March 24, 2023
Nearly a year ago on this date, our family experienced something that we hope to never experience again.
That evening, my wife and I laid the kids down and sat down to watch an episode of our latest binge-show. We had heard that the weather might get rough later, so we kept our phones near us and checked in periodically.
Around 10 o’clock, we noticed reports of a tornado in south Mississippi that caused a lot of damage to a little community named Rolling Fork. We also saw that our local legend of a meteorologist, Matt Laubhan , was streaming live and tracking several storms over north Mississippi.
Before long, there was a confirmed tornado heading what looked like directly toward us. My wife and I debated on whether or not we should get our boys up and get hunkered down in the closet together.
Finally, we decided it was time, woke up our 10-month-old and our 2-year-old, and buckled them into baby carriers for extra protection. We grabbed pillows, blankets, flashlights, and our dog, and all huddled in the closet together.
Then we waited.
We kept our phones on the live stream and watched our meteorologist continue tracking the tornado straight to our house. I vividly remember seeing the dark spot on the radar that symbolized debris from the tornado jump on the screen from a few miles away to nearly covering the name “Amory.”
I don’t know Matt personally, but he doesn’t strike me as the type of guy who is often caught at a loss for words. That night was different.
What couldn’t have been more than a second or two seemed like minutes as he rested his elbows on his desk seemingly in defeat. Finally, he broke the silence and prayed for the people in my town. He prayed for my sons crying because they didn’t know what was going on. He prayed for my wife who was worried that her family would be taken from her. He prayed for me who felt helpless that I had very little control over protecting my family.
It was simple. If I remember right, it was something along the lines of “Dear Jesus, help these people.”
We heard a few more sentences from him and then we lost service.
Almost immediately, we start to hear debris slam into our house, wind, and rain louder than we’ve ever experienced and all of a sudden, a rush of wind comes flooding under the closet door.
We gripped our family so tight, that for a brief minute, it felt like even a tornado couldn’t separate us.
After what seemed like an eternity of deafening wind and relentless prayers, things started to calm.
We stayed together in the closet for several more minutes before I ventured out to see some of the damage.
We were more fortunate than others. The worst part of our damage was the window that busted directly over our bed. The window we would have been lying under on any other ordinary night at this time.
So why am I telling you this story?
It’s because I want you to feel how real our mortality is.
领英推荐
We’ve spent many weeks now talking about some of the sexier aspects of investing and/or financial planning, but we’ve spent very little time talking about how to plan for the unexpected.
“In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
Taxes we can plan for.
Death, we don’t know when it will happen, but we can still plan for it.
We plan by owning enough of the right kind of insurance.
We plan by having a will and an estate plan. At the very least, a plan for where our kids go if something happens to us.
We even plan by having all the information that our spouse would need if something happened to us, in a place where they know about it, and have access to it.
Heck, we plan by just taking our financial lives seriously.
So now we have two editions of this newsletter back-to-back of me trying to convince you how important it is to take your financial life seriously and to do some level of financial planning whether on your own or with a professional.
Next week, we will get back to some more of the numbers, but I just had to take another shot at convincing you to take control. That’s how much I believe this can help people. Heck, that’s the whole reason I’m in this career at all.
I sincerely hope you take my advice and take action.
And I hope it doesn’t take you almost losing your family to figure out the importance.
Be intentional.
P.S. I haven’t really been offering this before on here, but if there is anything I can do to help you and your family take your financial life seriously, I’d love for you to schedule a time with me. I don’t start you a bill as soon as I pick up the phone, and you won’t get a hard sales pitch. You’ll just have a conversation, and who knows, you may get some questions answered.
If this sounds like something you’re interested in, please use my calendar link below.
I’d love to help.
LFS-6398034-021324