Nov 7th 2005

It was my fault. I took some time off to go hunting, even though I knew that there was a good chance the world would fall apart. And this is what happened: A horrible mudslide in Central America, parts of India and Pakistan devastated by one of the deadliest earthquakes in history, a new tropical storm swirled up ominously in the Gulf, Mount Everest inexplicably lost 12 feet in height and a tornado in the Midwest . For those of you who are hiding under your beds, you can safely come out again; I'm back in my office.

While hunting, I did have a saw fall out of a tree and try to cut my nose off, another saw cut through a branch and attack my left hand (3 stitches) and a small tree I was pruning jumped up and it tried to take my head off. Hunting is dangerous.

This is the time of year that we start planning what we want to do during the next year. We try to pre-set client appointments, find a financial planning theme for the coming year and improvements our systems to better help our clients. No matter how much planning we do, nature will usually throw a monkey wrench into things along the way. Yet having a plan often helps us to get better results.

Very often the financial planning theme will be different for each client, as almost each client is in a different stage of his or her financial planning life. Often, the times we pick for appointments will not fit into the client’s schedule. That is OK. We can and will work around these small setbacks. The real joy will come next year at this time, when we see the results of the planning we do now.