SUCCESS IS GETTING WHAT YOU WANT.
HAPPINESS IS WANTING WHAT YOU GET.
— Dale Carnegie
Imagine for a moment that you are in a large room filled with financial planners. They are not like your Uncle Harry or Cousin Sally, who pride themselves on being financially savvy, periodically giving you hot stock tips and advice on managing your credit cards.
No, these are professional planners, who devote 40-60 hours a week to clients willing and able to pay for advice on managing wealth and creating financial peace of mind. Many have advanced degrees and industry certifications.
Walking around the room, casually listening to the chatter, you hope to pick up hot investment tips on the cheap. But you hear nothing of the sort, nothing about stocks poised to double in price, strategies for smart asset allocations, economic forecasts, or the latest rumors on Wall Street.
To your surprise, these advisors are sharing anecdotes that could be story lines for some TV soap opera. These are the real stories from the financial-planning trenches: personal anecdotes about the heart-wrenching issues their clients face, vignettes of human drama and frailty.
As if a light were turned on, you have first hand confirmation that wealth solves some problems, but not all problems. In fact, it may create problems. You now realize the devastating truth of the Midas touch parabler: a passionate and obsessive quest for gold may get you gold, but that obsession can exact an exorbitant price – anguish, heartache, family decay, spiritual poverty.
Welcome to the true workings of financial planning.
A few years ago, we conducted a study with the support of the Financial Planning Association. You can read the first part of our published results at https://www.financialplanningassociation.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/AUG09%20The%20Changing%20Role%20of%20the%20Financial%20Planner%20Part%201%20From%20Financial%20Analytics%20to%20Coaching%20and%20Life%20Planning.pdf. We explored the changing role of financial planners, from one focusing exclusively on financial analytics and money management to one encompassing coaching and life planning.
We obtained anonymous and confidential data from a sample of 1,384 financial planners. Seventy five percent of the sample were responsible for managing over $20 million of their clients’ financial assets. The results of this study have been cited in professional journals, summarized at professional conferences, and incorporated into the financial-planning curricula at many colleges and universities.
Some planners have even said our study was instrumental in moving the profession from a focus on money exclusively, to a focus on money and emotions.
What we found supports the time-honored truism that personal wealth may come with unintended consequences. The only problem that money will assuredly and unequivocally solve is that of not having money. As Johnny Cash said, “Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world except money.”
Suicide, depression, addictions, divorce, family turmoil, terminal illness, chronic physical pain, emotional pain, the soul-searching quest for spirituality; this is a list of personal distress you would expect priests, ministers, rabbis, imams, therapists, and professional care givers to wrestle with – not financial planners. Yet our study found financial planners do confront these issues. After all, they are serving human beings who have human problems.
Today, financial planners are challenged to listen to their clients with empathy before offering advice. And when the time comes to counsel, they must go beyond financial algorithms, computer simulations and economic forecasts. Our research shows that possessing quantitative skills – knowing the lay of the economic land – while necessary for serving clients, is not nearly enough to satisfy their human needs and desires.
YIN OF FINANCE, YANG OF PERSONAL FULFILLMENT
This distinction between necessary and sufficient is the premise of this series of essays, which are drawn from our book, Your Total Wealth: The Heart and Soul of Financial Literacy. It is the logic underlying the yin-yang title of this article. Based on ancient Chinese philosophy, the yin and the yang connote the complementary, harmonious fusion of seemingly opposite forces. For example, consider these opposing yet complementary forces: activity and rest, sunrise and sunset, seasonal cycles, oriental martial arts, and yes, financial wealth coupled with psychological and physical health.
The give and take between aggression and submission, active and passive, is the essence of the yin and the yang. Natural forces, according to this philosophy, are not in destructive conflict, but rather constructive growth, resulting in a harmonious whole. Our ability to experience peace and fulfillment is tempered by having lived through turmoil and loss.
Do we need money to survive? Of course, we do. Will financial literacy, and understanding the essence of financial management, increase our ability to cope in an increasingly complex world? Yes, it will. But is money all we need to feel fulfilled? Is it sufficient to meet our emotional and psychological needs? That question is answered in the proverb, “Money can’t buy happiness.”
Financial planning thus requires a yin-yang blending of the necessary and sufficient, of the complementary needs, of the financial and soulful, to create a harmonious whole.
Recognizing that our emotional and financial worlds are intimately intertwined, we are compelled to approach the pursuit of wealth not just with calculation but with compassion, allowing our aspirations for security to flow alongside our longing for purpose. Within this interplay, financial planners—and indeed all of us—are invited to redefine success as a journey that embraces both prosperity and inner growth, forging a path where each informs and enriches the other in meaningful ways.
And so, we have a powerful lens for viewing and reconciling the duality of acquiring financial wealth while seeking personal growth and fulfillment. Dale Carnegie’s penetrating insight, “Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get,” is a testament to the quest for balancing the financial-personal fulfillment duality.
Other writers have stressed the importance of achieving riches without filing for spiritual bankruptcy. They see the Midas touch as a parable that could have been written by Stephen King.
The message of this series of essays supports those writers, but it adds a distinctive, epiphany-inducing format. Financial wealth and personal fulfillment are not mutually exclusive. The quest for a healthy balance need not result in a zero-sum tragedy. A yin-yang harmony creates your total wealth, and that glorious fusion is not only possible, but required for defining the full richness of your life and for achieving your full potential. Our goal is to help you achieve that potential.
OUR YIN-YANG FORMAT
You can acquire wealth without selling your soul. We help you achieve that goal by explaining basic financial concepts – the foundations of financial literacy – while framing those concepts in the context of balance, growth and personal fulfillment. To highlight the duality of financial well-being with psychological and spiritual well-being, we examine financial literacy juxtaposed with reflections on humanity.
We provide a bridge between money and fulfillment, one built on the foundation of moving from a false dichotomy of either/or to a fusion of and/also, from zero-sum to total-sum. In the essays that follow in coming weeks, you will see a complementary duality: the yin – definitions of important financial terms with examples and prescriptions for acquiring financial literacy – immediately followed by the yang – insights and recommendation for achieving personal fulfillment, conceptually linked to that financial term.
We believe the definitions, examples, lessons, quotes, vignettes, and cross referencing will draw you in. You will then have a different perspective of Your Total Wealth, regardless of your financial literacy or size of your portfolio.
We ask you to open your mind, your heart and your soul to our message. Yes, some of the financial concepts might be intimidating at first, especially if finance and numbers were never your thing. All of us feel intimidated and insecure when stepping out of our comfort zone. But maintain your resolve every week and you will see how financial security and personal fulfillment are within your grasp.
With your heart, mind, and soul open, you will in coming weeks, begin a journey to increase your financial literacy. And because you will overcome intimidation and insecurity, you realize, in the words of Eric Hofer, “The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.”
David Dubofsky PhD, CFA & Lyle Sussman PhD
