One of the lesser-known roles of a small number of financial planners is to help clients understand their emotional attitude towards money, and where necessary, work with them to create a more positive one.
By doing this, financial planners can help clients achieve their life goals, and hopefully, live a more fulfilled life.
This highlights how working with holistic financial planners is not just about investment performance and tax efficiency, it’s about helping clients understand their emotional relationship with money, which is often rooted in experience.
That’s why I recently became a Certified Financial Coach (CeFC), as it enables me to work with clients in a way that creates a healthier and more appropriate attitude towards money and wealth.
Doing this means they can make better, more confident decisions, which can help them fulfil their goals and live a happier, more fulfilled life.
It’s against this backdrop that I recently read a study by Aegon, which highlights the importance of happiness and self-worth when developing financial resilience. In its Financial Wellbeing Index, it suggests people develop five “mindset” building blocks to achieve peace of mind around wealth and money.
Read on to discover more about these building blocks, and how I as a financial coach can help you achieve them.
Spend more time thinking about what makes you happy
According to Aegon’s research, identifying what makes you happy is an essential part of financial wellbeing. Despite this, the table below taken from the Aegon study shows that on average, just 38% of people spend time considering what brings them happiness and fulfilment.
Source: Aegon
Understanding what makes us happy, Aegon concludes, is so important that it forms one of the five “building blocks” the study concludes should be used to create financial wellbeing. Below is a summary of all five building blocks:
- Knowledge of what makes you happy: by reflecting on what brings you joy and a sense of purpose every day, you can experience greater feelings of happiness and worth.
- A solid picture of your future self: by thinking about where you want to be in the future you can substantially increase your chances of achieving the life you want. Consider what you could do now that your future self would thank you for.
- Savvy social comparisons: if you compare yourself to others, look for a suitable role model to compare yourself against.
- A long-term plan: create a financial strategy, as people who do this tend to save more regularly and do better financially.
- Strong nerves in a crisis: working with a financial planner can help you understand your investments and wealth, meaning you are less likely to react to a negative situation in a way you later regret.
Working with a financial coach can help you develop these building blocks
As a Certified Financial Coach and holistic financial planner, my role is to work with clients in a way that helps them achieve all the above mindset goals.
Key to this is developing a strategy – or long-term plan as it’s called in the above list – which act as a constant reference point that can be returned to. This helps keep you on track for your financial goals, providing a sense of joy and satisfaction when you achieve them.
Besides this, there’s another reason to have a strategy. Part of the process of creating one is to understand your goals and ambitions, so that I can help you achieve them.
Whether this is a desire to retire earlier, travel the world or complete your “bucket list” goals, helping you identify and understand your aims provides a sense of purpose that ultimately results in better financial decisions.
Understanding your relationship with money creates a healthy mindset
In addition to creating a strategy, it’s important to understand your attitude to money, and identify areas that could need development.
In truth, we all have emotions around money, some of them positive and some of them not so positive. As a financial coach and planner, my role is to help you switch negative beliefs and actions into positive ones, that will benefit and not hinder your financial security.
Creating positive emotions provides the confidence to make better, more informed decisions that your future self will thank you for. As money is an intangible part of everything we do, viewing it in a positive way reduces stress levels and avoids potentially poor decisions that are driven by fear.
Get in touch
As you can see, being a financial planner is not just about helping you grow your wealth. While investments, tax efficiency and long-term financial planning are key parts of the role, they do not represent everything.
Equally as important is helping you understand why you have made the decisions you have, and how you could make different ones going forward to create the lifestyle you want and deserve.
If you would like to discuss your attitude towards money and how you could improve your financial wellbeing, please call us on 0116 262 1414. At Finance Lab we help you achieve financial peace of mind for yourself and your family, whether that’s meeting a financial goal, building an emergency fund or protecting the family’s future.
Please note
This article is for information only. Please do not act based on anything you might read in this article until you have sought professional advice.
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