a hair under 10% of four years of tuition, room, board and fees at Harvard–it wouldn’t even cover a single semester.

This is quite obviously a gross oversimplification, only factoring one of many important dimensions of the full college experience, and not accounting for the fact that few students at any college pay full price, but the illustration forces us to recognize that there are other educational options available aside from paying a fortune.

It also begs the question: In a day and age when the undergraduate degree has been largely commoditized and viewed as a prerequisite for virtually every white collar job available, do the intangible benefits to be derived from any collegiate scenario costing more than the $27,826 represent a good value proposition?  Is the nearly $200,000 premium (in today’s dollars) you pay for the elite private or Ivy League undergraduate experience worth it?  Is the $100,000 premium you pay to live on campus at an out-of-state, state university worth it?  Is the $50,000 premium you pay to live and eat on campus at your state university worth it?

The answer for any of the above may very well be an emphatic and justifiable YES! but the value proposition for each student/school/benefactor combination will be different and worthy of exploration.  Here’s a four step process that will help you make that determination and properly fund the resulting decisions.

Step 1: Can you?

This instruction is directed largely to parents, but the logic is identical and the process just as important for those flying solo in their educational endeavors.  In developing your Family Education Policy, you must first ask the question “Can I?”  What is a reasonable expense for your children’s education that your household could bear without unduly hampering your own financial plan, present and future? 

It’s actually a selfish act to prioritize your children’s education over your retirement savings, because it will be much less costly for your children to pay off finite student loans than to bail out parents in the midst of a financial and health crisis in their old age.  If you can’t, don’t; then set your pride aside and discuss this reality with your budding scholars.

If you’re having trouble answering the question Can I? without more of a frame of reference, let me give you a rough idea of how much you’d have to save monthly, from the day your child is born, for 18 years, assuming the cost of education rises at 5% and you’re able to earn 7% on your savings:

  • Community college / In-state State U commuter:                      $ 155/ mo
  • In-state State U resident:                                                                 $ 542/ mo
  • Out-of-state State U resident:                                                         $ 857/ mo
  • Premier private / Ivy League resident:                                        $1,618/ mo

Does that offer some perspective?

Step 2: Will you?

After determining whether you can, you should follow that with “Will I?”  The financial entities who sell and administer education savings plans have seemingly colluded with academia to create an unspoken moral imperative for parents to fund their children’s college education.  And while I have no desire to strip you of a healthy desire to pay for your child’s post-secondary schooling, I want to give you the freedom to recognize that it is your choice to make.  This is an opportunity to parent, and to make a mark on your children based on your articulated personal principles and goals—the first step of every good financial plan.  I urge you to capitalize on that opportunity.

Step 3: Develop a Family Education Policy

At this point, you can, with the aid of your co-parent, clearly set forth a Family Education Policy.  This is your answer to the question your kids will eventually ask: “Hey, Katie’s parents told her they would pay [whatever] for college—what are you doing for me?”  My hope is that you won’t even wait for that query to arrive, proactively communicating this message even before curiosity forces the issue.  Maybe you’ll offer to pay up-to the four-year cost of an in-state state university education; or possibly up-to four years at your alma mater (although I’d warn you that this common directive seems less about them and more about you); maybe you’ll offer to pay the first two years of school, or a fascinating idea one client proposed—the second two years (to ensure her children were serious about the endeavor).

If you have the wherewithal and desire to offer your children the educational blank check—you can go wherever your heart desires that will accept you—by all means, do so.  But if all you have is the desire and not the wherewithal, you’re doing no one a favor.

Step 4: Develop an Education Savings Plan

The number 529 has become nearly synonymous with education savings, and in part for good reason.  529 plans offer education savers options for hedging the future costs of education and/or tax privilege.  Prepaid tuition plans give us the opportunity to pay for tomorrow’s tuition at today’s prices.  The plans are state administered and typically only cover the cost of tuition in your state (although you may be able to use the equivalent of the tuition cost of your state’s universities in another state).  If the cost of education continues to rise at its current pace, this would appear to be a good hedge, but the solidity of your prepaid plan of choice must also be considered.  Since many states are enduring financial difficulties of their own, the solvency of some plans has been reasonably questioned.

A 529 investment savings plan is very different conceptually.  It is an investment bucket of mutual funds you own that receives tax privilege similar to that of a Roth IRA.  You contribute after-tax dollars to the plan, and the principal and growth can be distributed tax-free if used for a wide range of qualified education expenses.  You may also receive a state tax deduction for a portion of your contribution.  The contribution limits are quite liberal, allowing $15,000 per parent (or even grandparent), per child in 2020, also with an allowance to prefund up to five years.  But since the funds invested in these accounts are subject to market volatility, a bigger concern over the past decade has been whether or not you are actually making money at all—much less over the college inflation factor.

If your children are very young and you can stomach the volatility, a college investment savings plan is an excellent tool, but I highly recommend using a no-load version of one of these 529 plans so you don’t start your investment in the hole via a brokerage commission.  If your children are older and you live in a state with a strong prepaid tuition plan, that may be a good option to consider.  But in either of these cases, I recommend you apply the 50% Rule.  Save 50% of your expected education needs in education-specific 529 plans, but store the other 50% in conservatively invested taxable accounts (or even savings accounts and CDs) since there are so many other variables at work.

Does education have a price?  Learning has inherent value which is incalculable.  Education is one of the primary ways we learn.  I taught at the college level for seven years and believe that it is one of my most important contributions; but while the educational process may be priceless, we must not ignore the associated price tag.

This article, updated in 2020, was originally published in my blog on Forbes.com.

Is COVID-19 Creating An Education Planning Crisis?

Few things in our lives have been so dramatically altered throughout the COVID-19 crisis as school and education. From online coursework to cancelled proms to a March devoid of Madness but full of uncertainty about whether or not college campuses will even reopen for the fall semester, there seem to be even more questions than answers.

How events unfold is especially high stakes for the students and parents facing the myriad of decisions surrounding the meaningful investment—personally and professionally—of college education. So, both as an advisor and a parent of teens, I asked one of the most knowledgeable people I know on the topic of college planning, my colleague Dave Ressner, a wealth advisor and education planning specialist. And he answered:

New Jersey: Coronavirus
PRINCETON, NJ – APRIL 22CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

Tim Maurer: What impact is the COVID-19 crisis having on institutions of higher learning?

David Ressner: COVID-19 has affected almost every sector of the economy, and higher education is certainly no exception. One higher education group estimates more than $100 billion in emergency response costs across the sector, and some schools are worried they won’t be able survive this crisis.

The Key To Saving More For Retirement: Using Your Imagination

The coronavirus is dominating our attention so pervasively in the present moment that the notion of retirement seems even more distant for savers. That’s understandable—natural, even. But it’s precisely our fixation on the present that causes us to struggle to follow through on our intentions to secure our future. Let me show you why.

I have a proposition for you: I’d like to give you one of two gift certificates to your favorite restaurant (that is sure to reopen when the quarantine is lifted). But first, please picture that inviting atmosphere at 7:00 p.m. on a bustling Saturday night, the thoughtful waitstaff, the right musical backdrop, and the perfect meal in front of you and your ideal dinner companion. Now, choose between a $200 gift certificate you would receive today or a $400 gift certificate you would receive 10 years from now.

Time’s up. Which did you choose?

Unless you’re gaming the system – that is, you’re anticipating a financial advisor would never encourage seemingly impulsive behavior over deferred gratification – you almost surely chose the $200 gift certificate today. I would too. Lord knows we’re going to be ready for a night on the town when we return to public life! And that doesn’t make us wasteful or foolish. It makes us human.

Do it today
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To be clear, our all-so-human behavior isn’t inherently foolish or wasteful, especially in this instance. After all, your tastes could change 10 years from now. Another new restaurant could come into town. Heck, your favorite restaurant could shutter its doors, making your gift certificate worthless! A guaranteed two hundo today is almost certain to win over $400 a decade from now for most of us.

This tendency is a cognitive bias called hyperbolic discounting. It suggests that we’d prefer having something today rather than tomorrow, and that our bias for the present only compounds the further away on the calendar we place our hypothetical tomorrow.

But hyperbolic discounting moves out of the hypothetical and into reality when we examine it within the context of saving for retirement. Psychologically – biologically, even – we’ll generally default to today over tomorrow, and the result is that a generation of retirees hasn’t saved enough to meet their goals in retirement.

The odds were stacked against future retirees when the 401(k) was introduced. Think about it. You’re enduring one of life’s more stressful endeavors – starting a new job. You’ve exhausted your mental capacity and willpower on a long series of important decisions. After selecting tax withholding, choosing health insurance coverage, and navigating an array of other benefit options, you arrive at your 401(k) or equivalent retirement plan. And this is how your brain hears the question:

“Would you like to further reduce the amount you can spend today by setting even more money aside for a day decades in the future that might never come?”

How many people do you think opted-in to a 401(k) within the first six months of work? The numbers are atrocious – one study found 34%. But then, inspired by behavioral economists, companies started using an opt-out mechanism, requiring new hires to choose not to set aside at least a modicum of savings. The numbers shot up.

That sounds great, but our bias to choose the default doesn’t actually address hyperbolic discounting. More people may be saving, but they still aren’t saving enough. How, then, can we solve the hyperbolic discounting dilemma? Can we rewire ourselves to prefer saving more?

The answer, according to extensive research by Hal Hershfield on the subject, is to picture yourself in retirement. In one of his studies, Hershfield showed that digitally altering images of present-day participants, extrapolating what they might look like years down the road, could positively affect their saving behavior.

Furthermore, we can employ our imaginations to animate those future images. What do you most want to be doing in retirement? How do you want to feel?

In other words, to save more, we should first think about the lifestyle we want in the future and then back into the financial decisions required to make it a reality. And the degree to which these visions of our future self are vivid and positive will increase our propensity to save more.

Man standing in field admiring imaginary house
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Now, back to our initial proposition. The notion of $200 to spend today or $400 to spend 10 years from now isn’t so outlandish. If you’re earning an annual average return of 7% – a reasonable expected return for a balanced investment portfolio – your money doubles in roughly 10 years. And in retirement, it’s precisely stuff like food – and housing, transportation, travel and recreation – that add up to the lifestyle we desire.

So, wherever you are on the continuum from now until your personal retirement then, consider using your imagination to help increase your motivation to save for the future.

Be More Purposeful In 2020 With This Calendar Hack

My work as a financial advisor is dedicated to helping others best allocate their scarce resources in a way that is optimally aligned with their goals and grounded in their values. And while most of that work involves financial resources, I’ve also become somewhat obsessed with the stewardship of what is perhaps our scarcest resource—time.

One of the simplest and best productivity “hacks” I’ve found in pursuit of this obsession comes, almost hilariously, from one of the funniest people on the planet—Jerry Seinfeld.

First introduced to Seinfeld’s prolific productivity by Cal Newport in the priceless book Deep Work, and subsequently illuminated in the must-watch Netflix movie Jerry Before Seinfeld, I learned much about the single tool Seinfeld used to become the world’s top comedian: daily intentionality.

Long before he was a household name, Seinfeld committed himself to the daily intentionality of writing new jokes to hone his craft. He reportedly tracked this habit by drawing an “X” through that day’s box on the calendar.

He identified the most important thing he needed to do every day and then oriented his calendar around the completion of that task. And you don’t have to be a comedic genius to make this work.

What is the most important thing—or things—that you need to do, and how might you adapt your calendar management to improve the probability that it happens? Here’s how I’ve adapted this technique personally, in four simple slashes on my wall calendar:

1) The most important most important thing I need to do daily is to center myself spiritually and mentally. Therefore, the second habit I complete daily—after brewing a very strong pot of coffee, of course—is to sit down in my home office, where I spend about 60 minutes reading, reflecting, praying and then meditating.

The mindfulness exercise at the end becomes the bridge from the spiritual into the practical as I plan out my day—purposefully removed from the distraction of my computer—in my most prized possession: my Bullet Journal.

The completion of this routine earns a vertical line down the middle of the day’s box on my wall-sized, yearly calendar: |

2) The second most important thing that I need to do—not only for my own health, but for the sanity of those with whom I live and work—is physical exercise. 

I aim for three days of HIIT workouts and two days of yoga weekly. I’ve improved the probability of this happening by going to a gym that offers both types of classes. But more importantly, the gym requires you to schedule workouts in advance—and charges you if you cancel, creating a helpful disincentive for this financial planner to make it! So at the beginning of each week, I schedule five classes that turn into meetings on my calendar. These, in turn, help me be more productive in every other activity that day.

After completing my daily workout, I get the satisfaction of adding a horizontal line on that day of the calendar: —

3) Next, I aim to complete my M.I.T., the Most Important Task of the day. As part of my daily planning, I determine what I need to do that day to have the most impact on the projects I’m engaged in. Inspired by author Daniel Pink, I have a whiteboard in my office where I then write down that task.

The key here, of course, is to actually DO it. Pink suggests simply making it the first task of the day, but I’ve also applied some systematic calendar management to further increase the chances of checking off my most glaring to-do, as informed, again, by Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work.

Newport provides convincing evidence that, regardless of how many hours we work in a given day, we only have four hours of optimum productivity, biologically speaking. With his encouragement, I’ve determined what those four hours are for me (generally 10:00am to 2:00pm). I block them on the calendar as my Focus Time, in which I complete my M.I.T. (Other important, but less mentally strenuous, tasks, like email, calls, meetings and errands, are then “batched” throughout the day.)

Successful completion of the M.I.T. earns me a big backslash through that day on the calendar: \

4) Lastly, I discipline myself to offer at least one person a deliberate, if not pre-meditated, affirmation. This idea was inspired by Adam Grant, the author of Give and Take. Grant, who has dedicated his career to helping us get more out of our professions, is almost notorious for his high level of achievement and productivity. But he has a very simple method that guides his weekly and daily planning, as highlighted in GQ:

I try to start every week with three things that I want to accomplish that I care about. And then three ways that I want to help other people. And that’s the compass for the week. I’ll plan my whole schedule around those things.”

This notion of helping other people may be something as involved as reaching out to contribute effort to someone else’s project, but it can also be as simple as picking up the phone to see how a colleague or friend is doing, or sending a word of affirmation or commendation by email or, better yet, a hand-written note. In my experience, I’ve found that the concrete objective of sharing a deliberate affirmation is specific enough that I’ve had higher completion rates than when I’ve left the intention more generic.

What has been especially interesting to me is that the completion of this task—while it tends to be seen as the “lowest” priority and takes the least amount of time—often offers the greatest satisfaction.

I compound that satisfaction by finishing off my successful calendar day with a forward slash: /

Using a strategy like this makes for a messy calendar, but each mark offers the momentary endorphin rush we were meant to enjoy from the act of work completed. It also creates a visual record of our productivity—and lack thereof—throughout the day, week, month and year.

How could it work for you?

This post was initial published on Forbes.com.