Take The Trip – Podcast

In today’s episode Nicholas Olesen, CFP®, CPWA®walks through two very different client situations that both ended up with the same recommendation. Take The Trip. 

During this episode he gets a little more philosophical and personal about the reason for the advice that Kathmere Capital gives.

Listen as he shares how he helped a client think through “Why are you building your wealth and what is it all for?”  Through this conversation they uncovered a few strategies and options for his growing business to continue to flourish but allow some of his time shift to be enjoying life now and giving back for the “greater good”.

He then shares a very different circumstance that occured just minutes after the previous advice was given where the same question was discussed. This other client situation was the hardest one of the day, where he learned of a client’s passing and talked about it with the surviving spouse. 

Through today’s episode, we hope you can continue to make wise financial choices for the future but don’t forget to take the trip.

You can find the transcript below.

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Transcript from today’s show:

Hi, thanks for joining us on A Wealth of Advice. My name is Nicholas Olesen, Director of Private Wealth at Kathmere Capital.

We’re going to have a little bit of a different episode today where I frankly just share how yesterday went and the reason why is it was a rollercoaster of a day for me, but it also just brought two different examples that ended up with the same answer of what my recommendation was for a client.

And so to start the day off, yep, great morning, great day. Ended up having a great lunch meeting with just one of my favorite clients and really dove into a deeper conversation that we’ve had over the years, but spent, I don’t know, 45 minutes or so actually talking about “Why are you building the wealth that you are and what is your goal behind it?”

They don’t have kids to pass it on. And so when we talk about building their wealth and using it it’s really for them, and then as they said, the greater good. And when we talked about it, we found that they were really continuously working cause they hadn’t yet figured out what was next. They really enjoy their work, which is just fantastic, but when we really dove into what is this all for? What is this all you know about? It was a harder question to answer. It was one that, that we spent a lot of time kind of diving into some situations and circumstances where they could step away from work and pour their heart and soul into something else.

One of them has just an amazing business. And so stepping away from that, it’s really hard. It’s such a personal venture that they’ve been on for the better part of two decades. And so it’s very difficult for them to walk away from something like that. Without having something bigger or better to walk into. So that’s really where this conversation went in the beginning. We had an absolutely fantastic meeting, they both walked away and I walked away feeling that we had accomplished a lot and what we had talked through and also put some plan in place on how we’re going to keep this conversation going to talk about then restructuring some of their estate and restructuring where their assets are and why they’re using them the way that.

It also then pulled into a conversation the fact that, right now, working so hard because the business is doing so well is actually not allowing them to do some of the things that they really want to do today. The thought of going on a week long vacation to Europe just is really difficult for them to picture because even getting away for a long weekend, brings so much stress and frustration of just things that are being missed or quote unquote money that is not being. And so through that conversation, while we talked about a travel budget and talked about this need to go and spend more today, and then also this greater good that they want. I walked away from it saying, I really, I need them to find a way to just take the. To block it out to hire somebody for the business to change the way with the partnership work so that they can have this time away so they can go as a couple, go and do these things they want to do, go visit Italy again, go to Paris, go on a safari, you name it. Like literally those things that we all talk about, those dream vacations they have the means to do. But the time is the one that they don’t have. And so with wealth, you should have more time.

You should, part of the conundrum, if you will, of growing wealth is the more wealthy you get you should then have more freedom to do things. Unfortunately, when they’ve gotten that wealth and they’ve been able to generate that type of income for themselves over a life over their lifetime, it’s difficult for them to take a step back and go enjoy it sometimes is as funny as that sounds. So I came away with just this really great excitement about what the greater good is that they’re going to do. But then also this feeling that I have, let’s get them to feel the time is of the essence to take these. Don’t wait until next year or the year after go take these trips that you guys talk about that you guys say, oh, that’d be really great because you can.

And that’s when my day flipped. Right after I walked out of that meeting, I heard from another client, who is friends with a different client of ours, and he let me know this individual had passed away. This was hard. This was something that the, this individual had just retired a few years ago and was just beyond excited to be able to be retired and to focus on the things they want to do. And as a couple, he had been able to retire a few years back and then, through just doing a great job and savings and planning, we’d gotten them in a place where she then retired just four months. And part the rush to retire was he, his health had started not doing great, had gone back down.

And it was hard because she had just retired. They had a couple of trips planned. They had some longer trip plans that they wanted to do coming into this winter. And then in next summer and it all got taken away and it was. It, the message still was the same to me, which is, I wish we had just gotten them to take the trips earlier. I wish that we had not waited on a couple of things. I wish that there was a way that we had been able to balance the now versus future aspect of. And look, there’s some people who do it to the extreme in the wrong direction. They spend today without care in the world about tomorrow. We are fortunate and just with the types of clients that we work with and the advice that we give that so much of our planning is for the future.

But what’s lost in that sometimes is this desire to just continue to get the bigger number, to get to a certain level without realizing that you’re missing the day-to-day. And I ended up talking to her after in the afternoon. And she just was going through the stories of, their first date at a Penn state game, 40 years ago. And just now I just wish, and I forget the exact phrase she said, but she says, I just wish we had more dates. And that’s so hard to sit in and actually to just sit and reflect on that. I mourn with her actively now about what she has lost and just the feeling that she has, that it was never enough time.

And the gratefulness to have been able to walk away from work a few months back, but really the last. Month wasn’t the most fun. And so it just, it made me want to put this out. I know it’s going to be a shorter podcast. But I say this to those of you that are listening that we have that You’re looking for, what do I do? What’s this balancing act. And you have to balance it. You cannot just plan always for the future trip for the future retirement. For the future of this, we’ve all experienced those losses in our life where somebody passes away prematurely or frankly, things are just so busy that you forget to take the vacation or to go on the trip.

So I just want to end it with that, which is, continue to make wise financial choices for the future, continue to plan and save and do all of those things incredibly. However, please, don’t forget to take the trip.

That’s all I have for today.

I really appreciate you guys taking the time to listen to these. I hope this was helpful. I hope that you can take some time to reflect and put that list together that covers “what can we do to live life to the fullest today, while still making sure that we’re taking into account the future?”

Thanks so much. Take care.