When I think back to that conversation with my cousin — the one that started all of this — what struck me most wasn’t what he did or didn’t know about investing. He was doing his research, watching YouTubers, putting in the effort to figure it out. That part wasn’t the issue.
The issue was that he didn’t know me. Not really. Not the version of me that’s been quietly building something for twenty-five years. And I didn’t know enough about where he was in his life to know how I could be useful to him.
That’s not a money problem. That’s a distance problem.
We live in the same world, share the same family, show up at the same events — and still managed to stay strangers to each other’s actual lives. That happens. It happens quietly, over years, without anyone deciding it should.
The money conversation — or any meaningful conversation — can’t really happen across that kind of distance. You have to close it first.
Schedule the Connection Like You Schedule the Investment
“In family relationships, love is really spelled T-I-M-E.” — Dieter F. Uchtdorf
In my last post I talked about automating your investments so emotion and circumstance never get a vote. You set it up, it runs, and the consistency does the work over time.
The same logic applies here.
Waiting for the right moment to reconnect with someone in your circle — waiting until you have something important to say, or until life slows down enough to make it feel natural — is the same as waiting for the right moment to invest. The moment rarely comes. And every month you wait is a month of compounding you don’t get back.
Schedule something. One afternoon. One phone call. One standing monthly gathering with the cousins you actually want to know better. Put it on the calendar the same way you’d set up an automatic contribution — before life has a chance to fill that time with something else.
It doesn’t have to be about money. In fact it probably shouldn’t start there. Just start somewhere. Let people know you’re available. Let them see who you actually are outside of holidays and funerals. The rest tends to follow.
What Might Be Possible
My cousin didn’t know I’d been investing for over twenty-five years. I didn’t know what he needed or where he was trying to go. That conversation opened something up — not just about money, but about what’s possible when people in your circle actually know each other.
There are people in your life right now who have figured something out that you’re still struggling with. And there are things you’ve figured out that someone close to you desperately needs. That exchange doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because someone decided to show up more consistently than they had been.
Ask them what they know. Ask them what they wish they’d known earlier. You might be surprised what’s been sitting right next to you the whole time.
I’m still working on that. The monthly gathering is still just an idea my cousin and I both liked and haven’t acted on yet.
But I know what needs to happen. And now, so do you.
The conversation has to start somewhere. Maybe it starts with you.
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