More on the Personal Planning A3 and a Thank You
Well, this past Tuesday, a team of highly skilled medical professionals made a ten centimeter incision on my right buttocks, dislocated my right hip, sliced off my femoral head, inserted a titanium rod into what was left of my femur, installed a titanium/ceramic cup in my pelvis, topped it off with a shiny titanium ball, sewed me back up and sent me home. In other words, I received a standard hip replacement and now have a matched set - hardware on both the right and left! I’ll spare you the high definition picture of my old femoral head they gave me as a parting gift, but needless to say, the old one had reached its end-of-life.
A logical reaction to that story might be: “Thanks for ruining Saturday morning tea, Andy,” or “Wow, that was a massive overshare!” Both responses are warranted, but before you tune out, the point to the story serves as a continuation of last week’s discussion on the Personal Planning A3. That point is to be prepared.
As I write this, I’m three days post-surgery and feel remarkably well (touch wood). I continue to be amazed at the incredible things the medical community can accomplish. Just a few decades ago, I would have spent days in the hospital recovering. Here in 2022, I had the option of a same day procedure, but opted to spend the night to be sure everything went to plan.
Although relatively rare, things could have turned out differently. Any number of low probability, but plausible complications could have occurred, leaving me incapacitated or on a one-way trip to the great beyond. Therefore, before surgery, I spent time ensuring that my affairs were in order.
More on the Personal Planning A3
In last week’s Muse, I introduced a tool ripped from the pages of continuous improvement theory to help with personal life planning - the A3. We introduced a step-by-step guide to its construction and gave some tips for implementation. Most importantly, we stressed that the A3 is a living document that doesn’t get filed away, never to be seen again. Instead, it’s periodically revisited and adjusted as circumstances shift, goals are achieved, and failures are learned from.
One of the components of the Personal Planning A3 is the asset inventory, which is a listing of your personal physical and mental gifts along with the real assets you own that will help with the achievement of your goals. In practice, this asset inventory should be derived from another living, personal planning document - your family balance sheet. Like any business, your family (even if you’re a family of one) should routinely update its balance sheet, which is nothing more than the listing of your assets and liabilities. The sum of your assets minus liabilities equals your family’s net worth and this is a number that should be tracked immediately once we reach adulthood.
We’re not going to get into the details of the construction of a family balance sheet, that’s a well-worn road with myriad examples available on the Internet for free from accountants, financial planners, and other organizations that promote financial health and financial literacy. I’ve included a few examples in the end notes of this Muse and recommend you check them out. If you haven’t created a family balance sheet, please get cracking. It’s literally never too early to start and it’s a wonderful tool to improve financial awareness and literacy.
Beyond the Balance Sheet
If I die in a catastrophic car accident or on the table of a routine hip surgery, I’m not the one that’s going to suffer from a lack of personal planning or organization. I’ll be having loads of fun rocking out in the great beyond with Neil Peart, Tom Petty, and Eddie Money. It’s the people I love, the ones I’ve left behind, who are scratching their heads and cursing my name because they can’t find the keys to the safe, or make heads or tails of the family’s financial situation.
So in addition to building the financial discipline to create and routinely update your family balance sheet, maintain another set of documents that answer the following questions:
Who’s the family attorney? Is there a will? If not, what are you waiting for?
Is there an estate plan in place? If so, who’s the executor? Where are the documents?
Do you have a healthcare directive? Has it been filed with healthcare providers? Again, if not, what are you waiting for?
Do you have a list of all online accounts and places you routinely do business?
Where are all the passwords to everything from social media accounts to bank accounts? Is there a holistic password strategy?
Does your family know what you want for funeral arrangements and that big celebration of life you’ve dreamt about? Dreams don’t turn into reality unless they’re written down. Did you earmark any funds to pay for that big party?
What is to be done with your possessions? Who gets what? If you want your cousin Jimmy to have your old Pokemon cards, the only way he gets them is if it’s written down.
This next one is really hard, but I recommend writing short, but meaningful letters to your loved ones that they can read after you’re gone. I’ve personally used long-haul international flights to do this work - flight attendants walking by with bemused/concerned looks as tears stream down my face as I imagine speaking my final words to my wife and sons. Heavy, but incredibly rewarding.
The point of all this is to say that once a human reaches the age of majority, some level of planning for our eventual exit from this world should take place. Yes, that planning is very simple at first, but getting into the habit of documenting your wishes, where all your “stuff” is, and what to do with it is incredibly important. Basic end-of-life and estate planning is not solely the providence of retirees and the elderly.
Life’s Certainties
There are three certainties in life: change, community support (a.k.a., taxes), and death. We should all spend the right amount of time educating ourselves and contemplating our relationship with each of these certainties. It’s important not to dwell on, or allow these conversations to overwhelm us. However, it’s equally important to engage and not stick our heads in the sand - blissfully wandering through life under the assumption that we are somehow immortal. Note that there’s a lot of help out there. Financial advisors, non-profit financial literacy organizations, government, and educational institutions all have myriad resources available to help get you started. You are not alone (see End Notes). A wonderful starting point is to contact your local community college or university extension for their slate of financial literacy resources and courses.
Warning: Be careful that you’re not being lured into pay-for-play financial literacy or advisory services. Unfortunately, unscrupulous credit counseling businesses create Venus flytraps that promise a quick and pain-free path to financial freedom. There are no silver bullets and the road to financial literacy and financial independence takes real effort. After careful analysis, you might want to pay for financial literacy resources, but make sure you’re getting value-for-money and not hype and promises.
Oh, and there’s a key knock-on benefit of engaging in formal end-of-life planning earlier in your life: it improves emotional intelligence. End-of-life and emergency preparedness work forces you to think about how your actions impact others. It becomes less about “me,” and more about “we” when we stop to think about how those we leave behind will have to deal with the messes we’ve left them to clean up. Empathy and compassion muscles definitely get a workout!
The Thank You!
And now for the thank you. This one goes out to the nursing staff at Vernon Memorial Hospital in Viroqua, Wisconsin for providing me with an outstanding standard of care before, during, and after my surgery. After two years of crushing responsibilities due to the Covid-19 pandemic, these professionals were focused, caring, and efficient. My respect for the work they do day in, day out has reached new heights.
I had my procedure done at Vernon Memorial because of their reputation for excellence in outcomes and their rock-star surgeon, Jeff Lawrence. It is clear that those reputations sit squarely on the shoulders of the nursing team - one does not exist without the other.
Next time you have the opportunity, thank a nurse.
Conclusion
I’m by no means perfect when it comes to documenting our family’s personal finances and my personal wishes were something terrible to happen. My dear Linda always thinks I’ve left something out. On that count, she’s right, because we all have junk drawers and black holes of potential “gotchas” that we haven’t attended to for years. However, I take great comfort in knowing that I’ve got things as clear as possible every time we go on vacation or I face a significant life event like a hip replacement.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Grace. Dignity. Compassion.
Andy
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End Notes:
The Personal Balance Sheet:
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/evaluate-personal-financial-statement.asp
Resources for Financial Literacy:
https://www.investopedia.com/best-resources-for-improving-financial-literacy-5091689#:
