The Elephant in the Room: Sharing the Secrets for Pursuing Real Financial Success

EPILOGUE

I guided our Ford SUV down the mountain, through the snow, toward the hotel. The kids watched a movie on the DVD player in the backseat, and Jennifer read a novel in the front. This was our third trip to Telluride, a local ski area, and Madison and Alex were better skiers than we were.

I couldn't believe how those meetings with Aunt Katherine had changed our lives. After the meetings, Jen and I met with a financial adviser and developed an ongoing relationship. From that point on we no longer winged it—we established our values, we set and constantly reviewed our goals, and we stayed committed to our plan. Our adviser helped us develop it—we actually clarified our values and set goals, and he guided us to update it frequently. All of that planning had enabled us to take vacations we never would have been able to afford.

Jen turned to the kids in the back. "Are you going to ski tomorrow," she asked, "or snowboard?"

Madison called from the backseat. "Snowboard!" she said excitedly.

"Ski!" Alex answered.

At 12 and 15, our girls would whiz down the mountain in the ski suits we had bought them last Christmas and wait for us at the bottom. It would take Jennifer and me another minute to catch up with them; they'd be laughing hysterically. The annual vacation to Telluride was something we'd wanted to do for years, and Jennifer and I had finally saved up enough to do it—the past three years in a row. Now it had become our tradition, complete with the annual snowball fight in the trees ...