This week is going to be a busy week for me. As many know, I have three sons and the school year is ending for all of them. It’s especially important to my middle son who is wrapping up his high school baseball career and will be graduating on Friday. It’s kind of amusing to see how much stress can be caused by the process and celebrations related to graduation.
One of the events that we just completed was Senior Night at our church. It’s a time for people that have watched my kid grow up to celebrate him, express their love for him, and to remind him of the support he will have from his church family. We’ve participated in the celebration before with my older son, so I knew what to expect. This year, I found myself just going through the motions.
As the event was about to wrap up, our youth minister hit me with a lesson that I found very important. He called it his Spoon and Paint Brush story. He first held up a wooden spoon and told some funny stories about the correction he had received as a child from a wooden spoon, switch or other device his parents chose. He then turned to the students and acknowledged that they were becoming adults, and the adults no longer had the ability to use the spoon.
The spoon was no longer in the parents’ hands but was being handed to them. At points in life, we all need some correction. As young children, our parents had to find the form of correction that worked for us. As adults, we have to be able to identify aspects of our life that are not being done correctly and adjust. I see this often in financial planning. Most people know that they should be saving and investing for the future, but many of them are not. So, my question is: What are you going to do to correct the trajectory you are on?
His second prop was a paint brush. His story explained how parents have been painting the picture of the lives of their children up to this point. The strokes of the brush are the events of the day, people you are surrounded by, and often choices that are made for you by your parents. The parents often times painted the best picture they could with they brush(es) they had. Now, as the brush is being handed to the seniors, it’s their turn to paint the rest of their lives. His advice was to paint it well and along the way rely on the people you can trust to advise you. We all want to do the best we can in life and for many of us, a major piece of that picture is finances. So, my question is: Are you doing the best you can and have someone you can trust to advise you along the way?
If you are to the point of needing to correct your trajectory or just need to find someone to assist you in painting your financial picture, give our process Purpose-Built Planning™ an opportunity to assist in advising you.
