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Winter Blog

They say money doesn’t buy happiness. I wonder what the Powerball winners have to say about that! Kidding aside, I’ve had the privilege of doing what I do for as long as I have and I can tell you from observation and experience, money does not, in fact, buy happiness. I know that’s a very strange thing to hear from a financial advisor.

Through the years, I’ve discovered that all the money in the world doesn’t mean much if you’re not happy and fulfilled. As you all know, 2015 was a year full of events that reinforced this theory for me. And just in case I missed the signs, one of our favorite clients, Dr. Hai, was kind enough to give me a not so subtle reminder.

Earlier this year, he came strolling into our office on his birthday to give me a book. I pointed out that he can’t give me a gift on his birthday. He proclaimed it a new tradition and left the office before I could object further. That Friday, I boarded an early morning flight from LAX to Toronto. I had every intention of catching up on some much needed sleep after we were airborne and I could recline my seat. While waiting for the plane to board, I decided to give the book a glance. Bad idea. I landed in Toronto even more sleep deprived than I woke up that morning. I couldn’t put the book down. I won’t get into all the details of the book here, although some of you have already had to endure my takeaways from it while visiting the office. But suffice it to say that the book was about one’s dreams.

Speaking of dreams, my wife has no problem falling asleep on a plane. She can sleep anywhere, she’d fall asleep on a sidewalk if you gave her a pillow. Fortunately, she had my shoulder to use as a pillow for the flight. As I’m reading the book, I notice she’s fast asleep and drooling on my shoulder. In that moment, I realized that I have no idea what her dreams are. I think I know, the usual stuff – raise a family, travel, grow old together, etc, but I’ve never actually asked her. For all I know, she wants to be a country singer or a pilates instructor. Fact is, I’ve never asked. Then it occurs to me, I don’t truly know what my team’s dreams are, or my folks, my family, friends, or you all. I’ve always just assumed I knew, but I’ve never asked.

One of the most interesting things that have come from all this was that I had to sit down and write out what my dreams are. It would be impossible to expect the people in my life to focus on and share their dreams if I couldn’t do the same. It proved to be much more difficult than I anticipated. In fact, I felt a level of guilt for even thinking I wanted more than I already have. As I said in the last blog, I already feel like I’ve hit the lottery of life. But what I’ve found is that it’s my dream to help the people around me feel the same. It’s quickly become a personal mission of mine to help the people in my life strive towards being happy and fulfilled. Because without that, what else is there? It’s important to me that we’re facilitating the discussion around people’s dreams, putting a process in place for achieving and being accountable to them, and making sure that one never stops dreaming. I started with my family, friends and team. And we’ve started rolling it out to our clients and the professionals we work with. It’s even transformed the way we select the new clients we take on.

So fair warning, this is probably going come up in conversation at some point when we talk. Get your thinking hats on and start dreaming! For now, wishing you all a healthy and happy 2016.

Cheers!