Bruce Helmer and Peg Webb

Aligning your investments with what matters most to you is essential to living life authentically. But figuring out what you value the most isn’t always straightforward.

Defining what’s important

So, let’s open with a simple question: What are your values, and how do they show up in your life, in your relationships, and in your finances? So much of our daily lives are flooded with superfluous information and people telling us what we should be doing at any given moment.

When it comes to organizing your finances into a cohesive plan, we take an opposing view — to be true to yourself, start by identifying what you value, and then align those values to your financial plan. It all comes down to how you visualize living your best life. There are many examples of personal values that resonate with you and that can inform your financial decisions. The desire for security or abundance, for example, or lifelong learning or freedom, or serving your community or living sustainably, all can serve as one or more bedrock principles that help guide your financial life.

Setting financial goals

Once you are clear on values, set your financial goals. What do you want to achieve with your money or your time? Is it to achieve concrete goals, such as living debt-free or providing for your children’s future? Are you interested in starting a business, saving for a down payment on a home, or investing for retirement? Or maybe your goals are loftier, engaging your passions, talents, and sense of purpose to form a trinity of values that can make a difference in the world. Who would you like to help? How would you like to leave the world a little better? How can you engage your children to pursue what they’re passionate about, and can you help them make a bigger impact through your experience and resources?

Whatever you decide, make sure your goals are specific, measurable, and realistic. Goals are not about achieving perfection: they’re about charting a course so that as life events unfold, you can make needed adjustments while staying clear about the overall direction of your goal.

Evaluating your financial status

The next step in marrying your values to your investments is to evaluate your current financial situation. What are the sources and uses of your income? Do you have a firm grasp of your expenses, and where the money goes each month? Are you burdened by unproductive debt that builds no value on your household balance sheet?

With a better grasp of your financial status, you can begin to align your everyday spending habits with your values. For example, if you value financial security, creating and sticking to a budget may be especially important to you. If you value abundance, on the other hand, you may want to budget for more big-ticket items, such as an annual vacation trip or a more luxurious home or car. Or if you are committed to living more sustainably or intentionally, you may want to look for ways to reduce your carbon footprint or buy from companies that have high green ratings.

Squaring values with your investments

As you further develop the principles that help guide the way you want to live, you may want to reconcile those values with your investments. Values of abundance and generosity may point you to investment options that potentially grow over time (that is, that generate high returns). If this is the case, you may be comfortable with a more aggressive target asset allocation that weighs stocks more heavily than bonds.

However, if your guiding star values security and sustainability, that may suggest that peace of mind may be more important to you than high returns and guide you to more safe-haven investments such as fixed income (keeping some exposure to stocks in most cases). Or you may decide that your values place you somewhere in between.  There is no one-size-fits-all investment strategy that meets everyone’s goals and objectives.

Evaluating and adjusting your plan

Your income, debt load, and expenses undoubtedly will change over time. You need to be vigilant and revisit your financial plan from time to time to make sure it can support the life you want to live.

As the ancient philosophers stressed, a life well lived is not about simply accumulating wealth. It’s built on a foundation of self-sufficiency, self-confidence, and service. It’s filled with close, supportive relationships that require time and effort to nurture. Investing your values, more than your money is key to achieving joy and meaning in life.

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The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

Bruce Helmer and Peg Webb are financial advisers at Wealth Enhancement Group and co-hosts of “Your Money” on WCCO 830 AM on Sunday mornings. Email Bruce and Peg at yourmoney@wealthenhancement.com. Securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Wealth Enhancement Group and Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services are separate entities from LPL Financial.

Children today are growing up immersed in a digital world that is taking a toll on their mental health. Many parents know it’s a problem but don’t know how to fix it. The problem is too big.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt offers a prescription in his new book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” Haidt provides a necessary data-driven argument against a phone-obsessed childhood. But his most immediate solutions rely heavily on the collective will of parents to change course — a tacit acknowledgement that societal solutions are unlikely to arrive in time for this generation. Parents need more help.

Haidt makes the case that we’ve put bubble wrap around kids in the real world, while recklessly throwing open the floodgates in the virtual world. That deprives kids of the resilience and emotional fortitude that comes from healthy risk-taking in real life. He argues that boundary testing is increasingly rare even in spaces designed to encourage it, like playgrounds, and that kids are no longer granted the freedom to roam and develop the independence needed for a timely transition into adulthood. Meanwhile, they are allowed to wander the wilds of the internet and social media without sufficient supervision or boundaries.

Put together, it’s a recipe for the current teen mental health crisis. Borrowing heavily from the research of psychologist Jean Twenge, Haidt lays out the evidence that the arrival of smartphones coincides neatly with a sharp rise in anxiety and depression (most pronounced in girls) and a drop in in-person connectivity (most pronounced in boys).

Anyone trying to parent an adolescent or teen will likely find themselves vigorously nodding along. By now, we’ve all seen the alarming data reflecting a more anxious, isolated youth: 1 in 5 teens say they are almost constantly on YouTube or TikTok, nearly 1 in 3 teen girls say they’ve seriously considered suicide in the last year, and Gen Z spends far less time hanging out with their friends than Millennials, Gen Xers or Boomers did.

The big question is: What to do about it?

Haidt offers a long list of remedies targeted at various institutions, like schools, governments and social media companies.

But his most pointed prescription is for parents: “Supervise less in the real world but more in the virtual — primarily by delaying immersion.” What does that mean? Give kids more freedom to roam, allow no phones until high school, and bar social media until age 16.

He’s tuning into a movement already afoot. My colleague, Parmy Olson, recently wrote about UK parents banding together to delay cell phone use. A similar movement in the U.S. called “Wait Until 8th” asks groups of parents to pledge not to give their child a phone until 8th grade, around the time most kids are 13 or 14.

As a parent who has drawn a firm line in the sand on social media and smart phones, I sincerely hope these efforts gain traction. I often think about something that Mitchell Prinstein, the chief science officer of the American Psychological Association, told me last year, after the APA issued its first advisory on social media use in adolescence: “We have no data to say kids will suffer social consequences by being offline.”

Some parents will quibble with that. I’ve had many friends tell me that, without a phone, their kids would be left out of social gatherings or friend group chats. Fair point, but what about a smart watch? Or a “dumb” phone that makes them reachable without introducing social media? There are workarounds.

But there’s a problem: This phone-free movement only really works if the majority participates. Friends’ phones at recess or at a sleepover are like second-hand smoke: your kid might not have the cigarette in their mouth, but they’re still exposed.

That leads me to another missing piece in the discussion: Parents urgently need help in giving kids the tools for establishing a healthy digital life, one where they eventually can safely navigate these spaces without being under constant parental surveillance — something, I’d argue, is also an essential component to the modern transition to adulthood. The genie is already out of the bottle for most of today’s tweens and teens (and likely for their younger siblings, too), and schools, community programs, even doctors can be partners in helping children find their way.

Parents alone can’t fix this problem. It feels fantastical to think collective parental will can override the immense power of social media companies getting rich on the backs of teens’ scrolling.

We need the government and all the social institutions that help nurture children’s development to do their part. Haidt’s main suggestion for social media companies is to raise the age account access from 13 to 16 and to put more work into verifying users’ ages.

That’s a fair suggestion, but one that doesn’t do enough. Haidt’s bigger impact on the problem will likely be his work in dispelling the myth that the data don’t prove that social media is contributing to teens’ mental decline. In his testimony before Congress in February, Meta Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed, to immediate ridicule, that, “The existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health.”

That word “causal” is at the heart of the strategy Meta, TikTok, Alphabet Inc. and Snap Inc. are using to maintain the status quo. They lean on “correlation not causation” so they can keep kids hooked and resist calls for regulation. And they preserve those seeds of doubt by preventing researchers from studying their usage data. It’s a page straight out of the playbook long used by tobacco companies and climate deniers, and unfortunately has proven very effective.

We can’t let social media companies so easily off the hook. Parents can and should do their part by proceeding with more caution, but they need governments, schools and other institutions to show some real spine. Our kids’ lives are at stake. We shouldn’t have to defend them alone.

Lisa Jarvis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering biotech, health care and the pharmaceutical industry. Previously, she was executive editor of Chemical & Engineering News.

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In the immediate aftermath of suffering a quad injury that will force Royce Lewis to the injured list, the Twins’ third baseman said he didn’t feel like a guy who couldn’t catch a break.

But it sure seems that way on the outside looking in.

The early part of his career has been marked by dynamic play on the field and a myriad of injuries that have kept him off it.

His latest setback is a quad injury, suffered while running the bases Thursday during the Twins’ season opener. The Twins will provide a further update on Lewis later Saturday morning.

Lewis described the pain on Thursday as feeling like a cramp and said his first thought through his mind was, not the pain but, “’Dang, that should be 3-1,’” referring to the fact that he was trying to score on Carlos Correa’s double and instead had to pull up at third.

The third baseman had been 2-for-2 before he was forced out of the game, hitting a home run in his first at-bat and a single in his second.

Lewis played in just 58 games last season between injured list stints, starting the season on the IL as he rehabbed from his second anterior cruciate ligament surgery and then coming back and later suffering oblique and hamstring injuries.

“It’s something I can’t control, this stuff, and it’s part of the game,” Lewis said Thursday. “ … I’ll come back and make things happen. We’ll have some more fun.”

To fill his spot on the roster, the Twins will call up second baseman/center fielder Austin Martin, who should platoon with Edouard Julien at second base while Lewis is out. That would shift Kyle Farmer over to third base, a position both he and Willi Castro should see plenty of time at in Lewis’s absence.

It’s the first call up for Martin, who was the fifth overall pick in the 2020 draft and was part of the return from the Toronto Blue Jays for pitcher José Berríos. Martin reached Triple-A last year, playing in 59 games for the Saints. While there, he hit .263/.387/.405.

“There’s no nonsense that follows him around. It’s just that he’s a ballplayer and you love working with guys like that because you know what you’re going to get from them every day,” manager Rocco Baldelli said of Martin earlier this month. “Makes no excuses. He goes out there and works hard and he plays hard. He’s put himself in a nice spot.”

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