The Wonder Audit
Every financial plan I build starts with an audit — assets, liabilities, goals, timelines. I've started recommending a second audit alongside it, one that has nothing to do with numbers: a Wonder Audit.
The question is simple. When was the last time something made you stop, genuinely stop, mid-errand, mid-meeting, mid-ordinary-day? If you can't answer quickly, that's diagnostic information every bit as real as a cash flow shortfall.
Financial planning, done well, buys people time. But time bought back from work and worry doesn't automatically refill with wonder. It has to be built into, deliberately, the same way a retirement account has to be funded deliberately. A Wonder Cabinet — a shelf, a drawer, a weekly family ritual of noticing something strange together — is one of the cheapest, most durable ways I know to make sure the freedom a good financial plan creates actually gets used for something worth remembering.
I've started asking clients, gently, alongside the retirement projections: what will you do with the time this plan buys you? The best answers I hear are rarely about travel or leisure in the abstract. They're specific: rebuilding a Sunday ritual, restarting a practice that got lost during the working years, making room again for astonishment. A financial plan without a Wonder Audit risks funding a life that's secure but not particularly alive. I'd rather build both.
I would love to hear your thoughts. Please email me here.
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