Thriving Family Principle: Life is a Team Sport

“Fifty-two percent of senior female executives played sports at the university level, compare to 39% of women at other management levels”, said Debora Spar, a professor at Harvard Business School. [1]

What is it about playing team sports that helps us later in life?

According to Spar, “Sports, and particularly team sports, tend to give women and girls things that they otherwise have a hard time getting, like resilience, grit, knowledge of teamwork, knowledge of leadership.  All of these things are crucial and they all are learned probably better on a sports team than anywhere else”.

I believe that the same is true for boys and men who play on teams as well. 

When it comes to meeting your financial goals, it takes a team to achieve it.

The first member of your families’ financial team, if you are married, should be your spouse.  Money is a notoriously difficult subject for spouses to discuss.  However, getting on the same page as your spouse is critical to building a strong financial team.

Your next financial team members should be your children.  Educating them about finances is important.  Bringing them into the family finances discussion, when appropriate, is also critical.  Your adult children should be informed about your financial plans and prepared for their financial role within your family.

Your final financial team members should be your advisors.  Your financial advisor, CPA and estate planning attorney (at a minimum) should all be knowledgeable in their fields, know each other, understand your goals and communicate well with your family and each other.

Few families have executed well on building their family financial team.  One big reason is that they aren’t receiving great advice from Wall Street.

A well-trained financial advisor can be a great “quarterback” for the family financial team.  However, many financial advisors only pay lip service to this role.  They spend too much time focusing solely on the “X’s and O’s” of investments and not enough time understanding the long-term goals of clients and facilitating healthy communication between all the team members.

The most competent “quarterback” financial advisors are often members of an aligned wealth management team that deliver unique resources to achieve the scorecard the family desires.

At Archetype, we have a set of twelve principles designed to help families thrive across generations. Check out more blogs from the "Thriving Family Principles" series.

Source:

[1] https://www.wgbh.org/news/lifestyle/2019/12/09/how-sports-impacts-the-lives-of-girls-and-women-long-after-their-playing-days-are-done