Your money or your life?

It's an old joke, if not a funny one:

MUGGER: "Your money or your life, mister!"

MAN BEING MUGGED: "I need a minute to decide!"
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If there is a theme emerging in these blog posts and my other writing about what we aspire to here at DRW Financial, it may very well be that the real value in money is how our money reflects our values.  In my own life and in the business I run I, I have made a very intentional decision to focus on Family, Community, and Legacy.  It is my desire to be seen and remembered as a man who cared deeply for his family, who made a contribution to his community, and left a positive legacy.  Part of this vision is accepting that money is [one] means to an end, and not an end in itself.

Precisely the right number of heartbeats?

From birth until the end of our lives, we all have precisely the right number of heartbeats to fill the days.  While we can make lifestyle choices to improve our odds of more heartbeats, we do not have the option to save or bank heartbeats for later use; whether they are used for something that makes us happy or sad, helpful or hurtful, the heartbeats each have their moment and then are gone.

Money is a little more flexible: we can save money, set some aside for a particular goal, invest some in pursuit of making more, we can even give it away.  Perhaps this is why some people come to measure their life in terms of money and not in heartbeats - money is something you can count, control, put on a spreadsheet.

But the truth remains that money in itself has no value.  The value must be assigned by what the money can accomplish.  Paying for a child's education, funding a comfortable lifestyle in life's later years, providing a boost for a charity's work in the community - these are uses of money that not only assign it value, but reflect your values.  
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At DRW Financial, we try to keep these ideas in mind at all times.  Our toolbox is comprised of investing knowledge and financial best practices, but the ultimate work is about so much more than money - it's about making each of life's heartbeats well spent.