Wealth in the Key of Life (eBook)

Finding Your Financial Harmony

Preston D. Cherry (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
245 Seiten
Wiley (Verlag)
978-1-394-26868-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Embark on a journey to financial freedom and personal well-being

Are you striving to live the life you've always envisioned? Do you wonder how retirement will reflect the dreams and luxuries you desire?

In Wealth in the Key of Life: Finding Your Financial Harmony, Dr. Preston D. Cherry, an Accredited Financial Counselor®, Certified Financial Therapist?, and Certified Financial Planner® delivers a unique perspective on harmonizing your financial and personal life.

Dr. Cherry's comprehensive Life Money Balance® approach focuses not only on wealth accumulation but also emphasizes the importance of well-being in achieving a fulfilling life. In this book, you'll find:

• The 'Six-A Alignment System': A revolutionary framework to understand and improve your relationship with money
• The Four-T's: Self-Audit, including Trial, Triumph, Transition, and Transformation, aiding in the seamless integration of finances into your life
• Strategies to navigate financial noise and conflicting advice, fostering mindfulness and resilience in your wealth-building journey

This book is a must-read for anyone looking to create a balanced, prosperous life. It's perfect for professionals, families, individuals with adult children, homeowners, renters, employees, and small business owners.

Whether you're just starting your financial journey or looking to enhance your current path, Wealth in the Key of Life provides the insights and tools necessary for aligning your financial decisions with your personal goals and well-being to help you flourish. Discover how to unlock your financial potential and live the life you've always envisioned.

PRESTON D. CHERRY, PHD, is the Founder and President of Concurrent Financial Planning and Director of the Financial Planning Program and the Charles Schwab Foundation Center for Financial Wellness at UW-Green Bay. He has over 15 years' experience in academia and financial services, including work in financial planning, investment management, and leadership positions.

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Embark on a journey to financial freedom and personal well-being Are you striving to live the life you've always envisioned? Do you wonder how retirement will reflect the dreams and luxuries you desire? In Wealth in the Key of Life: Finding Your Financial Harmony, Dr. Preston D. Cherry, an Accredited Financial Counselor, Certified Financial Therapist, and Certified Financial Planner delivers a unique perspective on harmonizing your financial and personal life. Dr. Cherry's comprehensive Life Money Balance approach focuses not only on wealth accumulation but also emphasizes the importance of well-being in achieving a fulfilling life. In this book, you'll find: The "e;Six-A Alignment System"e;: A revolutionary framework to understand and improve your relationship with money The Four-T's: Self-Audit, including Trial, Triumph, Transition, and Transformation, aiding in the seamless integration of finances into your life Strategies to navigate financial noise and conflicting advice, fostering mindfulness and resilience in your wealth-building journey This book is a must-read for anyone looking to create a balanced, prosperous life. It's perfect for professionals, families, individuals with adult children, homeowners, renters, employees, and small business owners. Whether you're just starting your financial journey or looking to enhance your current path, Wealth in the Key of Life provides the insights and tools necessary for aligning your financial decisions with your personal goals and well-being to help you flourish. Discover how to unlock your financial potential and live the life you've always envisioned.

Textauszug

INTRODUCTION
A PERSONAL JOURNEY TO HOLISTIC WEALTH: FROM BANKRUPTCY TO BALANCE

If you drive, you know how your car feels when the front-end alignment is out of whack. The car drifts left or right and becomes hard to steer, leaving you powerless. Instead of steering the car where you want it to go, your car controls your course. Then you repair your car, aligning it to achieve your desired driving experience so it can safely take you to your destination. Now, you and the car are working harmoniously on your travel journey. For several years, my life and money felt like a car with its front end out of alignment, steering me off course and leaving me with no control.

Excessively drinking alcohol to addiction nearly killed me. The journey through alcoholism also saved my life. The resilience to survive the trial helped me figure out what I didn’t want to do any longer and unlocked what I did want to do. Moving from trial to triumph was not easy or linear, but the transformation and resulting transition needed first simply to start. Personal transformation can start with a trial event or a triumphant event; the flashpoint moment is unique to the individual. The key to transformation is using that moment to reflect upon where you are and where you want to go and using that discovery as motivation to change your course. The motivation serves as an inspiration to avoid or to work through pain points to achieve your version of flourishing.

YOUR STORY GIVES YOUR FREEDOM

Your stories are your gateway to achieving financial freedom and the life you envision. When you tap into your story, you tap into your money. Let me tell you mine; I hope you find encouragement to embrace yours.

I graduated with a master’s in personal financial planning from Texas Tech in the winter of 2006, and from 2007 to 2008, I thrived. I secured two career-defining positions, new money heights, and personal accomplishments. The first was a respectably high salary for my life stage, and I felt secure enough to purchase a condo. The second position was a breakthrough career position with a generous six-figure compensation package with junior executive–type benefits like signing and performance bonuses, relocation expenses, and home-selling subsidies. I was in my late twenties and felt like I was progressing ahead of my expected personal life and money schedule.

The next seven years were what I call the “fog” years. I embarrassingly lost that second career position quickly, followed by losing the condo, ultimately leading me to bankruptcy. My financial regret is that I had a well-off tenant in their early 60s who paid rent in six-month installments in advance, and the condo had a prime location, so I missed out on real estate income and appreciation. But that’s not the worst of it; I lost sight of my aspirational life – an essential theme to life and money prosperity in this book. The sting of failure brought by the guilt and shame of self-destruction engulfed me. Wasting the gift of precious time coupled with not maximizing life’s opportunities fueled an onslaught of self-medication at best, abuse or addiction at worst.

Craving mind- and spirit-altering substances transforms into chemical dependency. Artificial chemicals that connect with the brain’s natural chemicals devilishly capture reason, which uncontrollably replaces reality with an alternative state of being: a false, yet at times euphorically calm state of well-being that is unsustainable. There was never going to be enough to feed my subsidized state that froze my inner conflicts and current issues so that my soul could function warmly. The only two outcomes were to admit and address or continue toward a certain death. Reaching this conclusion and finding what was killing me should have been the worst, but it wasn’t.

Much worse was discovering that a complete disconnect from my values, a total loss of self-identity and worth, and lacking the hope of ever understanding and healing my pain was killing me more than the substances. I didn’t know that traveling a pathway toward rock bottom would lead me to admit I was sparking a process to pursue the freedom to transform and transition to the life I want. You’ll read how admitting during your Honest Self-Audit kicks off finding the information you need to guide the senses and strategy of your financial life plan.

MOVING FROM DARK TO LIGHT

I was doing well professionally, but I was dying personally. How I used my lifestyle to cope led my money down the drain. My life and finances were markedly disconnected, displaying no concurrent partnership. My money financed reactions to my life; I did not allow my life to direct the purpose of my money.

During the “fog years,” the clouds during the day and the dark of night felt good because the weather matched my soul. I was comfortable there – until I wasn’t. The old-schoolers would say I was “broke, busted, dusted, and disgusted!” I was ready for the sunshine to shed light on me, for reflection, and in me for inspiration. I was ready for change. It was one of my final benders that moved me from darkness to light.

Outside my condo, there was a streetlight for a transit stop, which shone through my window at night, even with the blinds drawn. I required blackout curtains, which I did not have, to achieve pitch-black darkness. So the room was dark but not pitch dark. I arrived home around 4:00 a.m., worn out from drunkenness. After entering, I dropped to the floor, crawled to my bedroom, and lay on my back. I was exhausted not just from that night but from life. I did not want to end my life, but had it ended at that moment, I wouldn’t have minded. Figuratively, I felt dead.

Because the streetlight was coming through the window, the room wasn’t dark enough to match the darkness inside of my soul. I didn’t have enough coordination to walk, so I crawled to the windowless bathroom so I could achieve darker darkness, so I could be more comfortable in my guilt and shame.

There was a crack at the bottom of the bathroom door, letting light inside. Spread out on the floor, I didn’t think I was worthy of the sliver of light, so I had to find a darker place to feel more comfortable. I crawled into the closet and shut the door from the inside. The bottom of the closet door gripped the carpet tight, letting in no light; I found that I required it to be even darker still. I parted the clothes and crawled behind them into a corner, finally achieving the darkness and emptiness of my self-worth and value. At this moment, I realized what I didn’t want to do and what I wanted to do; I wanted more light, and I wanted more life – the life I envisioned.

FINDING LIFE MONEY BALANCE

With tears of desperation, I crawled from the closet toward the light and made two phone calls – one to my family and another for professional help. In that instant, I held my first Honest Self-Audit of my current situation, an essential step toward staging change and working toward sustainable action for an aspirational life.

After courageously and honestly admitting where I was, three things became apparent. First, my life situation was an emergency, with the current direction guaranteeing death. Second, my life was not where I wanted it to be. Third, I wanted to begin the journey of moving toward where I wanted to go. Unbeknownst to me, this was the moment when the Life Money Balance (LMB) philosophy was born.

LIFE MONEY BALANCE

Let your life lead your money, instead of your money leading your life; your life and money should work concurrently to create your life design.

The LMB system lets you partner your finances with the life you want. It requires engaging in vulnerable and bold steps and requires that you apply frameworks to help achieve life and money alignment by giving your money assignments to what you value most. The chapters in this book will help you apply LMB to your life’s course.

It took years for me to recover. Step two in the Honest Self-Audit is to compassionately acknowledge how you feel about where you are, to process the Humanity of Money, clearing the path for healing that will jumpstart you toward action. Tea drinkers know there are types of tea for different moods and health conditions. Timely sipping your proper tea can promote better outcomes in your target area of health or mindset. There are “teas” (“T’s”) for your life and money flashpoints, life stages, milestones, and mindsets. Through faith, family, friends, and professional help, I was compelled to travel the Teas of Life – Trial, Triumph, Transformation, and Transition toward abundant living, full of thriving well-being and consistent wealth-building.

Self-investment started with first surviving to heal, then moving towards investments in thriving. Connecting my current and future self was essential to allowing my whole self to thrive across my life’s course. In other words, my current self caring for my future self’s preferences and purpose – and vice versa – is an essential element to the Integrated Life Stage Well-Being aspect of LMB, which we will discuss shortly.

I set on a course to transform my life’s design and transition to the next stages of my life course. Through my testimony, I want others to gain the courage and vulnerability to live the life they want now and in their future. By using LMB, you can advance...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.12.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Beruf / Finanzen / Recht / Wirtschaft ► Geld / Bank / Börse
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Wirtschaftsrecht
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management
• Schlagworte: behavioral personal finance book • financial freedom • financial freedom book • financial therapist book • financial therapy book • life money balance • mindful wealth • personal finance • personal finance book • wealth building • Wealth Strategies
• ISBN-10: 1-394-26868-8 / 1394268688
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-26868-9 / 9781394268689