How To Get Your Money Growing

By: John Walter

Jim Gibbs didn’t grow up on a farm, but he might have if tragic events had not visited his family. His great-grandfather was killed in a tractor accident. A lack of financial planning, Gibbs later learned, left the family with little choice but to sell more than half the land to pay bills and to make a living. Later, Gibbs’ father and grandfather died unexpectedly within six months of each other.

These chapters of the family’s history are now etched into Gibbs’ work as a financial and retirement planning adviser. “In my 20s, I never thought about issues like insurance,” he says. Now, he knows from experience that farm financial planning needs to include such protection, as well as a broader, more diversified plan that looks beyond the farm gate.