What is Life + Wealth Achievement Formula®
The Life + Wealth Achievement Formula® is the counter-intuitive approach to financial success without wrecking your life.
1. Dynamic Process: Although it’s a method (meaning that it’s a repeatable process with predictable outcomes), the application of the process is dynamic. What this means is we are able to refine, optimize, and adapt with each new application, as well as what we discover through its implementation.
2. Flexible: It’s not a rigid, predestined, one-option-only plan but rather a structure from which to create the future of your choice. It’s flexible, while keeping the perspective of where you are in the three phases of the wealth life cycle: accumulation, preservation and transfer.
3. Circular: It allows you to circle back to another path or start blazing a new one altogether.
The Pillars of the Life + Wealth Achievement Formula®
A central tenet of Life + Wealth Achievement Formula® is that wealth supports your life, it doesn’t drive it. At the same time, however, wealth is a tool to support the growth of our human and social capital. The pillars of the system are:
1. _Life Design_
2. Human Capital
3. Financial Capital
4. Tax Filter
5. Cash Design
6. Plan Protection
A new path forward for Robert and Jamie
As part of the Life Design pillar of the Life + Wealth Achievement Formula®, I created a number of exercises to help guide clients through the work of defining their designed life and creating the goals to move them forward.
Jamie and Robert did the work of defining their current situation through the Life Inventory™ and Money Inventory™ exercises, which you will have the opportunity to do during the Life Design section. Being a positive person, Robert realized that he was taking an optimistic approach to the situation — to their detriment.
He made the situation less than it really was in his mind. He was so focused on doing what he needed to in his career and seeing the rewards that it clouded his perspective on the bigger picture of their collective life and lifestyle.
“The initial inventory and discussion with Jamie was hard for me but it was necessary for me to see how I was being. I also had no idea how my denial was affecting my wife, and she made it clear how it was affecting her when she saw the reality. She had no idea of the real situation. “Once I accepted where we were, identified where we were financially and in the key areas of our lives, and took responsibility for putting us there, things started to change. I felt more in control and therefore took more focused action that would produce the greatest results right now.”
“I was in denial about where we were and delusional that it was going to get better. I just kept telling Jamie “I am positive it’s changing! I feel it.” Being positive is important, but I was counting on outside circumstances to change our situation. There I was telling my wife things were going to change, but I was not changing and was continuing to do the same things over and over again, expecting a different result.”
Robert shifted from thinking that he could spend the money he made however he wanted and never making the connection to their goals and dreams. “I justified the spending and never communicated the results until Jamie took over the finances. The accountability was there, and I had to think twice before making a financial decision that was not in our collective best interest. The big move was making the mental change from ‘my money’ to ‘our money.’ What I spent was not just impacting me – it was affecting us. I previously thought spending ‘my money’ was no big deal, but these negative thoughts and selfishness began to seep into other areas of our relationship in a negative way.”
Robert and Jamie are back on the journey to a life and lifestyle that they have mapped out on paper. Having initially felt the desire to have more “life” in their already decent, some might even say “comfortable” or “privileged” life, the transformation actually happened when they decided to transform themselves.
Robert is still working for the same company, but he is making changes where he can so that he can have more focused time with Jamie and the kids. In fact, there is talk that the company might relocate him and the family to a different country.
Although Robert likes working for this company, he and Jamie are considering options based on their reignited vision for their lives and their family situation. The company doesn’t know this, but Jamie’s side hustle is becoming more viable and based on some of the financial projections that have been created, the possibility exists for a career path change for Robert. Robert is considering this possibility by running scenarios against their current financial plan.
*It’s kind of like this set of possibilities can give him permission to make his vision for how he really wants to spend his time, have meaning in his life, his health and energy levels, his relationship with his kids and Jamie, a reality.*
For the first time in years, both Jamie and Robert feel like they are in more control, self-reliant, and resourceful. They are not confined by the past. They’re tapping into their creativity to better shape how they understand a situation and how they respond. While they may still be seen by others to be “social butterflies,” outgoing and extroverted, they have authentic interactions with people and deep, meaningful relationships with their friends and families.
