Atkins Sees With His Heart and Spirit

Dennis Atkins has been a good friend of mine for almost 40 years.  He has a disability, but you'll quickly see that it hasn't limited him much at all.  He recently retired from his long-time career at American Family Insurance, and now offers his inspirational message through various running clinics and public speaking.  Dennis lives in St. Louis, but maintains many friend and family ties to northwest Missouri.  Dennis shared his story with our blog readers:

This is a story of losing my vision but seeing things clearer than I ever have. In July 1979, I was diagnosed with an eye disease called Retinitis Pigmentosa. Most refer to this condition as RP. RP started out with me not being able to see the stars at age 14. The disease continued to progress with night blindness at age 18. I remember talking with my parents and grandparents about not seeing at night well. The advice was that some people have night blindness and not to worry.

I continued to play sports and graduated from Missouri Western not giving my failing vision any thought. At age 23, I was missing the softball in the lights while playing. I was placed on the bench. My thought was now I need to go see about getting glasses. The eye doctor told me that I had RP. At this time, I had lost a lot of my peripheral vision. This was a very difficult time for me because the doctor felt that I would be totally blind in 24 months.

At first I wanted to give up but this changed to where I wanted to prove this wrong. See, I was no different than anyone else that had received heart-breaking news. My thoughts were, Where do I go now? What do I do? What will be my future? I was determined to find the answers to these questions. I want to share my story, so you too will never give up.

Here it is 33 years later. My vision is down to seeing shadows, light and dark and fading. The real blessing is that I am a long distance runner and run by myself every day. The good Lord, after being outside for awhile, allows me to see the black expansion joint in the middle of the street. The expansion joint guides me for hours as I run through my subdivision.

I was fortunate in that there was a slow progression of my eye disease. I had the time to prepare, by memorizing what things look like, developing a sense of direction, continuing my education and time to make the necessary adjustments in how to continue doing everything that I wanted. I learned to use my other senses to their full potential. Are you prepared for tomorrow?

The ability to have physical sight is wonderful and should not be taken for granted. I would like to share with you how I see with my mind, heart, and spirit. My wish is that you can develop these abilities in addition to your physical gift of vision. Can you see the benefit? Let me explain how I use these to help me see today.

Here is how your mind can work for you. Just try this. It works. Home repairs can be fun if you try. Most home projects include your spouse, family member, or friends. Just use their eyes at times if needed. I just picture completing the task in my mind. I think about how I can do this and do not stop thinking about it until I have figured out a way.

For example, I wanted to repair a small hole in the sheet rock wall and repaint this wall. I feel the size of the hole over and over with my fingers. I then decided that the hole is too large just to fill but would need to be taped as well. I pictured over and over in my mind the steps needed to accomplish this. The repairs are made successfully and then it was on to painting. Could you use this same process every day maybe at work when completing a project or facing a challenging goal? The answer is yes. Taking the time to picture the steps, methods, and the finish line is critical to your success.

Seeing with your heart allows you to feel things you never would through physical vision. I do not have the ability to see what someone looks like, facial expressions, their dress, or even if they are experiencing a bad hair day. I have a huge advantage over you. I listen with my ears, what they say and how they say it. My heart can see them as they truly are. I listen to their excitement, sadness, and gain insight into their character. My goal is to learn who they really are and their potential.

What a blessing! You too can learn this. Using your physical vision alone can many times lead to misperceptions and wrong assumptions. Using your heart helps you get to know a person better. What joy there is in making a new friend or hiring a person outside your comfort zone. Most individuals are afraid of using their heart. There is nothing wrong with having a soft, caring, loving, and insightful heart. Developing this type of vision takes courage, determination, and effort to see a person’s real potential.

Seeing with my spirit has been the largest benefit for me. My faith is what has carried me every day since July 1979. Fear and being afraid of failing stops most of us from living our dreams and I was no different. My spirit feeds my mind and heart. I have to know in my spirit that I am not in this alone. Every day I go out to run or go off to work there is fear. What if I get lost while running? What if I am asked to do something at work that I have never done? God feeds my spirit to stop and think it through with my mind and heart. Suddenly I feel a sense of calm. My fear slowly goes away.

When I first started running in my subdivision I would get lost. I would panic and walk around for several minutes to an hour. God was there with me. Once I stopped being terrified, He gave me a way to know where I was. I walked over to a mailbox. I found raised numbers and letters. My mind went to work. I just needed to memorize the street names and range of numbers for my blocks. What a gift! I now use my spirit through prayer to feed my mind and heart.

Now my vision is fading. Seeing shadows, light, and dark is what I see. My only vision comes through my spirit, heart, and mind. I am so glad that I have been given the ability to see like I never have before. My wish is that you learn these gifts in addition to having your physical gift of sight.

Do you have fading shadows in your life? Why not just use the gifts that you have been given to never give up? Let's live our dreams together and make a difference with our lives. Fading shadows are what I have left, but beautiful sight has been restored through my spirit, heart, and mind. What great joy!

Estate Planning Essentials

Wills and trusts are two different types of estate planning devices that allow you to look into the future and determine how you can protect your children and your assets if something were to happen to you.

Dan Danford, CFP® and Founder/Chief Executive Officer of Family Investment Center, says that many people use the terms wills and trusts interchangeably even though there are major differences between the two.

In the video below, Danford explains the disparity and in what situations people are more likely to need a will or a trust. He also suggests that any asset protection estate planning document should be handled by an attorney. According to Danford, a small fee can ensure a lifetime of peace of mind.

Mrs. Lentz was right: I am disruptive. Clients love me for it, though!

Hold up your hand if you like disruptive innovation! If you love your iPhone or enjoy a flat screen television, you are one of millions who benefit from dramatic changes in the marketplace.

Telephones and televisions have been around for decades, of course, but the old ones are nothing like the new ones. In fact, in a few very short years, traditional models are forever gone. Consumers – folks like you or me – love new products and services. Businesses, especially ones steeped in those old products and service models, don’t share our giddiness.

Banks and brokers are slow to adapt. Rapid changes in technology make some inroads, but ATM machines and on-line banking haven’t replaced the branch bank on every urban corner. Brokerage firms (well the ones that have survived, anyway) still manufacture investment products and rely on captive brokers to sell them to investors. Debit cards haven’t replaced checking accounts, and the sales commission still reigns as king of the brokerage compensation model.

Twice, I’ve been part of disruptive innovation in my home town (St. Joseph, Missouri). Both times, we changed some things forever, but not enough to satisfy me! The first time was in the late 1980s, when four of us founded an independent trust company. Trust services are a specialty financial service, and you probably don’t remember or care about the details. Let’s just say that other banks in our city and region weren’t especially pleased with our early success.

Ten years later, I left that trust company to start Family Investment Center. I grew frustrated because we couldn’t keep up with consumer-friendly technology (even in a firm I founded, for crying out loud). That was 1998 and our investment clients didn’t have on-line access, checking/debit privileges, auto-deposit or withdrawal to other accounts, or a host of other things we take for granted today. I could see them coming, just couldn’t provide them through the trust company platform.

So I left to start something better and, again, the bankers weren’t happy. This time, however, the brokers weren’t happy either. The RIA model we adopted was both commission-free and highly-regulated, putting us in direct competition with both groups. It was disruptive to the status quo and I discovered quickly and painfully that many important people in St. Joseph had financial and social ties to that old order!

Funny thing, though. Consumers loved us from the very start. One former colleague famously predicted that “Dan won’t last six months in the business.” That was 1998, and we never even looked back. The truth is that we’ve grown progressively over years where many traditional providers have lost clients, lost support staff, and lost quality professionals. Today, we are the only independent, locally-owned, commission-free, registered advisory firm in this city. No locally-owned bank trust departments or brokerage firms, either.

That’s nice and it makes us proud. What makes us even prouder is that consumers put us here. We’ve enjoyed little institutional support in building this company. Many of the groups and businesses who ordinarily support entrepreneurial effort have financial or social ties to our older competitors. No worries, though, consumers love us and that’s all we needed to thrive. National newspapers, journals, and trade groups appreciate us, too, and that has helped spread the word.

It turns out that disruptive innovation is pretty popular with the people who really matter – clients.

Tips to create financial success

Evidence suggests a person's behavior has more effect on financial success than income, and no matter how much money you make, most people wish they earned 10% more.

In the video below, Dan Danford, CFP®, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Family Investment Center, shares tips to create financial success and how to overcome the three money disorders that impact a person's ability to achieve their financial goals.

Effective tax planning requires forethought

Q: When I finished preparing my tax return for this year, I discovered I owed the government close to $10,000, which was far more than I thought I'd have to pay. How do I avoid future surprises like that?

A: Sometimes the situation you describe can't be helped. Maybe your practice had an especially good year or you earned a large one-time consulting fee. Even those of us who don't see payments like that face occasional tax surprises. Those surprises are maddening, but you can use a few tricks to keep them tolerable.

Effective tax planning is done in real time. It's done with a bit of research, good record-keeping, and deliberate decision-making. Most taxes are saved by not incurring them in the first place.

Retirement plans provide a good example. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some are suited to sole proprietors, whereas others to partnerships or corporations. But most require some set-up and adoption before tax year-end. A bit of forethought sends dollars to retirement, not Uncle Sam.

The same principle holds true for charitable giving. In general, gifts given by December 31 count toward that year's tax. Because taxes usually aren't prepared until April (much of the required paperwork doesn't come until late January of after), it's difficult to measure tax effect without some late-in-the-year projections. Talk with your accountant each December to "mock up" that year's income obligations. Then you can make informed decisions about giving.

Remember these three steps: research, record-keeping, and deliberate decision-making. Useful tax-related information is available on the Web, or at the library or bookstore. If you don't want to do the research yourself, hire an adviser or ask your accountant. The point is, don't wait until your taxes are prepared or until they are due before acting.

Q: My wife died last year, leaving assets of less than $5 million. Must I file a federal estate tax return?

A: It is not required, but for your beneficiaries to enjoy the benefit of both your and your wife's exclusion at the time of your death through "portability," you are required to file a Form 706 (the federal estate tax return). This form generally is due 9 months after the death of a spouse. If your spouse died in the first half of 2011, however, the Internal Revenue Service has permitted retroactive extensions, giving you 15 months from the date of death to request an extension and to file Form 706.

Q: Because my children are the beneficiaries of my estate, does it make sense to name my estate as my individual retirement account (IRA) beneficiary?

A: Generally, it does not. Even if your children are beneficiaries of your estate, if they are not the direct beneficiaries of the IRA they must take distributions based on your life expectancy, not theirs. Designating the children individually as beneficiaries allows them to spread the withdrawals over their own life expectancies, producing lower annual withdrawals and continued deferral of taxes.

Q: What happens if an individual retirement account (IRA) owner who is older than 70 1/2 years dies without having taken a distribution for that year? Is the heir required to take a distribution by December 31?

A: If you are past age 70 1/2 and die before taking the current year's withdrawal, your IRA beneficiary must take a distribution by the end of that year. The distribution is based on your life expectancy and should be reported as ordinary income on your heir's own tax return. Most custodians require that the beneficiary set up an inherited IRA account and move the assets into it before taking the current year's withdrawal.

Q&A session published in the May 10, 2012 issue of Medical Economics magazine. Questions answered by Dan Danford, CFP(R) and Principal/Chief Executive Officer of Family Investment Center, and Medical Economics editorial consultant David Schiller, JD, of Schiller Law Associates in Norristown, Pennsylvania.

Maximizing your 401(k) and retirement plan earnings

Dan Danford, CFP® and Founder/Chief Executive Officer of Family Investment Center, has been advising how to invest 401(k) and retirement plans for years. In the video below, he answers this question about what to do when dissatisfied with your 401(k) funds:

I want to shift my money to different funds within the plan. When making this decision, which do you think I should focus on more: the funds' expenses or the returns the funds have earned?

Danford explains why you should focus on expenses first, but that there is an important caveat when it comes to ensuring you are comparing apples to apples with different 401(k) funds.

May is Financial Life Planning for Women Month

 

 

This month, Charles Schwab & Co. is putting the spotlight on financial life planning for women. In this article, Schwab's senior vice president of Community Services Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz interviews Naureen Hassan, senior vice president of Schwab Advisor Services. We thought you’d like to listen in on their conversation.

Click here to read the interview.