November 30, 2004 03:36 PM
A Life Fulfilled
Excerpt: Are you a Wall Street banker who really wants to teach history? An accountant who yearns to become a rabbi? An insurance salesman who wants to own a charter boat? Or a corporate manager who wants to start a catering company? News Source
Are you a Wall Street banker who really wants to teach history? An accountant who yearns to become a rabbi? An insurance salesman who wants to own a charter boat? Or a corporate manager who wants to start a catering company?
If there are secrets sorrows to your life, you're not alone. The question is and always has been how to balance passion and pay. Financial life planning claims it can help you accomplish a major shift in your life within two to four years.
Started 10 years ago by financial planner George Kinder, the discipline of financial life planning is formally practiced by some 450 advisers in the United States. At its core is the proposition of personal fulfillment often ignored by personal finance.
"We are three times as wealthy as our grandparents both in terms of net worth and income, but we are no happier," says Kinder. "So something is really wrong with our relationship to money."
To drill down to the bedrock of fulfillment, or what we want out of life, Kinder approaches financial planning from a philosophical point of view, sort of the "who are we?" and "why are we here?" questions. To certain clients, these inquisitions elicit unfulfilled desires.
"I have one client who wanted to live in a foreign country but she had no support system. Once we started putting a plan in place, her life began to make a lot more sense to her," Kinder says.
Sometimes that clarity breeds a change in career. Sometimes that clarity brings about a change in family life, or a person's relationship with a community. Whatever the circumstance, financial life planners put into practice a development program that allows people to explore their wants.
"We had one client who went from Wall Street to playing piano in clubs. Needless to say there was a significant downsizing in his lifestyle," says Kinder.
To that end, financial life planners focus more on budgeting than investment planning. Budgeting allows people to quantify their wants, hopes and dreams. If spending more time with your family is important, then budgeting more time is important. If owning an inn in Vermont is what you think will give you solace, then saving for that goal should be a big part of your financial plan.
The difference between traditional financial planning and financial life planning is the core of the program. Traditional financial planning puts money and investment at its center, leaving the rest -- or what you want it for or what to do with it -- up to you. Financial life planning puts fulfillment at its center; it's not just a numbers game.
"It's easier to look toward a nicer home, vacations or trips to the shopping mall than it is to look inward and think about what we really want out of life," says Kinder.
But that's letting money lead you. Looking inward, "is where we store our fear of success...or failure," he says. It's more difficult to quest for those abstract things than material things. That's why financial life planning shifts the focus of money away from a quantitative goal of abundance to a qualitative promulgator.
Kinder is careful to point out that financial life planners aren't psychologists. "We don't focus on why you haven't done anything. We're there to help you do the things in life you want to do," he says.
And many of those things, no matter how abstract in quality, require money or time. "Maybe we can help you shave 10 hours off you workweek," Kinder says. "You may be able to better spend that time than the money it would bring."
To be sure, it's not an all-sum practice. "The goals sometimes shift," he says.
When people achieve the independence they were seeking, or embark on a different career, new goals arise. Take that woman who wanted to live in a foreign country, for example. She moved back to the United States. Now, she's a financial life planner.
Financial life planning can only put you on the path, light the torch, as they say. With more baby boomers shunning retirement, opting to lead the lives they want to lead today rather than wait, life planning is better begun now.
The last month of the year isn't such a bad time to think about new beginnings. After all, planning isn't about what you hope to have, but also about what you hope not to miss out on.
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