To those who haven’t witnessed it first-hand, guardianship may sound like a heroic assignment in which bigger, stronger, more seasoned protectors keep individuals who are unable to fend for themselves. However, as the ragtag super hero team the Guardians of the Galaxy has come to learn, the reality of assuming guardianship (over a single person, let alone the entire galaxy) is far less than ideal.
Written by: Matthew Phillips | The last words of the email stood out the most. “… the thing is … we are deaf.” This is how the prospective client closed her message to me in 2017.
When I agreed to meet with the woman and her husband, I was feeling uncertain about how to best communicate with them. To prepare, I added captions to my usual video presentation. But halfway through, I realized the couple was completely overwhelmed with the financial vocabulary I was using, which was entirely new to them. Improvising, I pulled up a blank Word document and started typing which allowed us to converse back and forth. I felt completely inadequate and regretted not preparing more, but did my best to connect with the couple.
To my surprise, the meeting concluded with the wife rejecting my handshake and instead grabbing onto me tightly as she began to cry. “Matthew, thank you for what you have done,” she said. “We have sat with five advisors, and none have come close to helping us like you have. I know we have missed out on financial opportunities because we are deaf.”
...No matter how much you and your partner have in common, investing will uncover differences. Maybe one likes playing it safe while the other relishes risk-taking. One wants to invest every available penny, while the other yearns to live it up now. Or perhaps you disagree on when to retire.
Differences are inevitable, says Kathleen Burns Kingsbury, founder of KBK Wealth Connection in Waitsfield, Vermont. “That’s the nature of a partnership.”
But some couples don’t discover their differences until they fester into conflicts. You can avoid discord by bringing financial topics into the open, finding common ground and compromising.
“Learning how to talk about and work through conflict will make you stronger partners,” says Kingsbury, author of “Breaking Money Silence: How to Shatter Money Taboos, Talk More Openly About Finances, and Live a Richer Life.”
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