Saving for More Important Things

My dad's definitely one of my role models in not just my personal life but my professional life. We moved quite a bit for my dad's job. In the early 90s we moved to the suburbs of Chicago. We lived in a town called Barrington. The kind of place where a lot of my classmates drove luxury cars. I did not live in that kind of household. We were very cost conscious. My grandmother worked her whole life. And so after several years my grandmother decided she didn't wanna drive anymore. She was driving a 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. And my sister and I thought we were way too fancy for that. But my dad saw this as an opportunity for him to save some money. And he proceeded to drive this car to work, to his reserved parking spot for executive in the front of the building. For several years. And he had no problem with this whatsoever. To him that meant he could save money for more important things in our lives. He could save money for our college savings, he could make sure you know we had money for my parents to retire. What I took from my dad was that having control of your financial security helps you have a lot of control in your life. As a portfolio manager at Dimensional I found it interesting that my dad made all these incremental decisions in our family's finances to lead to a better outcome. And my job is pretty similar in that I make incremental decisions in our portfolios. Even decisions that are seemingly small, and each of those, you know watching every basis point at a time, that can add up to a great outcome for our clients. Making sure that they, they end up in a great place too.