Marty Kurtz, a financial planner for nearly four decades, past Financial Planning Association president, and long-time mentor of mine, has been known to say, “Advice kills conversation.” This statement initially shocks financial planners and elicits an instant “deer in the headlights” response, followed seconds later by the squinted eyes and pursed lips of deeper thinking, […]
Research
6 Steps to Changing Your Client’s Instinctual Responses
Working to make positive changes in our lives can be challenging for so many reasons. Despite our best efforts, our bodies and brains can work against our efforts to modify our habits or behaviors, often leading us to fall short of our goals. Without a better understanding of what is occurring emotionally and neurologically, these […]
When Saying “Stop It!” Doesn’t Work
Recognizing instinctual, subconscious, and engrained habits or responses is a challenging, but important, first step on the path to modifying one’s behavior for more desired outcomes. A person cannot consciously choose to change a behavior unless they become aware of 1) what they are doing, and 2) how and/or why it was formed in the […]
Assessing the Value of “Functional Quality” in Designing Financial Planning Engagements
In our Money Quotient training programs and research projects, we frequently refer to the groundbreaking work of professors Neeru Sharma and Paul G. Patterson at the University of New South Wales. In the late 1990s, they conducted a study that identified communication effectiveness as the single most powerful determinant of a client’s perception of service […]
Evidence-Based Financial Planning: A Call to Action
“The scientific method provides a framework for validating the profession’s best practices so that practitioners can have confidence that their “best” practices are based on the “best” evidence… …we propose that the time has come to commit ourselves as a profession to a more scientifically grounded and evidence-based approach to expanding our body of knowledge […]
The Role of Emotional Value in Client Relationships
In a nutshell, our work at Money Quotient focuses on identifying both the subjective and objective factors that either enhance or hinder an individual’s financial and life satisfaction. Therefore, rather than using net worth as a snapshot of a client’s “true wealth,” we promote a more holistic approach to measuring financial health and maximizing quality […]
Redefining Retirement
The Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies conducted a survey to explore the fundamental question, “What does retirement mean to you?” In selecting from a series of words associated with retirement, Baby Boomer, Generation X, and Millennial respondents alike cited “freedom,” “enjoyment,” and “stress-free” as their top picks. However, despite this shared vision of retirement, the […]
Self-Efficacy – The Key to Financial Well-Being
In his long career at Stanford University, world renowned psychologist Albert Bandura made a tremendous contribution to our understanding of human behavior and motivation. One of his main areas of focus was the concept of self-efficacy—an individual’s belief in their own ability to succeed in accomplishing a specific goal or task. In fact, Bandura’s research […]
Retirement in Metamorphosis
The concept of retirement is undergoing a metamorphosis. Demographic, societal, and workplace trends have all converged to offer a stage of life that is much more fluid and flexible than what most of us previously imagined. In fact, retirement has become a matter of personal definition. Adding fuel to the fire of retirement reformation is […]
The Emerging Role of Post-Retirement Work
When it comes to preparing for retirement, the old rules about money have been thrown out. Therefore, adults of all ages need a new framework to guide and motivate their preparation for long-term financial independence. In the past, the goal of traditional retirement planning has been to build a retirement “nest egg” of personal […]