What Does Return on Life Mean?

Conrad Hotel, Dublin

Thursday 24th January

The stage was set for our first Dublin seminar and the Metis Ireland team were all very excited, if not a little apprehensive. We wanted to reaffirm to our existing clients of our raison d’etre and tell the world, or at least Ireland, of our vision and mission to deliver Life Centred Financial Planning to all those who would embrace it. This we believe, gives our clients the best Return on Life.

So, who could we get to help us deliver this message! Enter our straight talking Co-Founder Carl Widger (as the warm up act) and Best Selling American Author Mitch Anthony (as the main event). We also needed to draft in the very talented 2014 Rose of Tralee winner Maria Walsh. Maria’s main task of the day was to ensure she got Carl off the stage in a timely manner (his passion can get the better of him!) and get our guest speaker, Mitch Anthony on.

Carl Widger: “Making Better Decisions”

Lunch was served and Carl took to the stage. His message was simple; forget biases, get invested and stay invested. More often than not, we are blinded by biases and they cause us to invest in what we know – familiarity bias; rush in with the crowd; and out with the crowd- herd mentality; and even confirmation bias- because we all like to be right in the end. He tells the assembled guests the Metis Ireland ethos the team live by every day – a life centred approach to money or put simply: “What’s the money for?” We will ‘set ourselves on fire’ and ‘hold our clients feet to the fire of their best intentions’. This is of course figuratively speaking and he may have slightly borrowed this phrase from the next man on the stage. He finishes with an investment analogy of a bar of soup – the more you touch it, the less you have!

Mitch Anthony: “Life Centred Financial Planning”

Now for the main event. Coffee and cake were provided to ensure that attention levels remained high. However, once Mitch gets into full swing, no cake is needed. Before we go any further we need to define the concept of Return on Life. It is best demonstrated with this equation:

Return on Life = Getting the best life you can with the money you have.

So with that at the front of my mind, Mr Mitch Anthony took to the stage. Mitch is a modern day Seanchai or as one of our guests said:

‘He’s like a preacher …. He sucks you in and brings you along’

I think he was right and the feedback we have received seems to indicate that everyone else thought the same. He traverses from story to story stopping briefly only to give a quick history of retirement through the ages. He is the closest you will get to a financial comedian – albeit with a serious message.

Mitch opens up his talk with a series of questions, statements and straw polls. He asserts that retirement is nothing more than ageism, an artificial line that assumes all humans have the same ability at the same age. He begs the question:

“How many of you know a 45 year old that acts like they are 75 or a 90 year old who thinks they are 40?!”

He goes on:

“How many of you know someone who has retired and died within a year; got old and/ or developed hypochondria?!”

He gives us a stat from a study that asserts you can lose up to 30% of your short term memory in the first year of retirement, who has that on their bucket list, he quips!

Then he changes tack to confirm that he is not against retirement, but simply believes that there is a new way of retirement- ‘a New Retirementality’. He questions will people save without this end goal, and provokes us all to think about saving for financial freedom, to have control; to work when and where you want to work and on your terms. The audience is captivated as he tells of a story of a 77 and a HALF year old (stating that important HALF like an excited 6 year old) professor of upper atmospheric physics who he sits beside on a flight. After an hour on the subject he asks the Professor has the university ever spoken to him about retiring, to which he quickly responds- every week. He then asks him why he hasn’t and his reply is simple but striking- THERE IS SIMPLY TOO MUCH LEFT TO LEARN ABOUT UPPER ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS!!! Stay curious Mitch remarks!

Just when you were taking a minute to take it all in; Mitch delivers another one of his famous one liners – ‘Work is an engagement which brings value to others and meaning to you; the wage is a Bonus’.

Mitch further develops the discussion around purpose with the statement ‘There is no amount of money on this planet that will find you a purpose. Money will fund a purpose- it will not generate a purpose! The role of money for us all he says is to give ‘enough purpose to wake up in the morning and enough money to sleep at night’!

The feedback from Mitch’s talk has been phenomenal. We are thrilled that his message was received so well. We aren’t ashamed to say that he was capable of telling the story about Life Centred Financial Planning and the Return On Life much more engagingly than any of us at Metis Ireland could hope to do.

Our mission at Metis Ireland is to deliver World Class Financial Planning to all of our clients. Having folks like Mitch Anthony help us spread the word, can only help our cause. We plan on delivering on this mission, one family at a time. It starts with a cup of coffee.

Do you owe it to yourself and your family to have that cup of coffee? We would love to talk to you!

Photography by Karl Hussey Photography Dublin with the ‘Karl Hussey Photography Dublin’

Disclaimer

Metis Ireland Financial Planning Ltd t/a Metis Ireland is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.

All content provided in these blog posts is intended for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as financial advice. You should always engage the services of a fully qualified independent financial adviser before entering any financial contract. Metis Ireland Financial Planning Ltd t/a Metis Ireland will not be held responsible for any actions taken as a result of reading these blog posts.