Better New Year's Resolutions

by: Brian Seay, CFA

As we jump in to 2024, I wanted to revisit money and purpose.

I thought about starting off the year writing and talking about new year’s resolutions, but I think there is something more important than simply checking a few financial boxes off as we go through 2024. Over the course of the year, we will dive into markets, tax strategies and many other financial planning topics. But if we don’t have a purpose then what is it all for? Investment portfolios go up (hopefully) – but then what?

I’ve never met anyone who is truly happy because their portfolio returned 10% or they “outperformed the market.” Sure, those are good things, but so is a nice steak and a vacation. Just like steaks and vacations, ultimately, they are devoured, and we return to work, and life goes on. That’s not what we really want for our resources.

The real point of investing and financial planning is to align your resources – your time, your money, your debt, your other assets, with your purpose in life. The point is to align your resources with the causes you are passionate about that will change the lives of people in your community or perhaps people around the world. The point is to be able to use your resources to build your family, to create flexibility and to empower generosity. In fact, the concept of stewardship is rooted in the idea that our resources aren’t own, but we are managing them to accomplish a larger purpose.

That sounds great right? Who wouldn’t want to align their resources with their purpose? Who wouldn’t want to be a great steward?

That sounds great because that’s how we were designed to interact with money. We were not created to build up a portfolio of resources just for the sake of being rich. Reading NerdWallet and maximizing credit card rewards isn’t the end goal. We were designed to live with great purpose and to use our resources for tremendous good.

If you are a Christian, you’re probably familiar with the teachings of the Bible on money. The bible talks over and over about generosity and giving. In fact, the “love of money” is evil. It doesn’t say that money is evil or that resources are evil. But the love of anything more than God is sinful. But God created everything in the world, you, me, our stuff, our work, our businesses, and money. So, it’s not the money that’s bad, it’s how we choose to interact with it that determines whether our resources are life-giving or not. We were designed to be generous stewards of our resources. We were designed for our lives to be about something greater than ourselves, about glorifying god; and for our money to be used to accomplish biblical goals in the world. Those things might include building our family, creating a business that is life-giving instead of life-sucking, or giving generously. That’s why we all want, desire to give more, and do more for our families. It’s how we were created.

Now, don’t kick yourself if you feel like you don’t have it all figured out. So often I see organizations and families that just want to “grow their assets” or “reduce their taxes” and when I ask, “what for” or “why,” I usually get blank stares back. And if you don’t feel like you have your purpose in life or the plan for your organization fleshed out fully, that’s ok. In fact, most people and organizations don’t. You’re in great company.

But what if, in 2024, some of us started to figure out the purpose of our lives, and started aligning our resources to accomplish those goals? What kind of impact would that have on our communities? On our families?

So where do I start?

I don’t think I can outline a step-by-step plan to finding purpose in a blog post or on a podcast, but here are a few good questions to ask that I think may help jump start your thinking on the topic:

1. Why am I here? How am I uniquely gifted?

2. How am I creating opportunities for my family to thrive and grow?

3. What am I passionate about changing in my community?

4. What areas of my life are well-resourced? What areas need more resources, either time, attention, or money?

This time of year, we often make resolutions for things we want to “do better” the next year. If you are like me, by the time you read this, you will be well on your way to breaking your resolutions. For others not like me, you will be marking day number 5 or 6 in the gym and eating only things from the earth.

I’m supportive of keeping those commitments. You may even have financial resolutions for 2024, to save more, or pay down debt. Those are great things. But what if our real resolution in 2024 was to figure out what were called to do, what our family was created for, and then to align our resources to support those ideas. You would probably accomplish your traditional resolutions in the process and set yourself up for long-term joy. Not to mention the impact that our generosity would have on our families and the community around us.