Book Excerpt: The Rest of Your Life

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Kinder says that he has been asking these questions for years and that there's a consistent pattern to the answers. The first two questions yield answers that mostly have to do with material things: beach houses, sports cars, golf courses. The third question, however, is almost always answered qualitatively: regret over broken relationships; giving too little back to the community, the planet; an unfilled desire to write the great American novel.

It's in a client's answer to the third question, Kinder says, that an adept life planner--one who's rigorously trained and knows what he's doing--can begin to zero in. It is right here, in the funding of what should have been, that a worthwhile financial plan has its beginning and end.