Take a quick poll:
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Based on the response, my application of Category Management (CM) to golf was apparently quite a birdie so I thought I would take advantage of my enhanced credibility and push this a little further. My wife insisted we meet with our financial planner to make sure that we had enough to do what she wants to do in case I decide to hang up my cleats. Good news is that she will have enough if we both live a very long life. Bad news is that neither of us would want to live anywhere close to the projected affordable age. And being a Category Management kinda guy, it immediately got me thinking. How much Value had my wife and I wasted along the way??
Let me explain my logic. We had to “invest” X amount of resources to accumulate the wealth we have. The purpose of accumulating that wealth was to primarily afford a certain lifestyle (emphasis on life 😊) while we live. What about all the excess that we accumulated that we won’t need or use (and I’ll tackle the inheritance issue later). Because we focused on the Value Driver or metric of wealth accumulation much more than the other Value Drivers, how much Value had we wasted? How many more vacations could we have taken? How many toys could we have bought? How much more time could we have spent with our children? Our family? How many hobbies could we have indulged in? How much time / money could we have devoted to charity? You get my point.
That means that we can afford a comfortable life style for the rest of our lives and will not consume what we’ve accumulated. So that takes care of the ante death period – phew. Now let’s talk about the post death period (not trying to be morbid here). How many funerals have you been to where the priest or the subsequent eulogies talk about the wealth of the deceased? Or do they focus on all the other Value Drivers but hardly ever on the Value Driver of wealth accumulated? How many of their kids do you hear talk about the money the deceased left them, or do they talk about the vacations they took, how the deceased helped them etc. etc.?
As I was discussing this blog with a colleague, she immediately challenged my basic assumptions but then quickly diverted to reflecting on some recent losses in her family and what those people were remembered for and it clearly was not for the wealth they had accumulated. And how it had spurred her into accelerating her bucket list plans because a couple of the losses were premature and unexpected.
And that’s the other point. The bigger the difference between when you go meet your brand of angels and how long the accumulated wealth will actuarially last you, the larger your Value Deficit. It turns out that by focusing on the wrong Value Driver or metric (Wealth) you are actually increasing your Value Deficit!! Let that sink in for a moment. Now you can decrease your Value Deficit by living as long as you can and as close to the affordable age your wealth provides you. Or you can shift your resources today to some other Value Drivers right now (take a vacation, work in / give to a charity) thus positively impacting your ante death period (life) AND also your post death period because they’ll remember you more for those other Value Drivers and not for the wealth you left behind. It turns out you can use our brand of Category Management to improve your golf game and your life 😊 😊 😊!!! Golf anyone?? Playing through…….
