With April just getting underway, I always get excited this time of year. With each rare glimpse of what a beautiful spring day could look like, I know that warmer weather is on its way. And this means more time out in the outdoors doing the things I love.

As an avid gardener and “green thumb” in my spare time and as a wealth advisor in my professional life, I’ve come to notice some pretty interesting similarities between my gardening habits and how I help my clients manage their hard-earned money.

As a gardener, I’ve noticed the importance of:

• Regularly watering your plants & adding nutrients to the soil as required to ensure optimal growth
• Regularly pulling the weeds out of your garden to ensure they don’t choke out growing and maturing plants
• Harvesting your garden plants when they’ve fully matured

Similarly, some key principals that I regularly follow to properly tend to a client’s investment portfolio are the following:

• Regularly adding to investment positions that are not yet fully mature to optimize the growth potential of an investment portfolio.
• Regularly pulling the weeds out of an investment portfolio by selling investments that are no longer competitive to ensure they don’t detract from the overall performance of the portfolio
• “Harvesting” or utilizing the growth from your investments to meet your desired lifestyle in retirement.

Like many things – both gardening and investing are done successfully when following a dedicated process. Using a gardener’s vocabulary, both your garden and your investment portfolio will flourish with regular tending, constant watering & periodic weeding. If you want the best results, you have to stick to the process.

Do you or anyone you know need to pull a few weeds from their financial garden? We provide FREE Wealth Assessments to help you identify areas of your financial garden that can use a little love.

Authored by Isaac Musial