Key Takeaways
- When we first start off in life, we don’t always have the money right away to pay for financial services.
- Building yourself a CAT, or Collaborative Advisory Team, can help you get the financial services you need.
- As your wealth grows, so will your CAT as you continue to add other financial professionals to handle your more complex financial situation.
It wasn’t too long ago, maybe even just a 100 years ago, when you’d have a cobbler making shoes for the baker, who would turn around and give him bread. And the farrier would shoe a horse for the farmer, who’d turn around and give him a basket of vegetables. People bartered back and forth, trading goods and services because they didn’t have the money to pay for things.
Likewise, when we are first starting off in life, we need a bunch of services, but we don’t have the money to afford to pay for them. These services include things in the investment and tax arena, legal issues, banking, insurance, and so forth. So what can you do? Build yourself a CAT.
We’re not talking about the cute, furry, viral internet sensation here. CAT stands for a Collaborative Advisory Team, and on that team, you’ll have an investment advisor, an accountant, an attorney, an insurance agent, a banker, and maybe others depending on your situation. This might be a fairly informal team, as again, you may not have the money, so you might look for these professionals amongst your friends, family, or other acquaintances. As with the bartering system of old mentioned above, you may even be trading services you provide (graphic art, software programming, carpentry, etc.) in exchange for advice from these professionals, I’ve seen it done!
The point of your CAT is to help provide you with the professional help you need instead of trying to handle it on your own. When you are being proactive, maybe wanting to start a 401k, an investment advisor can help you with that. Or situationally, when you need insurance for your car, home, or personal property, you have an agent for that. Perhaps legal issues arise for you, and you’ve got an attorney who can help you, or maybe a banker helps you with your financial issues.
It just makes a lot of sense, because as we are starting off in life, we need these services, we just can’t afford them. But we can barter what we have for those other individual professionals in our life.
Eventually, as you start to build your wealth, more opportunities arise, and you may have much more complex situations. Then you could hire these different professionals to help you continue to grow your wealth successfully.
Until next time, enjoy!
Gary
