Star Tribune
Religious ideas can help guide your secular financial planning
I love reading religious books from all religions.
The lessons I receive from them have provided context for how I think about money and helped me explore important questions with our clients. So here are some religious ideas with a secular approach to financial planning.
We are investing for an uncertain tomorrow with a belief that by doing so, we will create choices for our future. By saving or investing, we are agreeing to sacrifice something today in order to create later-day security or options. We don’t know when we will be in a position for those to occur, but we believe that by giving up something today, our tomorrow will be better.
There are parts of our lives we have earned, and there are also parts that happened through the work of others or because we beneficially handled something that came our way. I was able to put myself through college and start a company that grew beyond my expectations partly through hard work, but also because the state subsidized my tuition at the University of Minnesota. And also because I had a wife who worked and helped provide financial security when my business partner and I were trying to build our venture. There were also mentors who invested time in me, clients who believed in what we were trying to do before we fully earned that belief, and colleagues, co-workers and writers who influenced me in ways that both changed and formed my thinking. There are certainly some things that I have had that I didn’t want, and many things that I did, but all was and is an act of grace.
Certainty is the opposite of faith …
… yet it is one of the things for which we are always clamoring. Financial planning is not about creating certainty. It is about developing strategies to handle life’s inevitable uncertainties. What would you do differently if you had five years to live or five months to live? Alternately, will what you are currently worked up about matter in five months or five years? The financial-planning question to constantly assess is, “What can I be doing so that I will have less regret? What do I want more of, less of or none of?
Regardless of our beliefs, answers might less determine our futures than questions.
Ross Levin is the founder of Accredited Investors Wealth Management in Edina. He can be reached at ross@accredited.com.
The current situation is similar to Minnesota’s 2017 outbreak of 75 cases, which also occurred mostly among Somali immigrants, who have been fearful that the measles vaccine increases risks of childhood autism, despite substantial research to the contrary.
Yet it has presented different challenges than the 2017 outbreak that centered on day care facilities and toddlers, or even this year’s outbreak in Chicago that emerged in a temporary shelter for migrants. Those weren’t discovered until locally infected people had already passed measles on to more people, who had passed it on to more people.
“That’s when its like, ‘uh oh, there’s a lot of people that got exposed that we don’t know about,’” Griffith said. “With [the 2024 outbreak], we’ve been able to stay on top of things a little bit more quickly.”
This year’s Minnesota outbreak started in May with three related children who were infected during travels to a country where measles is common. Health officials identified close contacts at risk who hadn’t been vaccinated and asked them to stay away from others, but the virus slipped through. People carrying the virus can be infectious for four days before rashes emerge, said Erica Bagstad, an infectious disease epidemiology supervisor for Hennepin County Public Health, which has worked closely with people exposed to measles during their stay-at-home periods.
“So you might have a little runny nose and a tiny cough and you wouldn’t think twice about going out in public” and unknowingly spreading measles, she said.
Two measles cases emerged in late June, followed by three in July among children from different metro counties who had no apparent links.
Varying pictures emerged at other colleges. St. Olaf College didn’t provide exact figures, but the number of Black, Asian and students reporting two or more races fell, while there were “a few more” Latino students, said Chris George, St. Olaf’s associate vice president for enrollment. He said he thinks the court decision “played a role,” though FAFSA problems also had a disproportionate impact on first-generation and lower-income students.
At the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, officials didn’t have detailed information about racial groups but said 37% of first-year students identified as people of color. Numbers have risen since 2019, when 25% of first-year students fit that description. This year saw the largest incoming class since 1965.
“We also believe this is the most racially and ethnically diverse cohort on record,” said Keri Risic, executive director of admissions for the office of undergraduate admissions at the U’s Twin Cities campus.
Across the country, college administrators had been preparing for the Supreme Court decision for months when it was announced.
The decision came at a challenging time for many higher education institutions because the pool of prospective college students is shrinking, partly because of declining birthrates over a decade ago. The population of college-age students is also becoming more diverse.
By 2036, about 40% of Minnesota public high school graduates will be people of color, according to projections from the nonprofit Midwestern Higher Education Compact.
Star Tribune
Walz is to attend the University of Michigan football game before final prep for Tuesday’s debate
BELLEVILLE, Mich. — Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz is set to make his final major campaign appearance before the coming week’s debate at a football game between the University of Michigan and the University of Minnesota in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Saturday.
Walz, the governor of Minnesota, planned to meet young voters on the college campus before the game’s afternoon kickoff. Walz has leaned into his background as a football coach and teacher while campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, making multiple recent visits to university campuses to engage with students.
The visit comes before the debate Tuesday between Walz and Donald Trump’s running mate, Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. After Saturday’s game, Walz will travel to northern Michigan for final debate prep before the faceoff, according to a source familiar with his plans who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private preparations.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has been playing the role of Vance in Walz’s debate prep sessions, which so far have taken place at a downtown Minneapolis hotel, according to another person who also spoke on condition of anonymity.
Michigan is one of the key battleground states in November’s presidential election. While Harris has made multiple visits to Detroit since launching her campaign in July, Walz has focused his efforts on other areas of the state, including a recent trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan’s second-largest city.
Walz has continued to engage with young voters on the campaign trail, including a recent visit to Michigan State University. In 2022, Michigan saw the highest youth voter turnout rate nationwide as Democrats made historic gains in the state. Energizing similar voters could be crucial for Harris’ this year.
AP writers Will Weissert in Washington and Meg Kinnard in South Carolina contributed to this report.
