Leveraging Your Financial Intelligence Read online

  Oh, and one more very important acknowledgment. We thank and acknowledge you, the reader. What would a book be without our readers? Thank you!

  Chapter One

  Money, Health, and Happiness: How They're Connected

  Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

  —President Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Just after 9:00 AM on September 11, 2001, life changed forever for Mary Ann Malone, though she couldn't have realized it at the time. She and her fellow Merrill Lynch traders had a disturbingly clear view of a massive fire at the World Trade Center just across the Hudson River from their Jersey City office, caused by a plane that had plowed into the WTC north tower. At 9:03 AM a second plane struck, this time crashing into the south tower. An hour later, the Merrill Lynch high-rise building was evacuated, and Mary Ann began a tortuous five-hour trip home to Westchester, just north of New York City. Major roads and bridges along her normal commute were closed, and cellular service was down, so she had no idea then that the WTC attack had taken the lives of countless friends and colleagues in the Wall Street trading community. All Mary Ann knew for certain was that she desperately needed to get home to her four-year-old daughter, and that she never again wanted to work where a body of water separated her from her child. For a year afterward, Mary Ann says, “I was a mess, and my daughter had issues because I had issues.”

  Mary Ann had grown up in working-class Queens, New York, and dropped out of college in the fall of 1978 after only a month, because she quickly realized that the academic life was not for her. Mary Ann initially got a clerical job on a stock-trading desk. By her early twenties, Mary Ann was making a six-figure income as a NASDAQ market maker, no small feat for a woman back in the 1970s, and by the early 1990s she was undeniably wealthy. Mary Ann was financially secure, but after 9/11, she was also emotionally devastated. When Merrill Lynch offered a generous separation package in the wake of the post 9/11 financial downturn, Mary Ann jumped at the opportunity. She took her daughter to Ireland, her ancestral home, for the summer of 2002. While there, Mary Ann learned about the EDUCO seminar,1 a powerful personal development experience. On the one-year anniversary of 9/11, Mary Ann flew to the Bahamas to attend the EDUCO seminar, and it changed her life. There, Mary Ann learned to use her mind to control her thoughts so she could live the life she wanted to live. Mary Ann discovered that she had a choice about how to live her life: She could look at life through the lens of the fear of terrorism, or she could live life through the lens of joy, positivity, and meaningful personal connections.

  When Mary Ann returned from the seminar in September 2002, her friends immediately noticed a positive difference in her. She no longer focused obsessively on the past. Previously, Mary Ann had trouble talking to her friends about anything other than the awful losses of 9/11. Today, it's rare for her to think about the terror of 9/11, not because 9/11 isn't important, but because Mary Ann learned to use her mind to focus on what she can control—not the past but the future—which includes creating positive experiences for herself, her family, and her community.

  Mary Ann has enjoyed taking on some exciting career challenges since then. She became a registered yoga instructor. Mary Ann also launched and operated a fitness center in Denver for four years. It was an extremely rewarding venture for Mary Ann. She loved being able to help people see the benefits they would derive from the training, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. The fitness center created another priceless benefit: That was where Mary Ann met her loving partner, Tom Perkins, now 55, who had coincidentally taken the same EDUCO personal development seminar several years before Mary Ann had, and who also coincidentally became a regular client at Mary Ann's fitness center in Denver.

  Sitting in Tom and Mary Ann's comfortable living room in Saint Augustine, Florida, surrounded by their two affectionate dogs, it's tempting to imagine yourself around a campfire, listening to the story of how these two very different people miraculously came together. Tom, who grew up on a Wyoming cattle ranch, got his pilot's license at age 16 and leveraged a lifelong passion for aviation into a series of lucrative aviation-support businesses; and Mary Ann, a scrappy girl from a New York outer borough, leveraged her smarts when still a teenager to become one of the earliest female stock traders on Wall Street.

  Tom and Mary Ann are each strong-willed and independent. But they know how to manage occasional differences, because what joins them as a couple is a shared belief that their life is in their hands, and that they are the ultimate creators of their lives. As Mary Ann says, “The way we think is our creative tool—our gift from God, our co-creation with God.” Whether you think of your source of spiritual energy as God, or Universal Energy, or Buddha, the result is the same. According to Mary Ann:

  It's not just about making money and being profitable. It's about employees. It's about customers. You want not just you, but them, to flourish, thrive, and be happy. When you understand how your mind operates, you can create a positive or negative story about your life. Why not make it positive?

  Mary Ann and Tom consistently focus on managing their thoughts to create alignment with their day-to-day behaviors. In addition, they also recognize the connection between their thoughts and emotions and their physical well-being. When each independently decided at some point to build a blueprint for personal happiness, both Tom and Mary Ann included physical fitness as a key ingredient. In fact, that was why Mary Ann had opened the fitness center in Denver—to help people translate their positive thoughts about vitality and fitness into their daily lives. Mary Ann, now 57, talks about how her mental state fuels her physical state. A few years ago, Mary Ann found she was able to leg press 10 repetitions at a 550-pound weight. Tom's mind-over-matter moment came when he leg pressed 1,000 pounds. Both attribute these accomplishments not just to regular workouts, but to their mental focus, a perspective they believe allows them to overperform ordinary physical expectations. But for both Tom and Mary Ann, their physical strength has a more important purpose. As Mary Ann says:

  Working out regularly makes all the difference. It clears your head and makes you feel better about yourself and your body. It's very easy to understand how your mind works through working out. Everybody wants to feel good. We all have that in common. Ultimately, it's not about the way you look—though working out will improve that—but about how you feel. When you work out, you feel strong, fit, energetic, and happy.

  Both Mary Ann and Tom have experienced financial stress. Mary Ann had a day trading business in the late 1990s, which was financially unsuccessful. Tom suffered significant financial losses in 2008, when his company's funding bank went bankrupt. But neither of them dwell on their business losses. Both moved on quickly, and both optimistically emphasize what they learned from business challenges.

  When asked what makes them happy, Mary Ann and Tom share similar perspectives.

  Mary Ann sums up the source of her happiness in this way: “Happiness is knowing who I truly am so I can connect with other people and who they truly are.” Tom believes he was put here to experience life and be happy. He adds, “Experiencing life makes me happy.” We authors (Doug and Ryan) can't help but imagine that our late co-author, Roy Geer, would have said essentially the same—and that he would have enjoyed meeting Tom and trading stories with him.

  Mary Ann and Tom exemplify the spirit of this book. Both are financially intelligent, and both continuously invest time and resources in practices that support their physical and emotional well-being. Their home is comfortable but modest (though they could easily afford a more upscale house). They take pleasure in working in their yard. (though if they chose, they could hire someone to landscape their property.) They work out at the gym. Mary Ann is a ballroom dancer. They enjoy time with family and friends. Mary Ann and Tom have discovered their own prescription for living life in a way that integrates money, health, and happiness.

  Like Mary Ann a
nd Tom, each of us has our own unique recipe for personal well-being. Our principles and values determine what's most important to us. Our sense of well-being depends on our ability to put those principles and values into action. Later in the book, we'll discuss practical approaches for defining and achieving personal well-being. In this chapter, we want to set the table for the three most common contributors to personal well-being—financial health, physical health, and emotional health. These three elements are also the most common potential obstacles to happiness. In fact, financial health, physical health, and happiness are profoundly interconnected. It's almost impossible to have one without the help of the other two.

  MONEY AND HAPPINESS

  The saying “money can't buy happiness” is a common expression, and like many sayings, it's not quite true. Research on the relationship between money and happiness is a mixed bag. For instance, psychologist and happiness researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky has found that there is a significant correlation between income and happiness, though the relationship is not as strong as we might expect.2 Some studies suggest the relationship between money and happiness may only apply to certain types of happiness:

  When people are asked to consider how happy or satisfied they are in general, those with more money report being more happy and satisfied. But when people are asked how happy they are moment to moment in their daily lives—e.g., “How joyful, stressed, angry, affectionate, and sad were you yesterday?”—then those with more money are hardly more likely to have experienced happy feelings.3,4

  How Much Is Enough?

  Jamie Hale summarizes key research on the relationship between U.S. income and happiness:

  Americans who earn $50,000 per year are much happier than those who earn $10,000 per year, but Americans who earn $5 million per year are not much happier than those who earn $100,000 per year. People who live in poor nations are much less happy than people who live in moderately wealthy nations, but people who live in moderately wealthy nations are not much less happy than people who live in extremely wealthy nations (Gilbert, 2007, p. 239).5

  When it comes to the relationship between annual household income and happiness, a daily survey of 1,000 U.S. residents found that self-reports of day-to-day happiness increase up to an annual household income of $75,000. After that, people don't report higher levels of day-to-day contentment.6

  But interpreting that result is a little complicated. The study authors, psychologist Daniel Kahneman and economist Angus Deaton, differentiate between two different aspects of happiness:

  Emotional Well-Being: The frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one's daily life pleasant or unpleasant

  Evaluation of Life: How satisfied an individual is with life as a whole

  Turns out that emotional well-being does tend to max out at the $75,000 number. However, when it comes to overall evaluation of one's life, people with incomes above $75,000 do feel they have a better life than do those with incomes below $75,000. Another complicating factor is that $75,000 doesn't go as far in some parts of the country as others, especially if your household is larger than the average 2.9 members the study assumes. Advisor Perspectives calculated a state-by-state cost-of-living adjustment to the $75K “Happiness Benchmark” from the Kahneman-Deaton study.7 (See Figure 1.1.) For example, in Mississippi, $61K will buy you as much happiness as $100K will give you in the state of New York.

  Source: Advisor Perspectives

  FIGURE 1.1 COLA HAPPINESS BENCHMARK INCOMES BY STATE

  This study echoes many others, which show that people who are in financial survival mode experience a great deal of stress. However, when they are able to earn enough to feel financially stable, additional income doesn't have much impact on day-to-day happiness. Once someone reaches the set happiness income level for their geographic area—they appear to be just about as happy as someone who is making a million dollars a year or more. In fact, there is some research that indicates high-income people may be less happy than moderate earners, possibly because the lifestyle that high-net-worth individuals adopt often makes it more difficult to enjoy life's simpler pleasures.

  National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner, in his book, Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way, asked a number of happiness experts if money can buy happiness. Ed Diener says yes, though he notes some important exceptions. That's because money means different things to different people. Studies show that materialistic people are rarely happy because they want more than they can have. According to Diener, “It is generally good for your happiness to have money, but toxic to your happiness to want money too much.”8

  Financial Stress

  Though having more money may not buy more happiness, having too little money almost always causes stress that's detrimental to happiness. It's interesting to note that the $50,000-a-year income (which research indicates is a minimum amount that provides the ability to pay one's bills) is not much lower than the median family income in the United States. That would suggest that nearly half of U.S. families don't have incomes that allow them to meet their basic financial needs, and therefore are likely to experience varying degrees of financial stress. Research also shows that the lower one's income, the higher the level of financial stress. Other studies support the idea that financial stress is widespread.

  A series of annual surveys conducted by the American Psychological Association9 confirms that money remains the top life stressor among Americans. APA's 2015 survey found that for the majority of Americans (64 percent), money is a “somewhat” or “very significant” source of stress. Responses to their 2015 survey showed that nearly three-quarters of Americans report feeling stressed about money at some point in the previous month, with nearly a quarter reporting that they experienced extreme stress in the prior month. The APA survey also found differences in levels of financial stress in different demographic groups, with women, parents, younger people, and members of lower income families all reporting the highest levels of stress. For example, 77 percent of parents, 75 percent of Millennials, and 76 percent of Gen Xers reported experiencing financial stress.

  The 2017 PwC Employee Financial Wellness Survey10 found similar results. In the PwC survey, finance was the top cause of stress for all employee age groups—Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers alike. Overall, 53 percent of employees reported that dealing with their financial situation was stressful; 45 percent of employees said that financial matters caused them the most life stress—about as much as other life stressors such as job, health, or relationships combined. For Millennials, financial burdens may be even greater. Of the 40 percent of Millennial employees who have student loans, a whopping 83 percent say they are stressed about their finances. What's more, financial stress may be getting worse over time—in the 2017 PwC survey, 47 percent of employees said that their stress had increased during the previous 12 months.

  Surprisingly, financial stress is not just a function of limited income or assets. According to the 2017 PwC survey, cash and debt issues are an increasing concern even for employees earning $100,000 or more. For example, nearly 60 percent of high income earners regularly carry credit card balances. It's common for people with net worth above $1 million to experience financial stress. No matter how healthy your investment accounts, you may understandably worry about running out of money. Co-author Doug's father, who passed away just before turning 85, was in very good financial shape and still worried about money. Even ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWIs), that is, those with assets exceeding $30 million, may suffer considerable stress. As financial professional and writer Greg DePersio points out:

  Many argue the financial problems plaguing UHNWIs are ones most of the world would love to have, kind of like being too good-looking, too smart, or having too many dates to choose from on a Saturday night. These challenges include changing tax codes, estate planning, sustaining their lifestyles during retirement, and protecting their current levels of wealth. While it may sound crazy to someone
working an average job for average pay, a UHNWI worth $50 million is often scared to death of descending to simple millionaire status.11

  According to DePersio, their worry is not without cause. They may be highly paid CEOs who fear the loss of salary if they lose their job or retire. Also, UHNWIs often accumulate their wealth from high-risk investments, and may legitimately fear heavy losses in the event of a recession or stock market crash. Finally, many UHNWIs don't manage their money well, leading to significant losses.

  Not Enough

  We know that financial stress is rampant. But how does financial stress affect our lives? It won't surprise you that money issues and financial stress have a profound impact on personal and family well-being and stability. For example, as family therapist John Dakin and psychologist Richard Wampler found:

  Conflict about finances ranks among the top reasons contributing to divorce (Lawrence, Thomasson, Wozniak, & Prawitz, 1993). “… [C]ouples dissatisfied with their financial situation frequently consider their entire relationship a failure” (Blumstein & Schwarz, 1983, p. 55)12