I’ll springboard off this. I currently work as a financial planner (in New Zealand) and one of the exercises I go through with clients is to “flawcast” their financial future—ie, look not just at their current financial situation but at their financial trajectory, making various assumptions. There’s enormous sampling bias (as only wealthier people tend to receive advice) but for a lot of these people they realise that they’re on track to achieving their financial goals—and they have a lot more options in life than they thought. For example, spending more, working less, retiring earlier, trying something different in their professional life, providing more assistance to loved ones and/or causes they care about, continuing to work but with the knowledge they’re doing it because they want to and not because they have to. Independent of any substantive advice I give, this is usually what gives them the most confidence and comfort and value out of the entire process—even though it’s a pretty basic mathematical exercise. (FWIW these are usually clever, switched on people but they haven’t looked at their finances in this future-focused way.)
I’ll springboard off this. I currently work as a financial planner (in New Zealand) and one of the exercises I go through with clients is to “flawcast” their financial future—ie, look not just at their current financial situation but at their financial trajectory, making various assumptions. There’s enormous sampling bias (as only wealthier people tend to receive advice) but for a lot of these people they realise that they’re on track to achieving their financial goals—and they have a lot more options in life than they thought. For example, spending more, working less, retiring earlier, trying something different in their professional life, providing more assistance to loved ones and/or causes they care about, continuing to work but with the knowledge they’re doing it because they want to and not because they have to. Independent of any substantive advice I give, this is usually what gives them the most confidence and comfort and value out of the entire process—even though it’s a pretty basic mathematical exercise. (FWIW these are usually clever, switched on people but they haven’t looked at their finances in this future-focused way.)