The professions of financial advisors and financial planners have been well-established for many years. These are the individuals who determine if you have enough money to retire, how to create a balanced portfolio, and how to get the best returns on your investments. They will show you charts and graphs, talk about various market caps, foreign markets, stocks, and bonds.
Traditional financial planners may also help in creating your budgets, and assume that as long as you have the numbers, there will be no issue staying within these parameters. Perhaps they will want to meet with you quarterly or annually to do a performance review and try not to overwhelm you with an abundance of financial jargon. The cost of working with a financial advisor often starts at $5,000 upwards to a percentage of your portfolio balance.
A financial coach is quite different. A coach is someone who deals with the interpersonal side of finance. They help you understand your financial history, what money dynamics you witnessed as a child, which behaviors you perhaps adopted from each parent, and how those patterns serve you (or don’t) in your adult life. They help couples come to a mutual agreement about their savings and spending and discuss the values and circumstances by which you want to be living, regardless of how much money you have.
So often I hear from clients, “I work hard to make money to take care of my family so we can enjoy our time together.”
The problem is that often they are working so hard, just trying to reach an undefined financial goal, that in reality, they spend very little meaningful time with their family. They are focused on getting rich rather than living rich.
A coach is the professional to help you really crystallize your core values and goals. Then, they will help you create a budget that reflects a sustainable spending plan that’s in alignment with those goals.
In my opinion, this is the crucial first step to creating the financial future of your dreams. Without it, you’re essentially building a house with great plans, but a weak foundation. Coaching exists to strengthen this foundation.
Because we have more regular meetings, there is an added degree of accountability at play. A coach is a supportive, non-judgemental financial cheerleader and teacher. Once the underlying emotions and patterns are brought to a conscious level, it is only then that sustainable change can occur. We help clients avoid making financial decisions from an emotional place, which can be risky and sometimes very costly. The fee structure of working with a financial coach is often much less than that of an advisor or planner, and is usually a flat rate per session.
Ultimately, a coach ensures that the client is the driver of their financial future and not just the passenger in a plan created by someone else.
If you feel you could benefit from working with a financial coach in order to better understand and shift your money patterns, please reach out.
