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EMBRACE THE JOURNEY1
1
 A TOUR DOWN THE ROAD
Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain.Climb slowly, steadily, enjoying each passing moment;and the view from the summit will serve as afitting climax for the journey.
Harold V. Melchert
E
ulogies offered at funerals and memorial services leave a pow-erful impression on me. A lot is to be learned about what isreally important about living from recalling the lives of thosewho, as St. Paul said, “have fought the good fight and have finishedthe race.” After more than five decades of life on this earth, I findmyself attending an ever-increasing number of farewell ceremoniesand reflecting on my own life and the limited time on earth allottedto us all. A reminder I take to heart was penned by Henry DavidThoreau: “When it’s time to die, let us not discover that we havenever lived.”I was privileged to cross paths with Warren P. Knowles in thefinal years of his life. Affectionately known as “the Governor” be-cause of his position as political leader of Wisconsin from 1965 to1971, he was a gentleman in every sense of the word. At Knowles’memorial service, his closest friend, Ody Fish, read from a poem the
CHAPTER 1
 
2 JOHN T. M
C
CARTHY
Governor had said captured the essence of his life philosophy. It spokeof life as a long and unending journey. The reward is not in reachingthe destination, but in the journey itself.Philosophical observer of the financial planning industry and jour-nalist Bob Veres speaks to us in this same vein. “We are learning thatthe process of improving our lives and achieving greater fulfillmentand success doesn’t have any end; it is always an endless beginning.This is perhaps the hardest lesson of all, because as humans, we arehard-wired to think in terms of beginnings and destinations.”Champion cyclist and seven-time winner of the
Tour de France,
Lance Armstrong, hits the same note in the subtitle of his bestseller,
 It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life
. The book chronicleshis life-and-death struggle with cancer. In spite of his remarkableathletic achievements, Armstrong puts it all in perspective with hiswords, “Surviving cancer is still the biggest victory of my life.”Esteemed soldier and statesman Colin Powell, in his best-selling personal memoir,
 My American Journey,
shares with his fellow Ameri-cans his extraordinary life’s journey. His rough spots include the lossof his father to cancer and the ugliness of racism. Yet, mostly goodtimes come together for him and add up to a self-described great life.Of all his heady accomplishments and triumphs, this distinguishedgentleman is proudest of his marriage partnership with Alma and of the family they raised together.I heard Powell say that the most interest from readers of his book did not center on his having rubbed shoulders with presidents, queens,and prime ministers or Hollywood and sports celebrities, but rather on his early years growing up in the Bronx as the son of Jamaican- born Luther and Arie.Powell clearly understands that the attainment of fame and for-tune is not what makes for a great life. The richness of family
is.
Thededication in his book reads, “To my family…past, present, and fu-ture.”My book,
 Embrace the Journey: Stories of Life and Finance,
explores my life and the influence that personal finances have on the
 
EMBRACE THE JOURNEY3
course of one’s passage. As a financial planning practitioner for 25years, I have adopted the emerging industry movement emphasizinglife planning. Life planning is more holistic in scope than pure“crunching the numbers” financial planning and much more encom- passing than a narrow focus on investing. In practical terms, life plan-ning balances the management of one’s wealth with the hopes, dreams,and values that go into making a happy and productive life.I agree with this thought-provoking quote by Frederic G. Donner,“When you come right down to it, almost any problem eventually becomes a financial problem.”Based on the premise that sound financial planning is actuallylife planning, these pages amount to a course on life planning. I haveno doubt that such planning pays off in a richer and more rewardinglife in every way.One of my favorite books and a frequent gift from me to clientsis
The Millionaire Next Door 
. Academics Thomas Stanley and Will-iam Danko wrote a lively text supporting their thesis that high in-come alone does not result in accumulated real net worth. Their caseis buttressed in story form with examples such as: You aren’t whatyou drive—the fortunes of Dr. North and Dr. South heading in oppo-site directions; and the ostentatious display of wealth is likely to be,as they say in Texas, “all hat and no cattle.” My hope is for the reader to perceive that
 Embrace the Journey
follows their example and dis-dains technical finance chatter. To that end, I tell real life stories of  people I have known and helped, while guarding the privacy of theindividuals involved.Unlike most personal finance books, including my own two pre-vious publications, this one avoids the traditional practice of group-ing chapters by subject, such as estate planning, taxes, andinvestments. Instead, I follow the back roads, weaving into each chap-ter snippets from assorted experiences to tell a story.My own life story took an abrupt turn on May 2, 2000, when asurgeon pronounced ominously, “I’m sorry, but you have cancer.”Reality hit home that his message was not a bad dream when I was
of 00

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