What's in store for you:

1. Photo From My Life
2. Financial Thought: Some Questions to Ask Yourself
3. Life Thought: Manifesto Against Things
4. Good Sh*t: Great Tweet

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Photo From My Life:

Financial Thought:

Some Questions to Ask Yourself: I'm 9 months into my journey of building VDB Wealth. I've realized that most people I interact with believe they have their financial plan managed. But, as someone who deeply believes in holistic planning, I've realized that most people just have a bunch of financial pieces.

A brokerage account here. A life insurance policy they bought years ago. A CPA they email once a year in April. A 401k at the company they used to work for.

While everything technically exists, it's not working together thoughtfully.

I have the pleasure of building holistic strategies for families. It’s coordinated. Your investments tie back to your goals. Your tax strategy is proactive, not reactive. Your estate plan is current. And your advisor actually knows what’s going on in your life.

I'm biased, but this is what “high-touch” should mean.

Sorry. I'll stop my rant here since I promised each and everyone of you value in this email. So, here's the value for today.

I'm sharing a list of questions you should ask yourself (or your advisor) to ensure your financial life is operating the way it should.

On your overall plan:

• Do you have a written financial plan you can actually reference, or is everything living in someone’s head?
• Are your top financial goals clearly defined and understood? Are you planning for them?

On your investments:

• Is your portfolio built specifically for your life and your goals?
• Can you (or your advisor) clearly explain why you own each position?

On taxes:

• Are you actively managing your lifetime tax bill, or just filing taxes each year and moving on?
• Has your advisor ever coordinated with your CPA?
• Are you thinking about capital gains throughout the year?

On estate planning:

• When was the last time you reviewed your beneficiary designations?
• Do you have an active estate plan?

On retirement:

• Do you have a clear plan for how you’ll actually generate income?

Don't worry if these questions are hard to answer. They're big questions. Financial plans take time to build and take time to continue managing them. If you want to chat through any of these questions, just shoot me an email.

Life Thought:

Manifesto Against Things: I think we all have a problem with things. Not useful things. Not meaningful things. Just things. If you couldn't tell by the photo of my pantry I shared this week, I'm feeling it.

We buy things because we think they will make life better. Easier. More organized. More fun. And sometimes they do. For a few days. Maybe a few weeks. Then they just become another item sitting in our house, quietly demanding attention.

The weird part is what happens next. We buy more things to manage our things. Storage bins. Shelves. Apps. Systems. We convince ourselves that the problem isn’t the amount of stuff we have. It is that we just haven’t organized it the right way yet.

The more things we have, the more they own us. They take up space in our homes and, more importantly, space in our heads. We think about them. Maintain them. Feel guilty about not using them. Feel worse when we realize we probably never will.

And yet, we keep buying things.

I feel this personally. I’m not writing this as someone who has it figured out. I’m writing this as someone who falls into the same trap over and over again. And it pisses me off.

The moments where I feel the best are rarely tied to things. They’re tied to experiences, people, progress, or even just a quiet moment with nothing going on. I'm convinced that no new purchase creates lasting happiness. At best, it creates a short spike that fades faster than we expect.

So my new belief is that we just all need fewer things.

Rant over.

Good Sh*t:

Great Tweet: I don't have much to add here apart from the photo. This tweet may seem funny at first, but it's so real and goes way deeper than most people would prefer to think about. We all deal with expectations in some capacity in our life.

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