2021 August Update

How is it September next week… already?

If you’re feeling a little unprepared for the swift arrival of the next month, we encourage you to go back to our July update and remind yourself that summer can last exactly as long as you want it to. You don’t have to live by somebody’s else’s rules (unless, you know, you kind of do, in the short term). You can extend your summer for as long as seems reasonable to YOU.

After all, it’s your life, isn’t it?

(Yes, it is)

If you’ve been hanging out with the Spring team for a while, you know that our tagline is: Your Life, Well Spent.

You also know that we mean every single word in that tagline. It’s your life, and the way YOU spend it is entirely up to you. That’s why we spent all of 2019 going over design thinking, and how you can use it to create what you want out of life. That’s why we spent all of 2020 sharing stories with you about the people we adore who have used design thinking and financial planning together to achieve their lives, well spent. It is, of course, why we’re spending all of this year focusing on your values, how to really understand them, and how to put them to work within your design.

That’s why we don’t generally adhere to the idea that what Canada needs is a lot more financial literacy. There’s a lot of information out there – a lot… so much that it can actually be overwhelming.

We think what Canadians need is a deeper understanding of what each of us values, as an individual, as a couple, as a family, as a business, as a community. From there, we need to understand how we demonstrate those values in our lives. After that, we can make really good use of all that financial literature along with the tools in our financial planning toolkit to create the life that we now understand we really want.

That’s how you get to your life, well spent.

We’ve written a lot about different kinds of values and how to operationalize them so far this year – and there is more to come. This month, we’re focused on putting those values to work in your portfolio, and how to think about what that means to you. We hope you gain as much insight into the kind of future you want to invest in as we gained in writing about it.

Practice Notes:

Your Spring team is taking Labour Day on September 6 to rest, relax, and recharge. Sandi has one last Adventure Wednesday to enjoy September 8, and has a full week booked off at the end of September. Darryl will be away from September 15 through the 19th.

“Free” Fridays remain booked permanently in our calendars. These days are free to us at Spring in the sense that they are our opportunity to work on becoming better planners, whether through collaboration and discussion, education, research, or even a little down time. It’s been a regular practice since the summer of 2017, and we will continue to set aside the time to become better versions of ourselves every week. Even 1% better is solidly worth it, because we know that will be reflected in the work we do for you.

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