The Taxable Investor's Manifesto

CHAPTER ELEVENShift from Success to Significance

Wealth without values is just money. As you grow businesses, as your career matures, as you accumulate significant financial assets, and as you age, how are you going to organize your affairs? Once you have built financial security, what will you do with your business, your time, and your money to maximize their intrinsic value to your family and to society?

In his book Just Enough,¹ Howard Stevenson – my good friend, consummate Harvard Business School professor, record-breaking fund raiser, superb investor, and prolific author – explores the path from success to significance. He asks, “How can I make a positive impact on people, institutions, and issues I care most about?” It's a great question.

Live your values. Values are what bring meaning to your accumulated assets, and values will define how you deploy those assets, in life and in death. Values are among the most important attributes we can share with our children, who will observe not what we say about our values, but what we do to express them.

This chapter starts with some important but mechanistic topics. Stick with me; as the chapter moves along, the topics get juicier.

For me, providing some protection to my family in an uncertain world is something to aspire to. One tool for building security is insurance. Sufficiently insuring our cars, our homes, and our health is a good idea and is sometimes a legal requirement. Insuring our lives can be equally important. In ...