A Holistic Approach to Financial Health Planning
[By Somnath Basu; PhD, MBA]
Financial Advisers [FAs] often feel helpless in the face of fierce resistance from clients, especially doctors, to rein in their spending, stop living beyond their means and salt away more of their paychecks. Even worse, the financial services industry’s less discerning practitioners are enabling reckless behavior for fear of losing business.
Psychological MoJo
A huge part of the problem is psychological. Look no further than the emerging field of behavioral finance to explain why average Americans of all ages and walks of life feel pressure to keep up with their neighbor. The unfortunate result, of course, is that consumers max out their credit cards, tap equity lines of credit or consolidate loans in pursuit of the American Dream. But, in the process, they often fall victim to over-consumption and under-saving.
Bad Faith Lenders
Unscrupulous lenders are exploiting doctors and consumers with interest-only loans and variable-rate home buying without a down payment – the latter labeled in one recent headline as a car-dealer tactic on the new-home lot. Another gimmick ties a home equity loan to life insurance with the promise of zero premiums, albeit no escape from a lien on equity no matter how it’s sold to an unsuspecting public.
Debt Consolidation Issues
There’s also the issue of determining whether it’s prudent for physicians to consolidate their debt. Many online calculators use the current monthly payment figure as the basis for comparison against monthly payments after debt consolidation, which is erroneous since payments in subsequent periods aren’t compared. This flawed approach is enough to convince unwary people they should consolidate their loans, and in many cases, it justifies a resumption of conspicuous consumption – leading to a vicious cycle.
Need for Discipline
Before a Financial Advisor even gets through a doctor-client’s front door, chances are that the person they’re meeting with might require the services of a psychotherapist and/or credit counselor (or require such a recommendation) to examine the root causes of their propensity for reckless spending and suggest a need for financial discipline.
Wants versus Needs
There must be a clear understanding of the difference between needs (i.e., retiring with peace of mind) and desires (i.e., living the high life), and a willingness to change. It means not eating out five times a week or financing a $75,000 kitchen remodeling makeover, cutting back on entertainment, or making more than the minimum payment on credit card balances. It means not rushing out to buy a house or perhaps finding a local college for children to attend and spare the added expense of housing them in a dormitory. Only then can physician’s and all of us, earmark increasing amounts from each paycheck to build a comfortable savings cushion.
A New Collaborative Approach
What’s needed is a collaborative approach [much like emerging Health 2.0 participatory medicine], since Financial Advisers cannot be the sole catalyst for change. The media too, needs to do much more reporting on the dangers of debt. Politicians need to make difficult choices [a balanced budget, for example] and business leaders need to be more vigilant about adopting ethical practices when it comes to lending, advertising or marketing products and services that feed the vicious cycle of indebtedness.
The Courage to Deliver Tough Love
Astute Financial Advisers can take on a real collaborative leadership role with regard to helping doctors and other clients avoid or dig out of debt; but the FAs who have the intestinal fortitude tend to have the most affluent clients. So the question becomes, do they have the courage to deliver tough love to their working or upper-middle class, or affluent middle-class clients and prospects?
The Faithful
For doctors to have faith in their FAs, they need to trust their expertise as a financial health practitioner and believe in the power of a diversified investment portfolio. But, they also need to be repeatedly told to stick with their long-term financial plan whenever there’s a downturn in financial markets and not be swayed by fear or the lure of short-term gain.
Financial Advisers who are willing to recognize and treat the symptoms of irrational decision-making, and educate their physician-clients on the follies of making emotion-based decisions, will be able to distinguish themselves in a competitive market. They need to understand investor psychology, as well as identify behavioral biases and offer counsel about the perils and consequences of irrational decisions. They need to know their target physician market-audience, too. This will enhance the results of their long-term planning.
Rethinking Mission
At the end of the day, it’s not just a matter of offering financial planning. It’s as much about life planning as helping get a client’s financial house in order. Just ask Richard Wagner or George Kinder, who describe the movement they created as “the human side of financial planning” and holds workshops that teach advisers client-relationship skills.
But, an even better objective would be to offer financial health planning as part of a more holistic, and arguably, effective approach.
Avoiding Unscrupulous Lending Practices
The best Financial Advisers know how to steer their clients away from unscrupulous lending practices, resist the urge to over-consume and learn financial discipline; but unfortunately they’re a rare breed. Unless the status quo changes, financial planning runs the risk of irrelevance.
How can people possibly expect to amass adequate savings for a home, child’s education and/or retirement if they can’t first dig out of debt? The only possible result will be legions of unhappy clients.
NPOs?
One way to help combat the nation’s difficulty in dealing with debt would be through the creation of a quasi-governmental, nonprofit organization whose educational mission is to better understand the basic issues surrounding the need to borrow money.
But, perhaps the time has come for the some 200 educational institutions that teach financial planning to pool their resources in hopes of becoming a credible watchdog of the nation’s financial health.
Lawmakers increasingly have come to the realization that financial literacy needs to become a higher priority. Advisers should never forget that sound financial health is a necessary condition for good physical and mental health, especially since most married couples argue about money more than anything else and financial distress is a leading cause of depression.
Link: http://www.fa-mag.com/issues.php?id_content=2&idArticle=1640#
Assessment
In the future, Financial Advisers could serve as financial health practitioners in partnership with counselors, behavioralists and psychologists. The very health of financial planning just might depend upon it.
Somnath Basu, Ph.D., is program director of the California Institute of Finance in the School of Business at California Lutheran University where he’s also a professor of finance. He can be reached at (805) 493 3980 or basu@callutheran.edu.
Conclusion
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Filed under: "Advisors Only", "Doctors Only", Ethics, Financial Planning, Research & Development | Tagged: Basu, behavioral finance, debt consolidation, debt reduction, financial advisors, financial planners, George Kinder, health 2.0, holistic financial planning, Richard Wagner, www.certifiedmedicalplanner.com | Leave a comment »
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