Our company began in a high school lunchroom as our founder, Christina Winch, realized her fellow educators needed help understanding their retirement account options.
In the nearly 40 years since, Winch Financial has grown exponentially and our commitment to education continues. Today, we offer seminars and classes, post weekly market commentaries and blogs, and recommend books and podcasts all with the understanding that education equals empowerment.
We want our clients and their families to understand their accounts and how we manage them, and to feel confident in the choices we make. As the world evolves, we intend to progress with it; we strive to maintain an innovative and effective approach to wealth management.
Transcending all that sophistication, though, are the relationships we build with our clients and we know some of the best advice, financial or otherwise, comes from the heart.
So, in honor of Grandparent’s Day, we’re sharing a few tips we’ve received from our own grandparents and we want you to know our ears and our hearts are always open to hearing some sound, sensible advice from you and yours.
Please enjoy the following advice from our grandparents:
From Aaron Bauer:
I remember when I was about six my grandfather took me on a walk to a black walnut tree he had noticed on a country road near our home. Along the way he gently recounted lessons from the Bible, including that of Methuselah, who lived longer than any other man, to the age of 969. Learning this was a relief to me because although I knew my grandfather was old, I was pretty sure he wasn’t even near 600, which meant that my primary source of LEGOs should be intact for at least a few hundred years.
When we reached the tree, we selected a few nuts and placed them in a plastic bag. Grandpa warned me that dropping them could leave a dark stain on my Dino-Dude sweatshirt, so I refrained from throwing any at enemy combatants. We wandered back with our haul, and then the true fun began.
We carefully husked the walnuts, leaving behind a dark residue on our fingers that delighted my six-year-old backyard sensibility. My grandfather wedged one of the walnuts with a vise and then carefully, deliberately, but forcefully smashed it with a hammer. In spite of his efforts the shell went flying everywhere, and it took us a long time to piece together the remnants of the tiny central nut.
Since that day I have had just about every type of store-bought nut, ranging from peanuts to pistachios to pine nuts, toasted and untoasted, with salt or lime or sugar. Some have been good, others great, but none have ever compared to that hard-won bit of black walnut that I shared with my grandfather many years ago.
From Sandy Shultz:
I’ve learned so many things from my Grandma! She taught me to cook, play the piano and encouraged my love of reading when I was a kid. As an adult, she’s taught me to treasure each moment, patience, the importance of unconditional love and spending time with those you love.
From Tyler Bauer:
Our grandparents knew all the grandkids’ favorite sweets and they always made some special for each Grandkid (and there were a lot of us). I remember this more than any of the gifts they got any of us. It reminds me that the best gifts are those that come from the heart.
From Vicki Weinaug Martin
One of my grandparents died before I was born, one died when I was a baby, and one died while I was young. But I learned patience from one of my grandpas. He lived with us for a long time when I was young. He probably had some form of dementia, which we would not have known back then. Helping my mom take care of an elderly person taught me patience. He would sit in a rocking chair all day and loved to watch Lawrence Welk. He would remember the “old” days but not really the current. If you took the time to chat with him, you could hear some good stories. But you had to learn to be patient when caring for someone like that.
From Laura Biskupic
Though her kitchen had the exact same layout as everyone else’s in the coal company town she grew up in, my grandma made hers seem like a Michelin Star restaurant. Even in lean times, and she lived through plenty of those, she always served delicious meals. No one ever left her table hungry. She sent us to pick blackberries in the woods behind her house, and she’d turn those wild berries, a little lard, sugar and flour into gourmet pies. Inexpensive cuts of beef became a thick, rich vegetable soup. I learned from my grandma that a little elbow grease and love can turn everyday ingredients – cheap, simple food – into a feast and that, if you manage it well, you don’t need very much money to live a rich and rewarding life.