Have you ever had a really bad experience with a financial planner?

Maybe the planner only talked to your husband and not to you? Or just wanted to sell you life insurance? Perhaps you walked away without understanding anything that was said because the financial advisor didn’t explain and you were too afraid to ask? Or worse, maybe you couldn’t even get a financial advisor because you didn’t already have enough money for them to manage? 

Let me tell you about the experience I had that led me to start a financial coaching and education business. 

(There are many caring, professional, and knowledgeable financial advisors out there and I’m not saying you should never hire one. I share these stories to explain how I became interested in financial coaching, not to denigrate the whole profession.)

In my 20s, as I was trying to figure out things like saving for retirement, investing, and insurance, I had several really terrible experiences with financial advisors. 

One time I called up the man who had sold my family a whole life insurance policy. It was a few years after I graduated from college; I was going to grad school and working part-time. I didn’t have a lot of income and wanted to cancel the life insurance because it just didn’t seem worth the cost. 

The phone call didn’t go well. 

He tried to talk me out of canceling the policy and proceeded to get increasingly frustrated as I questioned why I needed the policy. He basically tried to shame me for wanting to cancel and failed to give me any reasons I could understand for keeping it. 

I don’t remember the exact words that were said, but I do remember how I felt, and it wasn’t good. The situation left me confused, guilty, and frustrated. 

Another time I met with a financial advisor through the company that managed our 403b plans at work. He was a nice enough person and walked me through the standard financial planning process. 

The problem was that it all felt extremely impersonal and based on a lot of random guesses. He did a retirement needs analysis and made a random assumption about what interest rate I would earn, what the stock market would do, what I’d be making, and what my living expenses would be based on what I was earning at the age of 25. 

He also wanted to know if I thought social security would be available when I was retired. If I did think it would be part of my retirement income, then I wouldn’t need to save as much. If I didn’t believe it would be there, then I should save more. 

This makes no sense. Why would I change the amount I save based on what I think might potentially happen decades in the future? If I think social security is going bankrupt, does that magically give me more money to save now? Shouldn’t I just do my best and save as much as I can? 

As I was taking the financial planning courses at Boston University, I learned that calculating retirement needs on a bunch of guesses and assumptions is a pretty common practice. 

There’s really no way of knowing how your life will be different when you retire, so what’s the purpose of the guesses? Sure, sometimes it is nice to do some calculations just so you can get an idea of what retirement might look like at different levels of saving.

All you can really do is the best you can with the resources you have. 

Financial planning should be a much more personal process. It needs to take into account who you are, what your values are, and what you want your life to be in the future based on your current financial reality. 

I’ve met with a few other financial people along the way. Some of them were just glorified sales people. Some of them were very good investment advisors who are patient and good at explaining things. Despite this, I’ve found that I want to have much more control over my finances. I want to know exactly what I need to have and how to get there. I don’t want to have to pretend to know what the advisor is talking about. I want to know what questions to ask and to be able to decide if a recommendation really makes sense for me. 

The best thing to come out of my financial planning studies is the ability to confidently manage my money on my own.

I still sometimes talk with investment or tax experts because those things can get quite complicated, but I have enough general knowledge to know what information I want and to evaluate it in relation to my own circumstances. 

These are skills that everyone should have. Mindfully Money helps others learn about money management in a way that doesn’t make them feel guilty, ashamed, confused, or frustrated. With the right tools, everyone can take control of their finances and build their best life ever.

Are you ready to join me?