by Mark Gleason

photo via pixabay 

“Life planning focuses on the human side of financial planning. It rests on the idea that advisors must discover a client’s most essential goals in life before formulating a plan to make sure a client’s finances fully support those goals. This may sound elementary but few of us spontaneously undertake a thoughtful inquiry into our deepest and most enduring values and objectives. And financial advisors tend to focus on such things as investment management or tax planning and rarely ask questions like: ‘What do you want to get out of life?’ In life planning we discover a client’s deepest and most profound goals through a process of structured and non-judgmental inquiry. Then, using a mix of professional and advanced relationship skills, we inspire clients to pursue their aspirations, sort through and resolve possible obstacles, create a concrete financial plan and provide appropriate guidance as clients accomplish their objectives. We call it life planning because what’s really important isn’t your money, it’s your life.”

Roger Wellington, MBA, RLP®, is executive director of the Kinder Institute. He travels and speaks widely about the need to bring insight and humanity to our work with money and finance.