No, I’m not referencing all the Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals when I say Pay Yourself First. Put aside your holiday wishlist and forget about what’s on sale, the holiday budget needs attention. Gifts, meals, extravagant decorations—everything adds up quick. The festive season is an expensive one, and your wallet is probably feeling the strain. 

As advisors, we have access to a plethora of financial tools from savings, qualified/non-qualified accounts, life insurance, real estate holdings, business interests and tax strategies to name a few. These are tools and strategies that we layer in to build up and maintain an estate. It is a complicated process to monitor and manage these different instruments all at once. These tools are referred to as the 'basics' in our industry, which is not entirely accurate. The most basic and valuable tool we all use is time. Time is our most valuable asset, because once spent, you cannot get it back. It is quite literally priceless. 

​The Time Value of Money is the principle that "a dollar today will be worth more than a dollar tomorrow." It is the most significant concept in personal finance where time causes the constant erosion of value. Our purpose as financial advisors is to educate clients that a dollar today can actually be worth more tomorrow. Time influences money in every facet, from the appreciation of real estate holdings, to return on investments, to interest rates on debt, to inflation's depreciation of the very cash in our wallets. The smallest percentages compound over time to create massive disparities. This concept will work continuously against you until you learn how to leverage it for your own advantage. Time can be both the carrot in front of us and the stick behind us. 

​​Don't believe me? Let's look at an example.

This blog series began out of a desire to have a conversation about personal financial habits and building an estate. There have been numerous educational books written on these topics, but some can be outdated. Others start out as page turners, but halfway through transform into soapboxes. The point of this conversation is for it to be a discussion, where mistakes are educational, points are reviewed, and people learn instead of being lectured. 

This series is not just focused on accumulating wealth, but how and when we apply the financial lessons we have learned. It is about honoring individuals who chose to share hard-learned experiences from their lives.

​The experiences and wisdom that have been passed on from parents, teachers, mentors, friends, and peers, provide a financial foundation. Knowledge passed from one generation to another is invaluable, but meaningless if not put to good use. As an advisor, my ambition is to help answer, “How are we being responsible to those we care about?”

Isn’t it surprising how fast the sun sets?  How a good thing can quickly disappear? 

It is important to note that changes are on the horizon.  The current estate and gift tax exemption law is scheduled to sunset at the end of 2025. After that, the exemption amount will revert to the prior law of 2010.  

​According to Price Waterhouse Cooper’s 2023 U.S. Family Business Survey, one-third of family businesses have a succession plan in place. Is this the case for your family business? A 2020 Harvard Business Review article on family businesses affirmed that “the best business succession hand offs are often years in the making.”


When the plan is to transition the business to the next generation, all too often, the mindset is to just hand of the reins. Having worked with multiple generations of family businesses, the first stage of effective planning is to incorporate the business succession planning into the family’s estate planning, understanding that to do it right, time needs to be invested with a clear strategy of succession factors in place. 

This year’s Boston Marathon took me down memory lane. While working at John Hancock, I applied to run in the 2015 Boston Marathon on a sponsor’s exemption. I was nervous, and uncertain what the event would be like, but I knew it was a goal to go after if I was selected. The very next day I received the good news. That’s when the big questions started coming.

​What do I do now? What do I do next? How should I train even though I know how to run? What is the process for preparation to be able to reach the goal of crossing that finish line?

​Two thirds of the investors claimed to struggle with dividing their assets fairly. The harsh reality for many future heirs was that assets were going to be distributed unevenly for a variety of reasons. 

Growing up with a family winery, I naturally adopted an appreciation for wine and wine making that evolved into being both a critic and a connoisseur. Our family’s wine is made like the families of centuries ago in Europe, grown in virgin soil never before used for agriculture. Pure natural winemaking from clearing the land, planting the vines, reaping the harvest, fermenting, and aging with precision, and then bottling onsite. All within our control, every aspect, to assure the best quality and taste for discerning palates. 

Now as a financial advisor, I have noticed many similarities between the meticulous attention to details and process of winemaking with the process of financial and wealth planning. Our approach to financial planning and blog is entitled Pure Perspective to pay tribute to a pure process. In this second installment of our blog, I will share how the process of winemaking over generations is similar to how it is best to approach financial planning.