Category: Wellsfaber

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” – English Proverb Working with what we have now is more important than what we might have in the future. Life is too short to be lived in conversations that are filled with ‘if only’, ‘should’ve’, ‘could’ve’ and ‘would have’. In financial or investing terms, as one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, Paul Samuelson said: “Investing should be more like watching […]

“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” – Eleanor Roosevelt Appreciate the value of putting a plan in place and not merely spending time ‘with our heads in the clouds’. As Lee Bolman says, a vision without a strategy is just an illusion. Over the last few weeks we have looked at identifying our dragons and how to confront and slay them to eliminate the risks they may pose; considered the […]

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln It’s so easy to follow the philosophy that hard work is the only thing that will guarantee our success, but hard work on the wrong things will only leave us stiff the next day. If we focus on balancing our preparation with perspiration, we will find that our success is much closer than we […]

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” – Gloria Steinem Preparing and planning should be as much a creative exercise as much as it is considered to be a calculative exercise. If we allow our planning process to be purely a numbers game, we will struggle to become fully engaged, and fully invested, in our financial plan. As our days continue to fill […]

“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near one.” – J.R.R. Tolkien Should you take dragons into account when you’re working on your financial plan? Well… only if you live near one. While this may sound like a fantastic children’s story that holds little relevance in our professional lives, it’s profoundly relevant in the context of planning when we run the risk of excluding eventualities that we […]

“Happiness consists more in conveniences of pleasure that occur everyday than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom.” – Benjamin Franklin Many of us look at financial planning as working towards a big event in the future that will make us happy. But the reality is that if we don’t find happiness in our everyday lives, we won’t find happiness in those big future events. According to a Harvard study, instead of focusing […]

“The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.” – William Morris Financial planning has a couple of key check-in points. One check-in point is focussed on the future and considers risks and opportunities, whilst another check-in point helps us look at closer, medium-term goals that we want to achieve (or avoid!) in the next three-five years. However, the hardest, yet most accessible, check-in point is the […]

”Happiness is a direction, not a place.” – Sydney J Harris This means that you can choose that direction any time. In doing so it is important to continuously move forward and to sustain happiness by intentionally creating new positive experiences. When last did you take stock and look closely at the direction that you’re currently taking? In the cluttered and overwhelming expectations of life we often find ourselves going in a direction that we have […]

“Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.” – Ayn Rand Everyone wants to be happy. We are all united in this common worldwide goal, but how we imagine this happiness is different for each of us. It is also debatable whether or not money can buy happiness. We all know people we think should be happy, who seem to ‘have it all’, but who are unhappy nevertheless. Perhaps they want something else – […]