Buckets For Your Bucket List By Lewis J. Walker, CFP(R)

In January, new year’s resolutions are the rage. All manner of “bucket list” books are promoted to catch the wave before resolutionary ardor fades by the ides of March. Come spring it will be easier to snag a vacant machine at L.A. Fitness!

Google “bucket list” books and myriad titles pop up—things to do for travel, cooking, self-help, spiritual growth, mother-daughter activities, plus quests for golfers, fishermen, runners and hikers. According to Merriam-Webster, “bucket list” is “a list of things that one has not done before but wants to do before dying; from the phrase kick the bucket (to die); first use, 2006.” The term entered the popular lexicon with the 2007 Rob Reiner movie, The Bucket List, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. The comedy-drama followed two terminally ill seasoned citizens on a road trip with a wish list of things to do and experience before they kicked the bucket.

While there is debate about the origin of “kick the bucket,” its roots may lie in the Middle Ages. A frequent form of death was execution by hanging or even suicide. Just before death, the bucket the hapless person stood upon was kicked out from beneath them. Gadzooks, a new term!

Prior to the film, computing literature referred to algorithms for “bucket sort” as a way of arranging data. In computing a bucket is a bin, a place to distribute data. In a sense, a “bucket list” may be any kind of task list, wish list, things to get done within a targeted time frame, or even a container of sorts.

Financial planners refer to a “bucket approach” to asset allocation, as in “buckets of money” ranked in order of risk and/or volatility. You may have “safe money” buckets with values guaranteed by an agency of the U.S. government (e.g., FDIC) or insurance companies. Another low risk bucket may contain short-to-medium term bonds with a defined strategy to deal with potentially rising interest rates. As you move further up the risk scale, you may have buckets for growth assets such as stocks, real estate, hard assets, alternative investments. You may have buckets for taxable assets, other buckets for tax-free or tax-deferred assets.

You may have “what if?” buckets to hold emergency or rainy day funds. Living and testamentary estate planning buckets may hold insurance policies or trust vehicles. You may have “defined purpose buckets” to fund educations, buy or build a new or second home, remodel a room or facility, fund spiritual and missionary efforts, start a business, or “fun stuff”—a dream trip, buy or rent a recreational vehicle and hit the road, facilitate a meaningful and worry-free retirement, which we hope is fun!

The Internet has spawned an explosion in “crowd funding buckets,” fundraising web sites. GoFundMe has raised over $1 billion for personal causes such as education, memorials, emergencies, animal welfare, etc. Discretion is advised. It’s hard to tell the worthy from a new form of panhandling.

Like the pitchman on television pushing a rewards credit card who asks, “What’s in your wallet?”...we may ask, “What’s in your bucket?” A bucket list bucket is worthless without funding in most cases. You need money, resolve, and a plan to make it happen.

A financial plan is one big bucket list of sorts. It is a response to challenge, detailing the alternatives best suited to meeting challenges and accomplishing the objectives, defining resources needed to power alternatives, and listing your expectations, the desired outcomes. Resources often include money and assets and that’s where financial management, risk-reward considerations, tax-posture, and time frames come into play.

Eliminate deal killers, fuzzy words like “someday” and “maybe” from your bucket list ruminations. How is, “Someday I want to go to the South Pacific and walk on a beach” working out? Dale Carnegie said, “Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.”

A bucket with no funding is like a piggy bank with no coins. When it comes to your bucket list, what are you waiting for? As Nike urges, “Just do it!”

Lewis Walker is President of Walker Capital Management, LLC. Securities and advisory services offered through The Strategic Financial Alliance, Inc. (SFA). Lewis Walker is a registered representative and investment adviser representative of SFA which is otherwise unaffiliated with Walker Capital Management, LLC.

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