Put some ‘heart’ into financial planning

“Every­body has a cre­ative poten­tial and from the moment you can express this cre­ative poten­tial, you can start chang­ing the world.”

—Paulo Coelho

Finan­cial Plan­ning has got­ten far too pre­dictable. It has lost its heart. Every good mar­keter knows that we as peo­ple make deci­sions with our emo­tions and not with our logic. Think about how you spend your own money. We like to think that we spend our money on what we NEED, but the real­ity of most bank or credit card state­ments tells me that we spend money on what we WANT.

I am not sug­gest­ing that our wants are nec­es­sar­ily bad, in fact, the part of us that under­stands our wants lives not in our log­i­cal mind, but in our cre­ative mind. Why then, when we put our­selves in the con­text of finan­cial plan­ning do we typ­i­cally place our heart to the side and dis­cuss things like “finan­cial goals” and “finan­cial bench­marks.” We have just acted like our money is not con­nected to our emo­tions, which is clearly not the case. I men­tioned in my last col­umn the idea of get­ting cre­ative with our finan­cial plan­ning. I real­ize that this may be a new idea for many and wanted to take a moment to walk through an exer­cise that just might be the start of a new way of finan­cial think­ing for you. I believe that how we spend our money is a direct reflec­tion of who we are at our core. I believe that our money SHOULD reflect our most impor­tant desires and not be left to the drain­ing power of sloppy and heart­less plan­ning. Remem­ber, the only real value of wealth is what you choose to do with it. Let’s tap into your cre­ative mind and then use the mechan­ics of finan­cial plan­ning to make it hap­pen. This will acti­vate your wealth in a way that many never expe­ri­ence. Let’s start with tap­ping into your cre­ative side by walk­ing through a short exer­cise. Grab a cup of cof­fee, pen and paper. Go ahead… I’ll wait.

Now I want you to imag­ine that you have just got­ten the dif­fi­cult news that you have only one year left to live. Think about your fam­ily, your faith, your work and any­thing else that mat­ters to you and the impact this would have. Now I want you to take the time to list the top 10 things that you want to do before you take your last breath and num­ber them by impor­tance. Got that fin­ished? I have some good news. You now have three more months to live. That’s right. You accom­plished your bucket list and now have three more months to live. Now write down the last three things that you want to spend your life doing. Think about it and write them down. These are the things that live at the CORE of who you are. These are the things that your money should be pri­mar­ily posi­tioned to sup­port and you should not wait until the last three months of your life to pur­sue them.

Now use the power of solid plan­ning to make it hap­pen. Maybe an addi­tional exam­ple would be help­ful to see cre­ative plan­ning in action. Let me intro­duce you to Mary (not her real name). Mary is recently wid­owed and was blessed with a won­der­ful mar­riage and close life­long friends. Mary’s hus­band was known for the won­der­ful birth­day cel­e­bra­tions that he would coor­di­nate for his wife every year. While she counts these mem­o­ries as price­less bless­ings, they can now be dif­fi­cult annual reminders. Mary has a desire to honor her husband’s mem­ory and a heart to share her wealth and faith with her friends. Mary has decided to throw a birth­day party and spir­i­tual retreat on a cruise ship and has offered the expe­ri­ence to many at no charge. This would never have come about through a tra­di­tional finan­cial plan­ning expe­ri­ence. Remem­ber to scale this to your sit­u­a­tion. A pon­toon boat on the lake can be just as pow­er­ful when your finances reflect your heart. Cre­ative plan­ning takes some time, but the results are spec­tac­u­lar. Take the time to under­stand your heart, and then do every­thing you can to make your money sup­port those core desires.

RC Arse­neau is a Cer­ti­fied Finan­cial Plan­ner and lives with his fam­ily in Delaware. Please sub­mit any ques­tions or topic requests to AskRc@mail.com.

The infor­ma­tion and opin­ions in this col­umn are pro­vided only for edu­ca­tional and enter­tain­ment pur­poses. Any ref­er­ence to a finan­cial prod­uct or strat­egy is not to be con­sid­ered an endorse­ment or rec­om­men­da­tion. The infor­ma­tion is of a gen­eral nature only and does not take into account your indi­vid­ual objec­tives, finan­cial sit­u­a­tion or needs. It should not be used, relied upon, or treated as a sub­sti­tute for spe­cific pro­fes­sional finan­cial, legal or tax advice. Invest­ment Per­for­mance may vary due to tim­ing and expenses. Rc rec­om­mends that you obtain your own inde­pen­dent pro­fes­sional advice before mak­ing any deci­sion in rela­tion to your par­tic­u­lar require­ments or circumstances.

Posted by RC Arseneau on Sep 4 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.