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For the Holidays, Skip
the Silk Tie and Do Something that Will Change Your Life
Financial life planning helps you start
living the life thats calling you beginning now.
November 16, 2004 -- You know that little voice
calling you to a different life? Most people do not think that
what they hear is anything more than distraction or daydreaming.
What if that little voice was pointing to some potential in you,
some addition to your life that you could make real? What if you
could include the real you those aspects of yourself that you
cherish and want to nurture and enjoy a much richer and
fulfilling life? Not when you collect your first Social Security
check but now or within the next few years.
Financial Life Planners are trained to help you clarify not just
your money goals but your true hearts core desires. Better yet,
by working with a Financial Life Planner you can shift the focus
of your life and find ways to start living the life that calls
to you.
If you are
* A Wall Street banker who really wants to teach history
* An accountant who yearns to become a Rabbi
* An insurance salesman who wants to own a charter boat
* An administrative assistant who dreams of writing The Great
American Novel
* A physician who longs to help children in third-world
countries
* A traveling consultant who longs to stay home with his
family
* A corporate manager who wants to start a catering company
* A family that dreams of having a summer home in Colorado
then read on, my friend. Financial Life Planning is for you.
FINANCIAL PLANNING VS. LIFE PLANNING
Financial Life Planning is a special mixture of financial
planning and life planning. In fact, you may be surprised to
know that Financial Life Planning has just celebrated its tenth
anniversary.
According to some of the financial planning industrys most
respected and influential people, Financial Life Planning
delivers that added something that traditional financial
planning doesnt even attempt to provide. And, because properly
trained Financial Life Planners are both financial planners and
life planners, they can deliver the professional money guidance
that life coaches alone cant.
While you may be familiar with traditional financial planning or
already be working with an advisor of some sort, you might want
to take a trip to see a Financial Life Planner and experience
the difference for yourself. You just might find the support you
need to get started now, taking the steps that will support the
realization of your most closely held dreams.
Traditional financial planning focuses on spreadsheets and
rates-of-returns and numbers, whereas in Financial Life Planning
our focus is on you, your dreams, your most profound desires.
Then (and only then) do we focus on how financial skills will
deliver what you long for. We arrive at your dreams not by
asking you what your financial goals are but through a series of
Three Questions that get at what your most profound wishes and
heart's desires are. Usually the answer to the deepest question
becomes the focus of the financial life plan, says George D.
Kinder, CFP.
Kinder, author of "The Seven Stages of Money Maturity," a book
that helps people gain more power around money and create the
life theyve always wanted, is widely acknowledged as the
founding father of the financial life planning movement. A
CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER professional with over thirty years
experience counseling clients, Kinder is one of the top 25 most
influential people in financial planning (Investment Advisor
magazine, June 2003). A Financial Life Planner who practices
what he preaches, Kinder along with his wife and twin daughters
splits his time between a home in rural Massachusetts and a
second lovely home in Hawaii. Kinder spends his mornings
meditating, writing poetry, taking long walks and spending time
with his family. Afternoons are spent tending to the needs of
his financial planning clients, preparing for speeches and Life
Planning courses, writing business works and talking to
journalists about the Kinder Institute of Life Planning (www.KinderInstitute.com).
Studies suggest we make three times the income of our
grandparents, yet we are no happier than they were, says Kinder.
Cleary, something is wrong with our relationship to money.
Financial Life Planning is the first financial advisory
profession that aims to set that right and make us happier.
Financial Life Planners know that prosperity is about more than
just goal attainment and having enough money to pay the
mortgage, put the kids through college, maintain your lifestyle
and get through retirement without a sense of impending doom, he
says. Financial Life Planners will take your most profound
dreams and help you figure out how to make them into reality.
Okay. So now youre listening to that little voice in your head
with a bit more respect. Whats calling to you? Do you want to
write the great American novel, spend the next 6 years at home
with your kids, retire early, or reinvent yourself by becoming a
Rabbi or playing in a rock and roll band? Sure beats slaving way
at that endlessly dreary job. Go ahead, dream big!
But wait do you have a financial advisor who will focus on what
your deepest life dreams are, or do they just focus on the
numbers, and traditional retirement, investment and insurance
goals?
Nearly everyone who has worked for a living holds out the hope,
even the expectation, that someday-one-day they will be able to
retire and become that other person theyve imagined themselves
to be, says Kinder. A properly trained Financial Life Planner
will partner with you, bringing out your hearts core values and
creating a plan that moves you closer, quicker, to your dreams.
We want you to start living the live thats calling you sooner
rather than later and are trained to create the plan and
implement the strategies that will accelerate the plan and
support you on your journey, he says.
The most common categories for the financial life plan are:
family, spirit, creativity and community -- in that order. These
are things most financial planners have tossed off as
qualitative and not the province of financial planning, explains
Kinder. In Financial Life Planning, these things become the
focus of the plan. We should always be asking ourselves: How can
we use money skills to deliver what we most profoundly wish for,
rather that the usual claptrap of material things?
What type of results can one expect as a part of the financial
life planning process?
* A healed relationship with a spouse or children might mean
a 35-hour workweek instead of a 60-hour weekly grind.
* To play the guitar like Eric Clapton, or write a sweeping
novel like Tolstoy or Toni Morison, or achieve a greater level
of personal balance, may require downsizing the home or moving
to a less expensive neighborhood.
* To have greater integrity and authenticity in ones life may
require changing one's occupation, or negotiating a different
job with one's employer.
* A life worth living might include more time for friends,
family and charitable work or volunteer contributions.
* A new mindset about what work and contribution could mean
for you during the golden years could propel you forward with
renewed vigor.
THE GIFT OF LIFE
Whether youre celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or Winter
Solstice, which would you rather have? A laptop computer or your
heart's true desire? That's what Financial Life Planning
delivers. It's the gift of a life you love.
450 advisors from every corner of the country are listed on
www.KinderInstitute.com as having been trained in Life
Planning. Each of them has received anywhere from 16 to over 200
hours of in-depth training in how to help clients identify what
they truly want out of life, and then to help their clients
deliver on their dreams. Most of the life planners listed on the
site are CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER professionals (CFP) or
credentialed through some other leg of the financial advisory
profession.
So instead of, or perhaps in addition to, that Handspring Treo,
give yourself a trip to a financial life planner, and literally
give yourself the gift of life.
Susan Galvan, Executive Director
Phone: (925) 989-1078
E-mail:
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www.KinderInstitute.com
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