Marmaris Kultur

While growing up, my colleague Kate’s father, Eric, never talked about money. The subject was simply off limits, and the household was ruled by an ironclad mantle of financial silence that no one in the family dared to crack. But that didn’t mean that Kate’s mother or siblings didn’t wish things were different. “We’d have done so much better if only your father had invested our savings,” Kate overheard her mother lament years after Eric’s death. Not that the family was doing poorly. To the contrary Eric had managed to save a healthy sum, allowing the family to live quite comfortably. But aside from a few perfunctory attempts from time to time, Eric hadn’t been an investor. And that cost the family he loved. “We had a very nice lifestyle, but we could have had so much more,” says Kate.
Why did an educated man who was successful in so many aspects of his life fail to take control of his finances? “I guarantee you that he was afraid of investing,” says Kate. And because he didn’t want to reveal his lack of financial acumen, he didn’t consult a financial advisor, either. As a result, his hesitancy about money and investing wound up compromising his estate. That unfortunate legacy is now being perpetuated by three of his five children, none of whom invest or even talk about money. Clearly not everyone is fortunate enough to obtain financial knowledge in a way that he or she can hear and understand. I hope this book will help fill that communication void in your family. For in addition to providing you with information, it’s intended to fuel your family’s conversations about where you’re going, how much money it will take, and which investments might get you there.
This is a chapter for beginners. For those of you who are new to investing, want a refresher, or are introducing a family member or friend to investing, we start at square one and cover the basic concepts. We then launch into a primer on stocks, bonds, and mutual funds: the vocabulary and building blocks you need to talk about to build your financial future. Finally, we discuss professional advice and what you should look for in an advisor.
More experienced investors may want to skip to Chapter 3, where the focus is on putting these basics to work. That’s fine, but I urge you to use the information in the following pages to open what I hope will be an ongoing and worthwhile family dialogue about money.
As I hope you’ll see in this chapter, investing isn’t a sprint to an endless series of finish lines. It’s more like a family marathon, with all of you reaching the ends you’ve identified together, through steady and systematic discussions and planning that allow you to work toward your financial goals.