Sometimes your kids need to be your ‘clients’
The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss is a dream for most Canadians.
For me a 40-hour workweek is my dream. As a financial planner, I don’t see it as a job but as a passion for the past 18 years. However, I realized one day that my work and family life may not be balanced, according to my 3-year-old daughter. You may have read in a previous post how my daughter told me to go to work to ‘make money for her piggybank’…. with the follow-up comment of ‘don’t go to work because I have enough money in my piggybank’ coming a few months later.
Single time vs. family time
When I started my financial planning career in 1996, I was excited that I could now be my own boss and make my own schedule. I was 24-years-old and had my whole adult life ahead of me. What I soon found out was that building a business is not easy or void of long hours. I was single but didn’t have many obligations other than rent and a few extra costs. But it was tough when I was writing my own cheque each month, always wishing that I would be able to give myself a raise. So, naturally, I soon understood that I would not have a balanced life of work and family in the future.
In 1998, I got married and I now had to carve family time into my workweek. My wife Wendy was busy going to school with the goal of becoming a teacher. Once that was accomplished, she went on to get her master’s degree. As you can imagine, the work schedules prior to our two children being born were busy. But we had become accustomed to a busy work life and didn’t really feel a need to alter our schedules.
In the fall of 2007, our son was born, followed three years later by our daughter. I was able to take time off to enjoy the arrivals of my children, but soon found myself back to my regular busy schedule. With a growing financial planning practice where I saw most of my clients at night, it was a challenge to see my kids on a regular and meaningful basis. I made it up (I thought) by being able to see them during the day in between meetings.
My wife has always been supportive, though in the back of my brain I have always realized that I haven’t been able to contribute to family time as much as I have hoped. However, the flexibility I have as an entrepreneur allows me to take time off when desired or needed, in theory at least.
Yes, I thought that I was getting better.
You see, for the past six months, I have been working on developing a money coaching aspect to my financial planning practice. This has given me an added appreciation of what my parents sacrificed to give myself and my siblings a great life growing up. But as I reflected on my past, I realized that my mom was at home with us kids and my dad was always home for dinner and weekends. Now if I could only offer that to my kids.
Is time really money?
Do you remember the saying ‘time is money’? When you go through an exercise in money coaching that asks you to remember what your experience of money was while growing up, you soon realize this saying is right on the mark. It’s just that everyone’s definition of ‘time is money’ is dependent on their family’s financial plan. You can think that spending time away from work is costing you money. Or you can see that effective financial planning allows you to control the amount of time you have to work so that you can spend your desired time with your family on a regular basis.
I can’t remember the exact conversation, but one morning I heard “Can I be your client daddy?” coming out of my 3-year-old daughter’s mouth. Now, I am not saying that my daughter knows exactly what money does, or how much money we need to meet our family’s financial goals. However, she knows what the word ‘client’ means. In her ever-growing mind, she decided that if she was to see more of daddy that she would need to become a client. That hit me harder than any right hook a boxer could throw. I told her that she didn’t need to be my client, and that I would do better in spending more time with her, her brother and mommy.
Everyone is busy
You may ask what this has to do with financial planning? I would argue that the saying ‘time is money’ has a lot to do with your individual or family financial plan. We all lead busy lives and have different goals that we each want to accomplish. I believe that without a proper financial plan, you may find one day that your work and life balance is not what it should be. You will have put too much focus on getting to your retirement age without allowing yourself to enjoy the fruits of your labor during your working years. It may take a right hook from someone who loves you to make you realize that your work and family life needs a new definition of balance.
So I am going to take my daughter up on her request and set up a new client meeting with her soon. We will be scheduling our family time together during the next few months so that it doesn’t end up on daddy’s to-do list. As she gets older, I will certainly miss how she says financial planner though…