Valentine’s Day, which falls in the bleak month of February, is really about happiness. Some of the best financial advisors don’t deal simply with your financial arrangements. They also delve into how you derive joy from your money and how you avoid falling into soulless materialism.
The classic story about redemption from wrongheaded financial thinking is set during a recent holiday: Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, where the miserly, misanthropic Ebenezer Scrooge sees the error of his ways – and comes to enjoy his wealth, using it to benefit others. Numerous advisors function as the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, who turned Scrooge around.
What is really important to you? That’s the question that advisor Dan Crimmins, co-founder of Crimmins Wealth Management in Woodcliff Lake, N.J., likes to pose to clients. Citing the teachings of George Kinder, head of the Kinder Institute of Life Planning, Crimmins asks:
Imagine you have all the money you will ever need now and in the future. What will you do with it? How will you live your life? What will change?
To Crimmins, the goal is to guide clients to an understanding of how they behave toward getting the wealth they want and also using it to enrich their lives spiritually. It is not as simple as: rich equals happy and poor equals misery.
The better objectives are 1) appreciating what you have, 2) removing the bad behavior that prevents you from obtaining what you need and 3) revamping the skewed outlook that prevents you from attaining true happiness.
Eve Kaplan sometimes finds herself playing marriage counselor to clients of her Kaplan Financial Advisors in Berkley Heights, N.J. She tells of how she mediated the conflict between the financially cautious Susanna and the more freewheeling Jason, whose squabbling threatened to wreck their marriage.
Her first step was to figure out how to accommodate the pair’s clashing opinions on when they could afford to retire and how they’d pay for their daughter’s college expenses. While they still disagree on some issues, Kaplan says, “they are doing better and are still married.”
Some people use spending as a crutch. Advisor Rick Kahler occasionally finds himself acting as a financial therapist to spendthrift clients. For instance, Kahler, president of Kahler Financial Group of Rapid City, S.D., counseled a client named Alexandra over her habit of feel-good shopping. Whenever Alexandra felt stressed out, she headed for the mall, splurging on stuff she didn’t need.
Kahler helped her see that she could get the same relief, without the strain on her bank account, through talking to a friend or taking a walk – activities, Kahler says, that are “healthier responses to difficult days.”
A lot of advisors show people that spending on material goods doesn’t provide anywhere near the satisfaction that experiences do. And often the experiences cost less. So a camping trip with your family yields a wealth of fond memories that a snazzy new car does not.
So yes, money can bring happiness, but only if you see what is truly important.