They’re professionals, right?
How did all of the mechanisms operated by the mind-bogglingly well-paid men and women of the Street go so wrong?
Archive forProsperity
Ask and you shall receive; don’t ask — not so much
This article, by an academic who has studied the disparities between men and women in pay and other benefits, finds that women are not socialized to negotiate. The result, inevitably, is that they are paid less and promoted less often.
But this may not be exclusively the province of women — in my work with not-for-profit and faith-based organizations, I’ve often noted the same tendencies among men as well.
As a society, though we undoubtedly worship the pursuit of wealth too fervently, we also think it is more virtuous not to ask for more. Those who devote themselves to creating a better world often tend to aim for a degree of asceticism. The result is that the power of wealth often (not always, obviously) ends up in the hands of those who are less concerned with virtue. We pay money managers millions of dollars a year and day care workers live below the poverty level.
Certainly, living with less stuff is better for the planet, but money itself is the single most transferable, flexible form of energy we have. Money enables us to care for ourselves and reach our fullest potential free of the limitations that having too little money can impose. It enable us to support the people and causes we care about.
The key is not to view money as unimportant, or to pursue money for for its own sake, but to see it as a resource that can help us achieve meaningful goals and live a purposeful life. Remember, Mother Therese lived a vow of poverty, but it was her ability to raise funds to create orphanages and hospitals that made her so effective in the world.
So … the next time you’re offered a salary, don’t just accept it. Ask for 10 per cent more. And devote that 10 per cent to creating your richest life, or to supporting a cause that is important to you.
Why Rob Carrick hates principle protected notes
Another example of complexity gone wrong!
Rob mentions it only briefly here, but a simple way to get the benefits of principle protected notes without the high fees and small print is to invest the bulk of your principle in a GIC (guaranteed investment certificate) for five years and a comfortable percentage (five to 25 per cent, depending on your risk tolerance) in equity ETFs. See the previous post to this one for details on ETF portfolios.
Freedom for the road ahead
From financial planning to real estate investing, there are many ways to make early retirement a reality
Originally published in Alberta Venture Magazine Vol. 9 Issue 1 - January 2005
by Lori Bamber
Financial independence. Early retirement. Whatever you call it, we want it. Stuck in rush hour traffic, or listening to the boss drone on during another meeting, we dream of the day when every day is like Sunday.
Unless you own a successful business or have a generous pension plan, making these dreams real can seem daunting. Early retirement means we have less time to work and save, and less time to let those savings compound, even though these days we need those savings to last longer than in times past. Veteran financial advisor Rob McCullagh, a certified financial planning instructor at the University of Calgary, refers to a revealing anecdote about three generations of men. The grandfather started work at 17, toiled until age 65 and died 12 years later. The father began work at 22, worked until 60 and died 17 years later. The third generation son began work at age 25, plans to retire at age 55 and may very well live 30 years or more into his retirement.
Despite all of the obstacles, many people will do all the right things to become financially independent at an early age. Will you be among them? To increase your odds, we’ve outlined some of the problems you’ll face - and, more importantly, the strategies you’ll need to overcome them.
Don’t let your upkeep be your downfall. We’re all looking for lush investment returns without risk, but your grandmother probably knew more about the formula for wealth creation than today’s money managers. In fact, it’s tragically simple: if you want to retire early, you must save. And to save, you must spend less than you earn.
Successful wealth accumulators save first. Set up a monthly automatic investment plan and stick with it. And if you’re convinced the short-term result will be big trouble at the end of the month, be assured that cutting your expenses doesn’t have to be painful. For example, 1001 Ways to Cut Your Expenses author Jonathan Pond claims you can save up to $500,000 over a 40-year period just by keeping your cars 10 years or longer (save $350 a month in auto lease or purchase payments and insurance, invest it at 5% over 40 years and voila - $520,000). Another high-gain, low-pain strategy is accelerating your mortgage payments. A $582 mortgage payment every two weeks rather than $1,163 once a month (assuming a mortgage rate of 5% on a $200,000 loan amortized over 25 years) will save you more than $25,000 in interest - and retire your mortgage almost four years earlier. Do that by age 40, put that $25,000 and a biweekly contribution equivalent to your former mortgage payment into an RRSP at 8% for 15 years and you’ll add an additional $482,000 to your larder. If you’re just starting out, carve $50 from your weekly spending, starting at age 20, invest it at 8% and you’ll have more than $2 million at age 55. If you can’t think of ways to cut $50 a week from your spending, you’ll find hundreds at www.stretcher.com. But the best tip is probably the simplest - think before you spend. Ask yourself that vital question: Is this worth more to me than financial independence?
Avoid borrowing to pay for anything that’s not increasing in value more than the rate of interest you’re paying on the debt. For those aiming for financial freedom, consumer debt is the enemy. Carrying just $10,000 on your credit cards at 18% will cost you $1,800 per year; pay off the balance instead and invest that $1,800 in an RRSP at 8% over 20 years and you’ll have nearly $89,000 for your efforts.
With a few small lifestyle adjustments, we’ve just created more than $3 million in wealth. The question is, will you?
Keep your eyes wide open. We make decisions every single day that affect our ultimate financial destination and most of those decisions involve trade-offs. The motivation is in the vision: if we don’t know what we’re aiming for, it’s inevitable that we’ll choose the wide-screen TV and the new car over an uncertain, distant future.
According to Debbie Ammeter, vice-president of Advanced Financial Planning at Investors Group, people spend more time planning their annual vacations than their retirement. But there are questions that should be asked long before the morning after the retirement party: “Do you and your spouse have the same vision? Do you want to travel or just spend time at home? A clear picture is primar-y.” Ammeter also suggests that we consider alternatives to total retirement, like phased retirement with part-time work.
Jim Dillon agrees. He retired from an executive position in the brokerage industry in his early 50s, but it wasn’t long before he was back at work full time. And it wasn’t because he ran out of money. The problem was that his friends were still working - there was nobody to golf with. Dillon also found that while he was tired of the daily grind, he missed the challenge and learning opportunities work provided. Ten years later, he’s now retired again.
Not all early retirees will have the same opportunity to re-enter the workplace if they get cold feet, so it’s important to plan well: we don’t want a permanent solution to a temporary restlessness. You may even want to consider taking a sabbatical leave a few years before your planned retirement date. By giving yourself some space to think, you may even find that what you want is not early retirement but a new and challenging career.
Once you’ve hit the sweet spot - accumulated assets sufficient to produce income for the rest of your life without further employment - your work is not done. In fact, you’ve swapped one vocation for another, and putting your wealth in the hands of a professional can be terribly self-destructive unless you’re savvy enough to be a full partner in the decision-making process. There are no hard and fast general rules at this point, but there are a couple of principles that will save you from the worst mistakes.
In the last 15 years, diversification has come to mean holding the right mix of managed mutual funds, but a broader approach is healthier. Begin by thinking about what each asset is for: growth, inflation protection, income, liquidity, or safety of capital? If you understand that your Real Return Bonds (bonds that pay a nominal rate of return plus the rate of inflation) are meant to protect you when inflation rises and provide safety of capital, you won’t be disappointed when their returns aren’t as high as the latest hot stock.
Consider the most significant risks to your wealth: poor health, divorce, market risk, inflation and your spending. A healthy, fulfilling lifestyle is the best prevention, but Ammeter also suggests that you see a financial planner to help you determine and mitigate the risk of failing health with options like long-term-care insurance that can safeguard against catastrophic expenses which might otherwise decimate your best laid plans.
Be sure you’re comfortable with the worst-case scenario. It’s easy to work a few extra years but it’s challenging to get a job at 87 when you’ve outlived your savings. On the other hand, if you are content with a simple lifestyle, you might be perfectly comfortable living off the Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security and perhaps the Guaranteed Income Supplement. (Count on a minimum monthly income of about $1,600 per couple or $1,100 per person.)
If you want a more luxurious retirement lifestyle, analysts advise that you shouldn’t consume more than 4% of your net worth per year, and if you want your assets to last 30 years or longer, reduce that to 3.79% per year. To achieve an annual income of $70,000 over and above your government benefits (in today’s dollars) in 10 years, you’ll need almost $2 million and an investment yield in retirement of 6% if inflation averages 3%; just over $1.55 million if inflation averages 2%.
At the end of the day, retirement is personal. The way we earn, save, spend and invest our money is unique, and our success depends on finding a plan that works for us as individuals. For that reason, we wanted to leave you with three very different strategies for achieving early retirement. One of them, or a mix of all three, may be the ticket to your retirement dreams.
The first strategy is for your inner real estate titan. Ozzie Jurock, author of Forget about Location, Location, Location, is Canada’s pre-eminent real estate guru, attracting thousands to his seminars. Many of his devotees report using his advice to build portfolios of rental properties and significant wealth; we asked him how to retire early.
“I tell people to buy a condo, no money down, with a ratio of (rental) income to price of 1% per month,” says Jurock. “For example, if you buy a condo for $100,000 you should be receiving $1,000 per month in rent. It pays for itself. Do that five times and you have $5,000 a month. Eighteen or 20 years from now - and we’re making the assumption that the value doesn’t go up and rents don’t increase -you’re going to have free cash flow of $5,000 a month.”
It sounds good, but how to buy with no money down? Isn’t it risky? “You’re starting the ‘yeah, buts,’” says Jurock. “We think nothing of working all our lives to save $400,000 and then putting it all in the hands of a 25-year-old financial advisor with no real education. Yet when I advise people to buy a condo, they say ‘that’s too risky!’ There are a whole bunch of ways to get 100% financing. It may not be at 4%; it may be at 6.3%. ‘Oh, that’s horrible,’ I can hear people saying. My wife and I owned 28 condos in the ’80s when interest rates were 13.5%. If you’ve got rental income to service the debt, what’s the problem?
“There will be headaches,” continues Jurock. “There’s always something. You have to do the work. You’ll have to learn how to be a property manager, but there are thousands of books on the subject. Go to the library.”
You’ve also got to decide if you’re an investor or a flipper, adds Jurock. An investor doesn’t buy property which doesn’t have the rental income to purchase price ratio defined above; a flipper is betting that he’ll be able to sell for more than he paid and is taking on significantly more risk should the market turn against him. Do your research, he says. Have a plan of action. Develop relationships with professionals who will assist you along the way. Most importantly, challenge yourself: once you change your belief system, you’ll find ways to overcome the obstacles.
There is power in a plan. Asked if it’s possible to retire early, financial planner Rob McCullagh replies that it’s all about how well your foundation is built. Are you successfully and consistently contributing to an RRSP and saving outside of an RRSP? Have you articulated your vision? We also have to be clear, says McCullagh, on the difference between investment and speculation. Speculators may have been burned by the markets in the last five years, but investors with a long-term window see the opportunity.
The first thing to do, he advises, is catch up on your RRSP contribution. According to Statistics Canada, as of 2002 Canadians had accumulated more than $274 billion in unused, allowable RRSP contribution room. But contribution room is defined by actuarial studies to provide for our income needs in retirement, the same way that pensions are designed. “If your employer was behind on your pension contributions,” says McCullagh, “you’d expect dramatic action.”
It isn’t just about retirement, he says, but about building security and comfort. People with savings are in a better position to make decisions throughout their lives. They’re also much calmer. “Many of my clients now say things like, ‘We didn’t think it was possible, but now we’ve saved a little money and we feel great about getting our statement.’ We’re not in control of the market,” says McCullagh, “but we are in charge of many other aspects (of wealth creation). Make sure you prepare for all outcomes, including inflation.”
For help with that preparation, McCullagh believes in the value of professional financial planning. He tells of a client who began saving only $50 a month in an RRSP and $50 in a non-registered plan. Today he’s saving $5,000 US a month - made possible by a healthy income and good habits developed early.
Don’t get caught in the treadmill of returns, he says, but have the courage to step back and put all aspects of our life in order. It’s about vision, consistency and discipline. A financial planner can’t help you control the markets, but they can help you get back in control of your own financial destiny.
Sometimes a simple life is the sweet life. Alan Dickson, author of Advance to Go, doesn’t think the stock market volatility of recent years will stand early retirement. “I’m sure there are people there who have made enough to retire by investing in the markets, but I’ve never met any,” he says. “I’ve met lots who have lost money. I think it may be a good thing when the stock market is down: it doesn’t tempt us to get into it.
“We have to focus on the other side, preserving our money rather than making more. The old adage ‘A penny saved is a penny earned’ isn’t accurate in a our tax environment - a penny saved is more like two pennies earned when you consider tax and the cost of going to work. We have to think about where we’re spending money.
Asked for an example, Dickson refers to friends, a couple who retired on Vancouver Island at age 55 with a combined total of about $150,000 in their RRSPs. They’re now both 66, and, as they intended, their RRSPs are almost depleted. With only CPP and old-age benefits, they’re living very comfortably.
“You have to make some choices,” says Dickson. “You can’t have all the vices. But you can’t spend willy-nilly even if you have millions in your RRSP. In 1885, when the average income was $500 a year, Mark Twain was spending $30,000 on household expenses. Then he went broke and had to go back to work. Well, it wasn’t just household expenses-he also played the stock market. It isn’t how much you make; it’s what you spend. People equate happiness with what you have and I just don’t see it. There are so many simple things we can do to just enjoy life and it doesn’t cost very much.”
365 days to your richest life: Conclusion to Varieties of Risk
In 1994, author Graydon Watters (Financial Pursuit) wrote that 8 out of 10 Canadians had never invested in the market. By 2000, research revealed that almost 50 percent of adult Canadians owned stock directly or through mutual funds.
One of the risks wreaking havoc in the current interest rate environment is “reinvestment risk.” When we invest in bonds and/or GICs to achieve security of capital, at some point, our terms will mature. If we rely on those investments for income, we may find ourselves living on substantially less than we were prior to maturity. A study by Fidelity Investments of the 34-year period ending in 2002, for example, found that GIC investors received 214 percent less on their reinvested term, on average, than when they initially invested. Ouch!
In the late 70’s and early 80’s, inflation risk was a predominant factor. Somewhat predictably, when interest rates were at their highest, inflation was too, with purchasing power falling by as much as 12.5 percent in one year (1981). Today we have much greater confidence that economic and politic powers can effectively combat hyper-inflation, and demographic trends are also in our favour, i.e., an ageing population consumes less, and lower consumption lowers prices. However, there are still certain wild cards – like oil and gas prices – that are both unpredictable and unmanageable. Unlike market risk, which is reduced with time in the market, inflation risk increases with time. The younger and healthier we are now, the greater the influence of inflation during our lifetime. We can minimise the impact of inflation on our lives, very simply, by owning assets that go up in value as inflation rises – unlike cars, GICs, bonds, and money itself.
Finally, there is shortfall risk—the risk of running out of money before we die. My experience has been that far more Canadians damage their quality of life by worrying about running out of money than actually experience that remote eventuality, but since the antidote for one happens to also be the antidote for the other, I’m happy to help you overcome both.
Although the straight-forward, laddered GIC portfolio many risk-averse investors have chosen may seem like the lowest-risk way to build wealth and prepare for retirement, it really only provides protection from two of the six kinds of risk we face. A truly low-risk strategy is one that balances all of these risks, providing as much protection as possible against them all. That’s what we’re here to do.
In order to give you a clear path once you begin, however, let’s start by clearing up some of the money and investment myths that may be standing in your way right now.
Deja vu all over again?
From the Globe and Mail:
Back in 1980, when I was in B-school, the book, Japan as Number 1 was required reading. Japan was the world’s largest creditor, its people enjoyed the world’s highest quality of life, biggest per capita gross domestic product and longest life expectancy. Robots in Japanese factories were replacing U.S. rust belt manufacturing jobs. The economy was on a tear and the Nikkei index was soaring.
Worth reading …
Why optimism, vision and hope were never more important than they are today … Caroline Kennedy writes eloquently about why she’s endorsing Barack Obama in the Democratic primary.
365 days to your richest life: day 13
Once we create order in our financial lives, our anxiety will diminish a great deal, but it won’t disappear entirely — not unless we retreat to Walden’s Pond. The more we expose ourselves to environmental stresses, the more time we need to invest in treating our anxiety. Modern living requires us to counteract the stresses of modern life through active self-care — and accepting that fact allows us both to treat the anxiety that we are currently experiencing and to shore up our strength against future challenges.
Just as importantly, we must come to understand that anxiety does not indicate that there is a terrible problem lurking somewhere.
I have spent a great deal of time over the last five years listening to the “still, small voice” of my higher self, and one thing that has become crystal clear is that it never speaks from a place of fear. As Reverend Marvin Anderson used to say, the voice of God is always a Yes! Your divine self is a point of awareness in the ultimate, infinite positive. If you are hearing a voice that says, “If you do that you’ll fail spectacularly and have to declare bankruptcy and even your mother will think you’re a fool” that is not your highest self speaking. That is the voice of anxiety. The only truth it signals is that it is time to treat your anxiety through self-care.
So, let go of that particular myth. Your anxiety is not trying to warn you that you’re about to move in the wrong direction. It is warning you not to move at all, not to grow, not to reach toward your potential. It is warning you to ’stay safe’ by resisting change. (Since change is the one constant, resisting change is ultimately always a waste of precious energy and time.)
Never attempt to treat anxiety by attempting to solve the problems that anxiety attaches itself to. I find that it’s very helpful to treat anxious thoughts like upset toddlers. Reasoning with anxiety is a waste of time — distraction is the only real solution. Do whatever it is that best distracts you (unless that activity is also anxiety-provoking). Go for a long walk, see a funny movie, meditate, make yourself a nice cup of tea and re-read a favourite book. Get a baby sitter if you have young children, and take a hot bath or a nap. Stop everything — and treat the anxiety.
Why is this important? First, because acting from a place of anxiety is the least effective way to overcome any real challenges we face. Any decision made from a place of fear is very likely to be a bad decision.
Let’s recap. First, we rid ourselves of our anxiety magnets by creating order in our financial life — then, we treat any environmental anxiety on a regular basis.
And if that doesn’t work, if we are still uncomfortable, it is safe to conclude that we are suffering from divine discontent. That means that we must change our lives. For the primary difference between divine discontent and anxiety is that divine discontent spurs us to action — while anxiety keeps us in inaction.
Self-actualization, living our best life, determining our purpose and reaching our divine potential requires that we take risks. So, first we treat our environmental anxiety. Then we embrace our divine discontent, and harness it — we use it to lift us off the couch, to create a defense against those in our lives who are afraid of losing us if we become our best selves.
Frank X. Barron was a scholar who spent his life exploring the creative mind. And just to be clear about what we are talking about here, know that everyone who ever succeeded at anything, from art to business to motherhood, did so because they engaged their creative mind. Sometimes the only art we engage in is the creation of our own lives, and it might be argued that the creation of our lives is the greatest masterpiece of all.
Dr. Barron wrote that “Creativity requires taking what Einstein called “a leap into the unknown”. This can mean putting your beliefs, reputation and resources on he line as you suffer the slings and arrows of ridicule.”
During more than 20 years in the world of finance, I have identified a number of traits that separate those that succeed from those who only dream of succeeding. Successful people don’t wait until they feel safe before they take action. They don’t let their fear paralyze them — instead, they harness that fear to motivate them to do their best.
365 days to your richest life: day 12
Moving From Survival to Purpose
Financial Serenity is that point at which money becomes a source of energy rather than an obstacle to our best life, but it is also a daily, living practice. In freeing ourselves, we are able to move from the business of survival to the business of fulfilling our purpose, and if you’ve been watching the news lately, then you know that the world is in dire need of our help.
It’s time. This isn’t just about living our dreams — it’s about what the Lord’s Prayer refers to as “God’s will be done — on earth as it is in heaven.” Imagine a planet full of people living their purpose, living the reality of abundance and prosperity: living the reality of joy. And the only way to get from here to there is one person at a time — it begins with us. Here. Now.
Dr. Abraham Maslow described the process of self-actualization this way:
- “a person’s need to be and do that which the person was “born to do.” “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write.” These needs make themselves felt in signs of restlessness. The person feels on edge, tense, lacking something, in short, restless. If a person is hungry, unsafe, not loved or accepted, or lacking self-esteem, it is very easy to know what the person is restless about. It is not always clear what a person wants when there is a need for self-actualization.
Maslow is describing here the condition that I refer to in Financial Serenity as “divine discontent.”
Unfortunately, our most common tendency is to try to cure divine discontent, which often feels like garden-variety anxiety, by trying to create more security in our lives. Staying in the jobs we hate, avoiding risk — the opposite of those actions that will allow us to self-actualize and ease the divine discontent.
But let’s talk first about garden-variety anxiety — the social miasma of fear that’s created by the noise of the world, by traffic, by the media, for whom, if it bleeds, it leads, and in which a story is only a “REAL” story if it’s truly bad news. The anxiety that’s caused by urban living and which simply floats about, waiting to attach itself to whatever our favourite subject of worry is. That ‘favourite form of suffering’ might be concern for our health or our children — but it’s often wholly or partly about our money.
Environmental anxiety is a fact of life in an urban environment. We can control the volume — by limiting our exposure to media, noise, traffic and bustle, and by increasing our exposure to the natural world, to healthy, nutritious food and exercise, and inspirational people and activities — but we can never entirely turn it off. The greater the population, the greater the environmental stresses. The greater the environment stresses, the greater the level of anxiety.
In order to transform anxiety into creative energy, we have to first understand that anxiety is not personal, and it will not disappear when we have solved the problems we think make us anxious. Anxiety IS. It is free-floating and attaches itself to the weakest link in our lives. For many of us, that link is money.
Most of suffer from anxiety at some time, particularly when it comes to issues of money and security, and most of us begin by believing that if we do things right, we will become financially secure and therefore, we will no longer feel any anxiety about money.
That’s a myth. Money does not cure anxiety.
I’ve spoken previously about the very surreal experience of living from paycheque to paycheque as a struggling single mother while managing investments accounts in the millions of dollars — only to find that the investors who were blessed with these riches were even more afraid than I, living lives that were made smaller by fear of losing what they had, or that it might not be enough.
Most of us know someone that fits that description — someone that has more money than we could ever imagine having, and yet whose life is small — constrained by fear, or by greed. People who work too hard, long after they’ve achieved financial success, until their health and relationships are ruined, or who can’t enjoy the money they have because they are impoverished by fear.
Conversely, many of us have had the experience of working hard, increasing our income, increasing our savings and our investment portfolio, only to find that our expenses go up even faster, we pay more in tax, and we can’t get ahead.
If money is not the solution to anxiety — what is the solution?
We must be able to separate anxiety from divine discontent, and the way we do that is simply by treating the anxiety. If our ‘treatment’ relieves the anxiety, it is not divine discontent, which can only be cured by growing into our divine potential.
Therefore, when we feel anxiety, the primary step is to treat it.
To do so, we must begin by creating order. If you don’t know where your money goes every month, or if you really have no idea how much you make (net of taxes and work-related expenses) then you have created an anxiety magnet.
To rid yourself of that magnet, you need only create order in your finances — recording your expenses, creating and maintaining a spending plan, and moving toward that state of grace in which you spend all of the money you earn on things that you truly care about, things that add to the quality of your life.
If you have no idea how to go about doing that, click here. I also highly recommend “Your Money or Your Life,” the best-selling book by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robins.
365 days to your richest life: day 11
This threefold process will allow you to transcend any negative beliefs that are undermining your relationship with money.
1. Practice faith. Read inspirational books; visit www.beliefnet.com and do some of their wonderful ten-minute meditations; surround yourself with positive, creative people. James told us that “faith without works is dead:” it is also true that faith as a practice, rather than as a concept or ideal, will provide you with the confidence and courage to make creative changes in your life.
2. Apply the power of symbolism — it is the language that speaks directly to the unconscious mind. Rid your environment of anything that makes you feel impoverished, and surround yourself instead with symbols of luxury and prosperity, items and experiences that make you feel prosperous even if they may have no meaning for other people.
For example, get rid of tattered clothes and furnishings that you hate, even if it means wearing your one good outfit every day and living in nearly bare rooms. Not only will you rid your environment of poverty symbols, you create a space, an invitation, for new and beautiful things. Don’t rush out with your Visa to replace the things you let go of. Instead, allow life to offer its gifts — and allow yourself to experience the natural, inevitable flow of abundance. Your job is to create space and then to accept with gratitude and delight.
3. Learn to live the art of gratitude. Without gratitude, wealth is wasted on us, and wealth goes only where it can be creative. Keep a daily gratitude journal, do gratitude meditations in which you affirm each and every thing you have to be grateful for today, get outside to experience the extraordinary abundance of nature, practice seeing the perfection in small moments and pleasures, and live gratitude by living “with an open hand,” acknowledging the many blessings in your life by sharing them with others.
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Melody Beatty