Blog Post #1 Why am I so passionate about the subjects of preparation and personal finance?

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The year was 1986. I was living in a beautiful home in Newton, Massachusetts, with my mom, my dad, and my sister. My mom and dad had a thriving business and a second home on Cape Cod. They were making plenty of money and they were on top of the world.

Then my dad was diagnosed with cancer. It was terminal. Six weeks later, he was gone. He did not have life insurance. Over the next five to seven years, I watched my mother work to put my sister and me through college, but her income was not enough to cover it all. She eventually had to sell our home in Newton for less than full value, her share of the second home in Cape Cod, and then her business. Altogether she cleared over $1,000,000, but it all went to pay off the debt she had accumulated. Because we had no insurance, this unexpected event took all of our money. Guess what my mom and dad did for a living? They sold insurance. They sold homeowner’s insurance. Before my dad died, my mom was in the process of getting her life insurance license. She was studying for the exam. It was a classic case of the old saying, “the cobbler’s children have no shoes.”

Years later, I got into the mortgage business and started to see the opportunity to really make a difference in people’s lives. Many times, buying a home is the first major financial move a person or a family makes. I realized another thing—my parents sat with the same mortgage originator for the purchase of their first and second homes, a construction loan, and two refinances. They did five loans with the same mortgage originator and they used to say such nice things about him. The mortgage originator should have recognized the opportunity to recommend that my parents talk to a financial advisor about their insurance protection, but he didn’t.

It made me wonder how I would feel if I were their lender, and I had assumed that because they were in the insurance business, they were all set and had already taken care of their insurance protection? Did their mortgage originator think it wasn’t his responsibility to advise them on their insurance and their finances because he was facilitating the mortgage loan?

It is our responsibility.

People need to get their financial team in place as soon as possible. This shows how someone can be on top of the world, and one missing piece in their overall financial plan can change that in a New York minute. As a Core7 professional, we have the opportunity to put people in a much better financial place, and that can carry over into the rest of their lives. We can make a difference.

 www.mycore7.com