Gravel Roads and Beer

Particularly peaceful about my recent trip to South Dakota was the absence of modernity. It felt like I stepped back into the days of settlers crossing the plains in covered wagons carring everything they owned. I, like you, am so connected to everybody and everything around me from a technology standpoint. The constant flow of information tends to numb our senses to what really matters. It’s easy to forget how the world got along just fine before twitter. How people communicated, families took vacations, and life-long relationships were forged before Facebook.

In a way, wealth allows you to pick the world you prefer. One connected, or one disconnected. Money gives you this choice, a valuable option to hit the “off” button on all the noise. Money allows you to ride down gravel roads on the farm enjoying a beer without scrolling up and down a screen looking for emails. No people, no information and no technology to cause problems that really don’t exist except in the fully connected world.

It seems so simple, but such a pause in the action can be complicated to achieve. As a financial planner, I’ve done my job when a client responds to an email I sent a month earlier and says, “Sorry just getting back to you Rusty, been staying in a cabin for a month and decided not to turn my phone on.” Wealth management achieved.