Tag Archives: financial planning

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Advisor Resources For Financial LIFE Planning

In a recent Forbes post, “The Stuff In Life That Financial Planning CAN’T Prepare You For,” I suggested that we all, and perhaps especially financial advisors, need training in being better humans, and that it makes us better advisors when we do. Here are links to some of these resources and trainings that I have personally benefited from:

Books For Underlying Knowledge

These are books that, I believe, will provide a systematic learning path for better understanding the human elements of decision making in general, and financial decision making, in particular. They are listed in a purposeful order, but I encourage you to jump in wherever your interest takes you:

The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis

This is a great place to start, because Lewis is a master storyteller, and this mini-biography of the lives and work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the OG behavioral economists, gives you an opportunity to be introduced to the field in an approachable, narrative form.

Misbehaving, Richard Thaler

Of course, it was actually Richard Thaler, the Nobel prize-winning economics professor at the University of Chicago, who coined the term “behavioral economics,” helping merge Kahneman and Tversky’s cognitive and mathematical psychology into “the dismal science,” effectively turning it on its head. Thaler provides an excellent history of this relatively new field that, along with The Undoing Project, might just prepare you for the next recommendation…

Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

This is the Bible of behavioral economics, summarizing the major lessons of Kahneman and Tversky. It’s not a “light read,” but it’s important and powerful.

Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein

This volume, by the aforementioned Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, now provides us with our first real-world example of applied behavioral economics. And apply it they did! In fact, this work has likely influenced your life, in at least some small way, whether you know it or not. For example, if your 401(k) is opt-out rather than opt-in, or if it has an automatic escalation option, you have Nudge to thank for it.

Switch, Chip and Dan Heath

Yet for all of its virtues, a first look at behavioral economics doesn’t feel much less dismal than its predecessor, in part because it makes us feel, as humans, like a big pile of mistaken biases and behavioral patterns. In a few powerful ways, Chip and Dan Heath invite us to see strength where others might see weakness.

Behavioral Finance: The Second Generation, Meir Statman

In fact, if you want a more positive take of behavioral economics and finance, look no further than Meir Statman, the Glenn Klimek Professor of Finance at Santa Clara University’s, look at the 2.0 version. (The link above gives you access to a free PDF of this book via the CFA Institute.)

Drive, Daniel Pink

Now we start to move beyond the more technical to the more applicable, beginning with Daniel Pink’s very readable look at human motivation. Why is this so pertinent for financial advisors? Because we’re in the business of helping people discern, articulate, and activate their motivating priorities in life, of course!

Start with Why, Simon Sinek

Sinek explores the core of motivation–what motivates us, and what motivates others to action–in his breakout book. Or, you can get a pretty good summary via his 18-minute Ted Talk.

The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg

Of course, once we have the motivation, we often need help putting it to work, hence a deep dive on the science of habit formation. As advisors, it’s helpful to understand that people aren’t just financially “dumb”–they (we) are all just creatures of habit.

Atomic Habits, James Clear

Clear picks up where Duhigg leaves off, giving us a roadmap to powerful, positive habit formation. Again, as advisors, we’re in the business of helpful habit formation.

You Are What You Love, James K. A. Smith

If Duhigg and Clear help us evolve from discipline to habit, Smith takes it to another level, through to the final evolutionary stage–welcome ritual. This book definitely falls into the “spiritual” category, as Smith’s philosophy is primarily drawn from a Judeo-Christian worldview, but I do think it is ecumenically applicable.

Books for Practice Management

Now let’s get to work:

There Is No Good Card For This, Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell

The first book I mention is not explicitly oriented toward the practice of financial advising, but it is no less applicable, because the great human unifier is pain. No Good Card is a crash course in how to say you’re sorry and effectively helping people navigate challenges in life. It should be a prerequisite for every financial advisor, because every single one of us will face this tragic privilege in our work.

The Financial Wisdom of Ebeneezer Scrooge, Kahler, Klontz and Klontz

This oddly-named book is a great place to start when you consider the implications of psychology within the context of financial formation. It’s a quick, easy read that sets off a series of lightbulb moments, making it a great client gift as well as an advisor introduction.

Lighting the Torch, George Kinder and Susan Galvin

It’s unfortunate that this book is so hard to get your hands on, because it is an excellent articulation of the Kinder EVOKE® method of life planning, something you’ll see more about in the recommended trainings below.

Facilitating Financial Health, Kahler, Klontz and Klontz

If Scrooge is the prelude, Facilitating Financial Health is the masterclass, a literal textbook for financial advisors, therapists, and executive coaches (and priced as such). The best compliment I can give the book is a comment I got from another advisor to whom I had recommended it: “This should be required reading for every financial advisor.” I agree.

Practice Management Articles

I’ve written many, many articles about financial life planning, but here are a few that speak to some of that which I’ve learned from the books above and the trainings that you’ll see outlined below:

Behavioral Economist Richard Thaler’s Message To Advisors, Money

One of my favorite interviews ever was Professor Thaler, the co-author of Nudge and the author of Misbehaving…and the dude who coined the term, “behavioral economics.” I don’t think he’d take my call after winning the Nobel prize.

Riding The Elephant: Mastering Decision Making In Money And Life, Forbes

This article focuses on the big takeaway from Kahneman’s work, Systems 1 and 2, AKA, the Elephant and the Rider.

3 Questions That Will Get Your Finances–And Life–On Track, Money

George Kinder’s legendary “3 Questions” can change your financial planning practice…and your life.

Solving For The Qualitative Deficit In Financial Planning, Forbes

This book summarizes a host of the thought leaders referenced here.

Adopting A “Coach Approach” To Overcome Financial Planning Inaction, Kitces.com

This is a long-form article listing some of the biggest takeaways from my professional coach training (below).

Trainings To Attend

These aren’t the only trainings available, just the ones that I have experienced, personally, and am happy to recommend. Here again, I’ve listed them in an ascending order that I hope will serve you well wherever you are on your vocationally journey:

The Seven Stages of Money Maturity®, Kinder Institute of Life Planning

This two-day training is an excellent introduction to becoming a true practitioner of financial life planning, as taught by George Kinder. And I’d wager you get about four days’ worth of personal and professional impact for the two days it requires.

Fundamentals of True Wealth Planning, Money Quotient

Money Quotient is a true gem in the Pacific Northwest, a community led by Carol Anderson and Amy Mullen that has created teaching and tools that have been helping advisors put the life in financial life planning for many years. I’ve taken their 3-day fundamentals training, not once, not twice, but three times–and I’ve learned something new every time!

EVOKE® Life Planning Training, Kinder Institute of Life Planning

This is the legendary five-day intensive course where Kinder, or one of the other excellent trainers at the Institute, teaches you the entire client-ready EVOKE® method through an experiential intensive. I’ve yet to talk to a trainee, myself included, who didn’t consider it to be truly life changing–and if you stack the two-day with the five-day and the Life Planning Mentorship, you can also acquire the Registered Life Planner® designation, if you choose.

Core Essentials Fast Track Professional Coach Training Program, Coach U

Having dedicated many hours to learning about life planning within the sphere of financial planning, I was inspired a couple years ago to see what the world outside of financial planning had to say about life planning. I decided to drink from the fire house, taking Coach U’s 6-day Essentials class that is a precursor to gaining ICF certification as a professional coach.

As I mentioned, I don’t consider this list to be comprehensive, and therefore, I’d love to hear of any of the books, articles, and trainings that would be on your list!

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30 Books That Changed My Life

“It’ll change your life,” a good friend of mine is fond of saying, to lend a touch of credence to a recommendation. And in most cases he’s been right. Whether it’s a good meal, movie, whiskey, podcast, video, song, sermon, album, or book, most of his recommendations have been good enough that the experiences I’ve undertaken at his suggestion have left a mark beyond mere entertainment or additions to the contextual fabric of life, two otherwise worthy ends. These experiences have, to varying degrees, changed the way I think, feel, act, or abstain.

Therefore, in lieu of a “Best Books of [Fill In The Year],” I’m following in the footsteps of Matthew Kelly, an author who has maintained a list of the “top 20” books that have changed his life. Although in my case I was unable to limit that number to 20, I hereby submit 30 Books That Changed My Life, in four distinct alphabetical categories: fiction, non-fiction, spiritual, and vocational.

Fiction

Fiction is the category that wouldn’t have existed on my list only 10 years ago, because I’d fallen prey to the silly notion that fictional books, by their very nature, can’t actually change our lives for the better. How foolish I was to think that!

  • Cutting For Stone, by Abraham Verghese, was recommended to me by #1 book referral friend. While most times, I wait until I’ve heard a recommendation from three credible sources, I’ll add anything she recommends to my reading list. Cutting For Stone is an epic masterpiece featuring “twin brothers born of a secret union of a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon.” I know, it sounds a bit like the start of an international soap opera, but the story and writing were good enough to keep me engaged for all 600+ pages. I may have been aided by the fact that I listened to this particular book–again based on my friend’s suggestion that the many words that were foreign to my ear would sing when well narrated–but I think I’d have stuck it out just as well in print.
  • Jayber Crow, by Wendell Berry, opened my mind to a whole new form of reading, writing, and living. Wendell Berry is an American philosopher, essayist, poet, and fictional author whose creation of an autobiographically-inspired town, Port William, has made me yearn for a more deliberate, tangible, and meaningful life. Jayber was Port William’s barber from 1937 until 1969…and that’s about all I can tell you, if I’m to hold myself to Berry’s “ORDER BY THE AUTHOR,” a notice written to readers in the preamble: “Persons attempting to find a ‘text’ in this book will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a ‘subtext’ in it will be banished; persons attempting to explain, interpret, explicate, analyze, deconstruct, or otherwise ‘understand’ it will be exiled to a desert island in the company only of other explainers.” All I can tell you is that I’ve read and enjoyed many of the Port William series now, but none has had an impact on my like Jayber Crow, although I’m barred from attempting to tell you how or why!

  • A Prayer For Owen Meany was my introduction to John Irving’s work, and I enjoyed it so much, I’m afraid to read anything else he’s written lest I spoil it. Although not on the grand scale of Cutting For Stone, I’d nonetheless refer to A Prayer For Owen Meany as an epic, too, although mostly confined to the small town of Gravesend, New Hampshire. While Irving seems much more inclined than Berry to allow his worldview to charge through the text, in this case through the lens of an often heart-wrenching confluence of coming-of-age stories, you don’t have to agree with the author’s opinions to acknowledge the brilliance of his writing.
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Parents Of College-Bound Kids: Don’t Eat The Guilt Sandwich

The ivory tower of higher ed, the U.S. government, the financial industry, the bumper sticker barrage, a healthy pinch of pride, and, yes, even our genuine love for our children have all converged to serve up a big fat guilt sandwich for parents of college-bound kids.

We’ve been made to think that we’re damned if we don’t, so we’ve done it—or overdone it, really. We’ve sacrificed our own financial futures for the sake of a supposedly priceless experience in the form of a college education.

Now, before you grab a pitchfork to chase me down from whatever perspective I might have offended, please know that I’m a thankful college graduate. What’s more, I enjoyed teaching at the college level for several years (and likely will again). I’m in the financial industry, I love my kids more than I can express, and I’m proud enough to have adorned my car with a bumper sticker pledging my support for their teams and/or academic institutions.

Perhaps most importantly, those kids I mentioned are 17 and 15—a high school junior and freshman—and, at the very moment this article is published, I am literally attending a college “prospect day” for my eldest at an institution of higher learning that resembles Hogwarts. In other words: I’m a believer in a college education, and I’m right there in the trenches with you.

Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Hollywood
HogwartsGETTY IMAGES
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Helpful Perspective From A Rockstar Non-Profit And A Tailwind

Do you ever get so caught up in your own head, in your own stuff, that you lose perspective? I can’t imagine a time that would be more inclined to lead us to insular thinking, self-pity, conspiracy theorizing, and perspective losing than this season we’re trudging through.

So in this week’s Financial LIFE Planning weekly installment, you’ll get some perspective that I hope will give you peace and help you make wise financial, and other, decisions:

  • An exclusive FLiP video chat with Michael O’Neal, the Executive Director of global non-profit, ONEWORLD Health
  • A confounding Weekly Market Update with a side of cheese
  • A reminder about our capacity to overestimate our own capabilities

Oh, and Happy Mothers Day, to mine and all of you moms!

Financial Planning

How to Get More Than You Give

Have you ever noticed that when you give to someone whose needs are greater than yours, you actually feel like you have more? Whether it’s a friend in need of a pick-me-up, an investment of your time at a soup kitchen, or a charitable contribution, this change in perspective is one of three major benefits of giving.

The other two? Well, in addition to our perspective being changed, we experience a biological phenomenon, an endorphin rush. Apparently, we’re biologically wired to feel good when we give. Cool, right? And pragmatically, depending on how (or if) you file your tax return, you may also get a rebate on a portion of your financial gifts…check with your CPA.

This week, I recorded a video chat I had with the Executive Director of ONEWORLD Health, Michael O’Neal, specifically for you! We discussed their unique approach to sustainable development work that has enabled them to survive the COVID-19 crisis–and the success they’ve had cultivating relationships with individuals, families, businesses, and even rock bands, like NEEDTOBREATHE, who alone has raised over $2.3 million for the work their doing.

He also explains why we always get more than we give. Click below to watch the nine-minute excerpt, or top off your coffee and click HERE for the full 23-minute interview.

And yes, if you’re jonesing to put that give-more-than-you-get business to the test right now, it’s easy–click HERE and hit the Donate button. And if you choose to give $50 or more, please let me know, because I’d like to send you a personal thank you.

Weekly Market Update:

After two marginally down weeks, the market had another week in the green, almost confoundingly so:

  • +2.56% DJIA (30 big U.S. companies)
  • +3.50% S&P (500 big U.S. companies)
  • +2.71% EFA (~900 international companies)

The biggest question for most people is, “How!? How is the market going up when the economic news is historically bad?” It’s true: Unemployment this week hit 14.7%–the worst since the Great Depression.

Although clearly indeed of a beard trim–sorry, Mom!–I joined Jill Wagner on Cheddar (an online TV channel) to discuss this seemingly odd phenomenon, and to offer some suggestions for the unemployed, under-employed, self-employed, and gainfully-employed in these challenging times:

Life Planning

Is the wind at your back?

I’m not a “cyclist,” but I do love to ride my bike. Last week, I took a new ride, recommended by my good friend–who is a cyclist–that stretched me a bit, and gave me another healthy dose of perspective.

I love to have a destination, so I set my course for the Bulls Island Ferry, a beautiful spot in Awendaw, SC. The total ride was about 20 miles, and on the way there, I felt like an Olympian, averaging about 18 mph. (“Maybe I can call myself a cyclist,” I was beginning to think.

With head held high, I took in the beautiful view, nodded proudly to the couple that I passed on the last mile, and headed homeward. Only then did I realize that I’d had a meaningful tailwind that I’d now be fighting the entire way home. The wind had been at my back.

And as I was thinking about a contingency plan on mile 15–suffering the embarassment of calling my wife and asking her to pick me up in the middle of nowhere, a length to which I thank the Lord I didn’t (quite) have to go–a question hit me like an easterly wind pounding route 17:

How much of whatever I’ve done well in life was actually just thanks to a solid tailwind? Being born into a great family? In the right zip code? Being on the right team? Having selfless friends? Working with amazing people?

How about you? Is it possible that your successes have been aided by a tailwind? If so, who is deserving of thanks? (In addition to your mother, of course!)

How about now? If you feel like a failure at the moment, is it possible you’re just facing the greatest economic headwind of a generation? Who can you ask for help?

Or if you’re fortunate enough to be cranking through this crisis at top speed, who can you help?

And if you think of the people who’ve been your tailwind, I hope you take a moment–why not now?–to thank them.

The spent lungs and sore butt were worth the perspective…and so was the view:

I hope you have a great Mother’s Day and find a healthy tailwind this week!

Tim

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Solving for the Qualitative Deficit in Financial Planning

“The whole financial planning process is wrong,” says George Kinder, widely recognized as one of the chief educators and influencers in the financial planning profession.

But what exactly does he mean, and how does he justify this bold statement?

First, let’s separate the work of financial planning into two different elements–let’s call the first quantitative analysis and the second qualitative analysis.

Quantitative analysis is the more tangible, numerical and objective. It’s where planners tell clients what they need to do and, perhaps, how to do it. For example:

  • “Your asset allocation should be 65% in stocks and 35% in bonds.”
  • “You need $1.5 million of 20-year term life insurance.”
  • “Have your will updated and consider utilizing a pooled family trust.”

The qualitative work of financial planning is the intangible, non-numerical pursuit of uncovering a client’s more subjective values and goals, and, hopefully, attaching recommendations like those above to the client’s motivational core–their why.

If quantitative work is of the mind, qualitative is of the heart.

Qualitative planning often has been dubbed “financial life planning”–or simply “life planning.” It is defined in Michael Kay’s book, The Business of Life, as the process of:

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Back to School — Back to Financial Fundamentals for 3 Generations

Originally in ForbesAs kids head back to school, adults spanning several generations set their sites on getting their financial house back in order.  What are the most important financial planning considerations in three major demographics—Millennials, Generation X and Empty Nesters?

Millennials:  First things first – Before making any big financial commitments, like buying a house, figure out what you want life to look like.

  • Are you in a relationship and looking to “settle down,” or do you highly value freedom and flexibility?  If the latter, you shouldn’t be buying a house or committing to a job that is geographically tethered.
  • If you’re in your twenties, the primary factor that will influence your financial success is how well you establish yourself in a career.  Invest in yourself, and that will likely help you invest more money in the future.
  • Save as much as you can in tax-qualified retirement accounts at this phase of life, because once you get settled down and have kids, your expenses will rise dramatically.
  • Don’t default to 100% equity portfolios just because you’re young.  After getting burned by the market crash of 2008, many Millennials got scared away and didn’t benefit from the subsequent market rise.  Your portfolio should likely be predominantly stocks at this age, but consider some fixed income exposure to keep from losing your shirt (and abandoning your strategy) in a downturn.
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Dealing With the ‘Personal’ in Personal Finance

Originally in MoneyTo really help people, financial planners have to delve into the the feelings and emotions that drive their clients’ financial decisions. One planner explains why that’s so hard.

While most of us financial advisers want to do the best for our clients, we often struggle at the task.

The main problem, as I recently wrote: We don’t know our clients well enough. We may say that a client’s values and goals are important, but most of us don’t adequately explore these more personal (a.k.a. “touchy-feely”) parts of a client’s life.

Why is this? 

One reason we avoid deeper discovery with clients: No matter how we’re paid—whether by commissions or fees—most of us don’t get compensated until the financial planning process has neared its end. 

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The Top 10 Places Your Next Dollar Should Go

Originally in ForbesThere is no shortage of receptacles clamoring for your money each day. No matter how much money you have or make, it could never keep up with all the seemingly urgent invitations to part with it.

Separating true financial priorities from flash impulses is an increasing challenge, even when you’re trying to do the right thing with your moola — like saving for the future, insuring against catastrophic risks and otherwise improving your financial standing. And while every individual and household is in some way unique, the following list of financial priorities for your next available dollar is a reliable guide for most.

Once you’ve spent the money necessary to cover your fixed and variable living expenses (and yes, I realize that’s no easy task for many), consider spending your additional dollars in this order: 

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Financial Advisors: Differentiate Yourself By Being Yourself

The most freeing day of my career was when I sold my golf clubs.

Different

Although the transformation had been under way for several years, it was a moment of symbolic importance. It signaled an official decision to permit myself to be something other than what I had come to believe the financial industry wanted me to be. I was officially granting myself permission to be myself.

Conformity

I apologize in advance for stereotyping, but the sales managers I had worked for had personified the industry for me. Not fond of nuance or implication, they simply had expressed that I was to be, among other things, a golfer. So I bought a set of new clubs outfitted with a nice bag, and I hired an instructor to help me master the gentleman’s game.

After several lessons, my laidback instructor told me he’d never seen anyone grip the club quite so hard. We discovered that I had complemented my less-than-elite athleticism with heavy doses of intensity and hustle to remain competitive in sports while growing up. Unfortunately, as it turned out, these traits were counterproductive to success in golf.

Instead of investing thousands of dollars in psychotherapy to try and loosen my grip on a golf club, I sold my clubs and bought a used road bicycle. I grew to love the sport, which rewarded my overcompensation of will and desire.

But I wasn’t just dumping golf at that moment. I was dumping it all—the notion that I should only wear dark suits, plain white (or light blue on Friday) shirts, power ties, hair that is neither too long nor short and a clean shaven face. Eureka—I could even wear a pair of jeans to the grocery store now!

Differentiation

Paradoxically, as long as I lived inside of the industry’s box, I was taught to differentiate myself professionally—to become “the guy” for orthopedists or cosmetic dentists or corporate attorneys. Everything I did in life, work and play, was supposed to send a message that would presumably attract a specific niche of people who are known for making especially profitable financial advisory clients.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with golfing, differentiating yourself or serving a niche. In fact, each of these pursuits can be beneficial for you and your clients when practiced in earnest. What is wrong—or at least unhealthy and more than a touch manipulative—is becoming someone you are not for the benefit of purposefully differentiating or conforming.

What if the Holy Grail of finding your niche and setting yourself apart from the crowd was found simply in permitting yourself to be yourself?

Being Yourself

If you always wanted to be a Navy fighter pilot but got turned down because you’re too tall or your eyesight was worse than 20/20, you could develop a niche serving military officers. If you aspired to be a surgeon but threw up all over the cadaver on the second day of medical school, you could serve the medical community. And of course, if you’re passionate about golf and enjoy the simplicity of uncomplicated garb, you should be entirely free to live up to the stereotype of the financial advisor.

There’s only one caveat, but it’s a big one: When you give yourself the freedom to be exactly who you are, you might disappoint other people. It’s easier for companies and managers—even parents, spouses and, in some cases, kids—to put you in a predictable construct that may best serve their needs and wants.

What if you want to help social workers navigate the world of personal finance and thereby would likely have to take a pay cut? What if it means you’d be working with clients less and drawing more? What if becoming fully you means moving to Latin America to manage a micro-finance operation and teach English? What if it means educating advisors more than investors?  What if it means designing a practice that conforms to your family instead of the reverse?

You might have to change ZIP codes, companies or professions altogether.

Unfortunately, being who you are—especially in the financial industry—may not be the easiest thing to do, but choosing to be yourself is simple because it’s natural, and incredibly liberating.

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Time Is More Precious Than Money

As the Fed has taught us through the money-printing machine cloaked as quantitative easing, the potential supply of U.S. dollars is limitless. Even for most of us individually, we are capable, to varying degrees, of generating and regenerating money through work, investment and happenstance.

Time, however, is a different story.

Thanks to Emily Rooney for permission to feature her artwork

Thanks to Emily Rooney for permission to feature her artwork

It brings to mind these lyrics: “Where you invest your love, you invest your life,” croons Marcus Mumford in the song “Awake My Soul” on Mumford & Sons’ debut album, “Sigh No More.”

Sure, musicians are notorious for writing lyrics because they sound self-important, or maybe simply because they rhyme, but Mumford has earned a reputation for lyrical brilliance and offers us something deep and meaningful here to apply in our lives and finances.

No matter how much we strive, delegate and engineer for efficiency, there are only 24 hours in each day. We are unable to manufacture more time, and once a moment has passed, it is beyond retrieval.

Of these 24 hours each day, if we assume that we will sleep, work and commute for approximately 17 of them, that leaves us with a measly seven hours to apply ourselves to loftier pursuits. After an hour at the gym, an hour to eat and another hour to decompress with a book or TV show, we’re down to four hours to personally affect those for whom we are presumably working and staying healthy—the people we love.

Our human capacity to love also has its limits.

While not measurable, we can all acknowledge that our capacity to love, in the four hours each day that we have to invest it, is affected by how we’ve invested the other 20 hours. By the “end” of many days, we are just beginning our four hours, and we are already spent. Even if we wanted to, we have nothing left to give—no love left to invest.

I am a chief offender of misallocating my love.

I often allow the four hours I have to give to my wife, Andrea, and two boys, Kieran (10) and Connor (8), to shrink to three, two or even one. In whatever time is allocated, I often serve leftover love, having over-invested myself throughout the day. Then I steal from their time, interrupting it with “important” emails and calls.

I must acknowledge that these are choices I make.

We have the choice to order our loves, to acknowledge the limited nature of time and our own capacity, and to prioritize our work and life.

It’s entirely appropriate to love our work and the people we serve through it. It’s entirely appropriate to love ourselves and to do what is necessary to be physically, fiscally, psychologically and spiritually healthy. It’s entirely appropriate to love our areas of service and civic duty, and to serve well. Therefore, almost paradoxically, it’s entirely appropriate to spend 83 percent of our daily allotment of time in pursuits other than the direct edification of those we love the most.

But what would our lives look like if we engineered our days to make the very most of the other four hours?

Would we have a different job? Would we live in a different house or part of the country? Would we drive a different car? Would we say “no” to some people more and to other people less? Would we invest our time and money differently?

Would you invest your love differently?

I’m excited to be part of a contingent of financial advisors asking these questions of our clients (and ourselves).  We don’t believe that the only way to benefit our clients is through their portfolios, and we believe that asset allocation involves more than mere securities.

This isn’t a particularly new concept.  Indeed, the second phase of the six-step financial planning process, as articulated in the Certified Financial Planner™ (CFP®) practice standards, is to “determine a client’s personal and financial goals, needs and priorities.”  But thought leaders like Rick Kahler, Ted Klontz, Carol Anderson, George Kinder, Carl Richards and Larry Swedroe are persistently nudging the notoriously left-brained financial realm to reconcile with its creative and intuitive side for the benefit of our clients.

With statistics suggesting that as many as 80% of financial planning recommendations are not implemented by clients, it’s officially time to recognize that personal finance is more personal than it is finance.

If you enjoyed this post, please let me know on Twitter at @TimMaurer, and if you’d like to receive my weekly post via email, click HERE.