Hello 2024! We’re both feeling energized and excited by the new year and the chance to reboot our human computers for a fresh start. A lot of that enthusiasm came from finishing our routine of annual personal life planning, which we call our Seabrook Summit. The name comes from the location we chose for the first of these nerdy personal planning meetings back in 2017.

We love the idea of setting aside some uninterrupted time at least once a year to have major money-related conversations as a couple. That helps us make important decisions as a team, and it also helps us start each new year with intentionality.

During our most recent summit last month, Alison shared a goofy photo of us feeling proud on Instagram to memorialize what we just experienced together. We rarely post on social media so we didn’t think much about it, until the emails started rolling in.

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A post shared by Ali💜Alison🏳️‍🌈 (@alloptionsconsidered)

Within a few days we both had a bunch of side chats going with people asking questions about the logistics of our process. We were suddenly hearing from some people we had done a bit of coaching with previously, telling us how the process was working for them or voicing their concerns about how to make it work for them. We knew our first post about this process didn’t answer the types of questions we were getting and that got us talking about a new post for this blog. So here it is!

The first thing we should say on the topic of designing your own process, is that we designed our process to fit our needs and we encourage you to do the same. We made sure our process was formal enough to help us talk through big ideas and set important life goals. And we also made sure our process was designed to fit our individual personality types and our needs, emotionally and from a learning perspective as well.

Time for some Q&A!

We got some really good questions so we’re including some of them in our post. And if you have more questions keep them coming!

Is this just another self care idea that I don’t have time for???

No, this isn’t a trend to avoid this is a routine to adopt that will help keep you organized and intentional with your personal finances and your choices. We want to empower people to manage their own money and make their own thoughtful life choices. Our personal planning process focuses on any and all aspects of managing our lives and our wellbeing, both as individuals and as a couple. It’s not just about money, but it is interesting to think about how many parts of our lives are attached to money.

How much time does the process take?

We always give the process three full days, but I’m guessing a lot of others could get through it more quickly.

For us the goal isn’t to finish quickly, it’s about giving ourselves as much time as we need to work through all of the questions and big ideas we each have. And we always come up with new ideas along the way. I love this drawing below that Alison drew on day two of our summit last month, when we got sidetracked by our different ways of looking at things and answering questions. It probably won’t mean much to others, but I think this is a great illustration of our decision making style as a couple, and I think it also shows why we like giving this process so much of our time.

Here’s how it went for us last month…

• We started with a medium-depth dive (even though I can’t swim) through our agenda. We added post-it notes for topics that needed follow up when we got stuck, so we could keep the conversation going and also keep moving forward.
• On day two we started with the topics flagged for follow up discussions, we dove deeper (because Alison is an excellent swimmer), and we kept circling back as needed. And honestly, we were pretty tired after the second day.
• Then on day three we got excited again! We revisited the last few unresolved agenda items that still needed consensus. We skimmed through our agenda one more time just to admire our decisions. And we reviewed our action items and scheduled anything that needed milestone dates or completion dates to keep us on track. Whew!

For a couple more examples, one couple reported back that they also like to give a weekend to their process, but in their case they don’t ‘re spend as many hours “in meetings” and they maintain a more casual vibe. And a single person we know says she’s giving herself a very similar amount of time and formality, but her process and agenda don’t look anything like ours.

The Seabrook Summit idea can be adapted in a million different ways to suit what you need!

You said your first summit was in September but the most recent one was in December, does it matter when you do this?

We had our first Seabrook Summit in September because that’s when the need hit us. There was so much change in the air at that point in our lives that we needed to come up with a way to deal with it all quickly, and the result was this annual planning process. After that we decided to make this an end-of-year exercise and chose December, because that’s when we’re ready to look back at our complete year of spending and plan for the coming year’s financial needs. Your goals will probably be different!

This might work well for you as a year-end activity, or the idea of adding one more big thing to accomplish during the holiday season might sound like a nightmare to you. Maybe it fits with your summer plans, or your spring cleaning plans?

What was on your agenda? Do you have the same agenda every year? Is it something we can copy?

Our agenda has similar categories every year but the actual agenda is different every time. Since everyone is unique we always say — don’t copy anyone else’s life plans or financial plans! But most people don’t want to reinvent the wheel, so here are some examples…

AOC 2017 Agenda topics:

• Financial overview – review our spreadsheet. Update widget that tracks net worth and large expenses!
• Update 1/3/5 year plans?
• What’s our perfect 2021 look like?
• How do we feel about housing/renting/owning at this point in our lives?
• Discuss our health, health care, and personal priorities. ACA health insurance?
• How can we spend more time with Mom/family in the future?
• 2018 spending budget
• Short term tax plan? Assumed long term tax plan? Prep questions for CPA
• Credit card points. What’s the next card and who gets it?
• Prep our numbers for review by CFP
• Action items

AOC 2023 Agenda topics:

• Personal theme for 2024
• 2023 financial performance review, net worth and large expenses
• Current portfolio overview
• Roth conversion and tax plan for 2024
• What’s our plan for pulling our 2024 spending cash?
• Current family picture and financial impacts
• How will 2024 money moves impact near and long term tax plan? Prep questions for CPA.
• Time for a check-in with our CFP. Prep numbers for review.
• What’s our 2024 giving plan?
• Upcoming home remodel projects and financial impacts
• Personal priorities & wild ideas! (Alisons fav!)
• Action Items

Basically we talk about the year we just had, what we know we’ll have to deal with in the next few years, and how everything will impact our finances. Our agenda always includes our location and whether our housing needs to change, how our family has changed and how that impacts our money (when we started this blog we had six nieces and nephews with birthdays to remember, now we have 12!), our current individual personal goals, our big picture life goals, and how our money and taxes relate to everything else.

What goes on your life planning agenda these days?

How formal is your process? 

We like to keep it a bit formal for ourselves, but in a fun way. During my career I really loved the strategic planning process so we used elements from those experiences to design our process. A dose of formality adds a nerdy quality that makes it more fun for us, but your process could be very informal if keeping things casual works better for you. 

Apparently the dynamics of our little two-person team and our “organizational culture” makes formality useful for us. Life can feel chaotic, especially if we’re focused on big changes or major decisions. We’ll even add in a version of a risk analysis similar to a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis if we’re talking about something like the idea of turning our personal home into a rental (which we’ve tried twice in the past).

To answer this formality question for yourself consider your personality, social style, learning style, and factor in how easy or overwhelming things are for you at the moment. And if you’re more than just you, of course make sure to accommodate the needs of everyone involved.

This drawing below was one of the most interesting outcomes of this year’s summit for me and Alison, so we’re keeping this one up for now. We’ve learned so much about ourselves and how we can find consensus together through this process!

We were trying to map each other on a continuum when approaching simple or hard choices. Alison tends to float around being content and not overly stressed much of the time. But I tend to see things as either really easy or super hard. Alison can also carry a lot of concern around a topic, when I see nothing but blue skies and a big YES! Our AOC compromise boxes are where we each have to flex to when making final decisions. I encourage Alison to be more brave and take chances, and Alison helps ground me in reality and practicality when I have wild ideas. This is how we tried being landlords twice, bought our Seattle condo, owned a home in Canada, started taking big trips to Europe every two years during our careers, started investing in individual stocks and then swing trades and then index funds, changed jobs, retired early, gave away almost everything we owned, traveled full time for two years, moved to Flagstaff Arizona with an old friend we love like a brother, and moved to central AZ last year. Wow.

If we have kids should we include them? 

We don’t have kids but as aunts and people who used to be kids, we think it would be a great idea to involve kids at some level. Involving your kids in your family planning process helps them develop their own confidence and skills around decision-making. It also gives you a chance to model taking responsibility for your life and your personal finances, and a chance to explain some of those important big-picture lessons you have to share. 

The age of your kids would probably help determine how you could include them in the process, from letting younger kids help with writing and drawing on big adhesive pages, to inviting older kids to participate in complex discussions. Find the balance between working as a team and maintaining appropriate boundaries that fit your family.

If you’re single how would you change the process to fit an individual?

As an individual you can arrive at your decisions without having to negotiate with others, and you can stay focused on your own goals and needs. That works for quite a lot of people we know and love, including our housemate. Similarly, if Alison was doing this process alone these days she’d probably change the logistics quite a bit, and she’d probably do well with decision making on her own.

Personally, I wouldn’t change the logistics if I was doing this process alone, but I’d definitely have a hard time trusting my decisions without someone else to bounce ideas around with. If you’re someone who does better with feedback and conversational decision-making, it might help to invite someone else to participate with you so you can bounce ideas off of them. Consider whether someone in your life can be asked to sit in with you during parts of your planning process, as a listener and a source of different ideas. Those are some serious boundaries to maintain! Having someone you trust involved in your planning process might be a good option, as long as you both can maintain boundaries and the person you include is given a clear role of providing support without overstepping.

We also find it very helpful to enlist a CPA and CFP. In fact, Alison has an action item right now to schedule an appointment with our CFP for a check in and review of our portfolio.

How do you decide where to hold these events? 

Deciding where to hold a multi-day process like this depends on what we’re willing to spend if we want to be away from home. Sometimes we just want to buy adhesive note pads and markers and get to the finish line, and other times we want to combine this process with a long weekend away from home that also gives us a little adventure. 

We’ve had some people tell us the awayness of our Seabrook Summit idea is what helps them get through the process, and we’ve had other people tell us they want to keep their weekend adventures very separate from anything resembling meetings with agendas. Do what works for you!

We set the tone for our ongoing routine as the end of the year was approaching in 2017, when we had tons of crazy-sounding ideas being tossed around without enough time or energy to focus on them. We realized the pace of our lives in Seattle had become overwhelming and we wanted to slow down and be intentional, so we set time aside for our first money retreat over a long weekend. Getting away from our little condo and the constant interruptions there allowed us to take a deep dive into how, why, and when to turn our lives upside down and retire from our careers. 

When we’re away from home in a neutral place the process feels more serious and important. It also takes a lot of energy to keep me focused when we’re at home so sometimes that’s enough of a reason for a change of venue for us. And we both feel more open-minded and creative if we add a change of scenery to our process. At a minimum we need windows and walking space, and no matter where we are for our summit we aren’t shy about taking things off the walls and rearranging furniture to create the vibe we want.

This last December we held our Seabrook Summit in our house. We had just recently moved to a new place so our house still felt new and neutral, and we didn’t have room in our budget for a weekend getaway. We chose “the daisy room,” with it’s wild daisy-covered wall paper and set that up as our headquarters. We had a window for inspiring distance views and plenty of available wall space for big adhesive note pages, which was good since we ended up with 12 of them by the end of day three.

What if you disagree with your partner and can’t find consensus? 

First of all, if you never disagree with your partner you might be a unicorn! Or a robot. These events are a platform for making time and space for each of us to present big ideas to each other and we’re going to disagree at least some of the time, regardless of whether we’re making big or small decisions. That’s how we know we are separate people!

We start by having each of us write down agenda items to then share with each other. We talk through each person’s thoughts and opinions, which leads to reacting to each other’s thoughts and opinions. Make sure you are both really listening, take breaks, and set ground rules if you need them. Stay focused on very clear and effective communication, your shared values, your shared goals, and lots of mutual respect. For us, no option is too crazy to consider.

And it’s ok to offer up new ground rules right in the middle of the process because you might need something slightly different each time you dig deep and review what’s going on in your life. Alison and I make sure our focus is on encouraging each other to express our own individual thoughts, concerns, and preferences without fear of judgment. I work really hard at not interrupting Alison to keep her going, and she works really hard at adding positivity to keep me going. We have to make sure we are really listening to each other, and it takes practice like everything else. And of course we all make mistakes.

I’m not sure my partner and I could get through a “meeting” together that goes on for days. I’m also not sure I want to have meetings in my personal life.

It doesn’t have to be called a meeting or feel like one either. That’s just me and Alison doing things our way. The way you design this process is 100% up to you. We know one couple that does a version of this almost entirely by email because that works better for them. We go analog and use colorful markers to write on big adhesive notes, and we love having them to refer back to. You do you!

From an emotional perspective, I like to paint a fun/happy picture of everything when I’m talking, and Alison likes to paint a logical/factual picture of everything when she’s talking. In other words, we are totally different and we disagree about all sorts of things. It takes time for us to cycle through our discussions to reach consensus, and we have challenges getting to the consensus part some times. But we really value spending time together to plan the next steps in our lives, so we stick with the planning process and keep practicing. We also really enjoy the idea of accomplishing life together and we’re grateful for this amazing life we’re living!

This is a great opportunity for couples to navigate through personal goals and major decisions in a way that strengthens your relationship. Consider this annual planning process as quality time together, a chance to practice being intentional with your decisions, and a whole ton of opportunities to listen and support your partner’s ideas and opinions.

Also – we pay attention to how we are compromising to make sure we are both actually compromising, not just one of us. We celebrate with a sloppy high five after completing each part of our agenda, and we celebrate being done at the end of each day.

We know it’s important, but neither of us is motivated to get started. Help!

We know working through goals and plans isn’t fun for everyone. For some people (most people?), getting into a routine of annual planning might be about as fun as a routine of regular visits to a dentist. For other people (nerds like us) having an annual Seabrook Summit routine is more fun to look forward to than our birthdays. Weird huh? 

If adding some type of annual planning process to your routine is important to you and also not something you’ll really enjoy, focus on your strengths and your interests and design a process that works for you. Because it’s actually really important to see a dentist regularly…

If you only take one thing from us take this message we shared with one of our nieces the other day: No one will care for your money and your life as much as you do, so make sure you manage your money and design your life to fit YOU.

I feel like we could just do this maybe every 3-5 years and that would be enough, what do you think?

That would not be frequent enough for us, but if that’s frequent enough for you go with it! It’s important to find a routine that you’ll stick with and benefit from it. We’ve gone through our process a couple of times when life was very simple with no house to maintain, no big changes planned, and we were satisfied that we were on the same page with our goals. In those years all we really needed to do was check in and review what we had in our notes from the previous year. Done (and yes we can even stretch that into a three day discussion)!

We’ve also had a few years when life was changing so fast that we needed to go through a full planning session every six months — around our retirement year and again during the Covid pandemic years. No matter what’s going on in our lives, we have a routine of going through an intentional life planning process with check-ins as needed if things change.

And now for another reminder about why we really love this process… Our annual Seabrook Summit really does help us accomplish our goals, and the retirement rocket ship is still Alison’s favorite example of how that keeps happening for us. I like thinking there’s truth to that Buddhist idea, “The mind is everything. What you think, you become.”

We sketched the rocket drawing above on our white board at home in Seattle in 2017, as soon as we got home from our first Seabrook Summit. At that point we had just set a plan for retirement in 2021, and though we didn’t fully realize it at the time we had also put that decision in action with serious momentum. One of our action items was to give our portfolio numbers to our new CFP as a quality control measure. We spent days talking through our fears about the possibility of running out of money in retirement, and then our CFP said our math worked and her simulations showed our portfolio outliving us despite the black swan events she threw at it. We immediately had a little follow up to our Seabrook Summit, and decided we both had enough confidence in our plans to give ourselves permission to retire that year in 2018.

I wonder what your planning process might mean for you!?

Time for Some Action Items!

At the end of our process we still need time to pull all of our notes together, take photos of our awesome adhesive notes pages all over the walls, and get our action items organized. Our action items include serious business, like withdrawing cash for spending in the upcoming year. Or opening a new donor advised fund account and getting it funded with 2023 and 2024 dollars so we can make our first “really big” donation this year. 

If you’re curious or looking for a new target for your donation dollars… We’re very excited to give toward the build out of GenPride on the ground floor of Pride Place in Seattle. This project will provide 118 apartments, along with a community and health services center, for LGBTQIA+ seniors. We live in Arizona now but we met in Seattle on Capitol Hill in 2004 during pride weekend, and we still feel a very strong connection to that location and some of the people behind this amazing project.

Our planning process is really about our lives in general not just money decisions, so our action items also include ideas we want to prioritize that require (for us) setting a budget so we can figure out our plans. I’m turning 50 in a few months and I’m pretty obsessed with that fact at the moment. The first thing I thought of when considering how I wan to celebrate this big round birthday year, was the big party we had when Alison turned 50. That event went beautifully and it was wonderful to have so many of our friends there to honor her, including that really important friend who is now our housemate. So I added my birthday to the agenda last month and announced that I hate parties, which Alison knows, so we set a budget for my birthday celebration and I have a deadline for coming up with a plan that feels right to me. It’s probably going to be a getaway for the two of us with an activity, maybe involving our little Airstream or possibly an airplane? I’m unsure so feel free to make some suggestions!

If you’re working through this process as a couple or as a family, divide the action items and other responsibilities between you. We all have different strengths, interests, and capacity, but if you’re part of a team make sure you treat this like a team event that includes any action items or other follow-up activities.

Time to Pause!

I’ll wrap this up by saying… you can do this! If you want to! Create an agenda around your own goals and plans, set a date for your summit, and maybe even give it a fun name. Take lots of notes, take breaks when you need them, take lots of photos, and be ready for unexpected ideas and discoveries.

Oh and don’t forget to celebrate! Our first Seabrook Summit was brought to a close with the last sips of an outstanding bottle of 18 year old Scotch. Our most recent summit was brought to a close with a glass of Tilden’s Lacewing.

And now I’ll take an old hint from our friend Purple, who always encouraged us to try shorter blog posts. This post is already longer than I had planned and it’s taking up too much of my time so I’ll pause it here, and save the Personal Money Statement discussion for another post. Stay tuned!