What You Prioritize When Money Isn’t the Issue

There’s a somewhat snarky meme that makes its way around the internet. It goes something like this:

$500 Client: Please provide me with a detailed proposal on how your service is worth $500, will pay for itself, and will materially make my life at least 10x better for having purchased it. Please also make amendments to your service agreement in areas X, Y, and Z. I’ve had AI redline the items I’d like to change.

$50,000 Client: Check is in the mail; thanks for everything you do.

I don’t share this example because I believe in it. I’ve had great clients who were tiny relationships, and I’ve had nightmare clients who were some of the largest we’ve worked with (past tense, mind you). But I use it as an example tangential to something I think that does actually matter and bears out in reality: how involved people are with their finances as they mature in both age and finances. That is to say, “At what point do they let go of the inclination to get into the details?”

The point the snarky meme is really highlighting is that, for those with less money than time, money becomes the focus of a scarcity mindset. Because it’s not in total abundance, those in such a place in life find themselves focusing heavily on details that may or may not actually affect the outcome. Thus, because money is scarce, they spend more time than money in the effort of pursuing the best possible outcome. In turn, those with financial abundance but less time find themselves spending money to buy back time. They hire housekeepers and landscapers, financial planners and tax professionals, and so on, in the effort to trade their abundant capital for their rare peace of mind and freedom of time and effort.

It’s all the more interesting because, as a financial planner, I’ve gotten to watch people over enough time to see them turn the corner on that item. Some of our favorite clients today came in with the attitude of “what are you going to do for me, how do we get the cost down, and how quickly can we get what we need and move on from this engagement so I can stop paying for it?” Remarkably then, what made them go from seeming like tough clients is that they found that the value wasn’t in the math we’d do for them or the taxes we’d save them, but in the comfort that money was just taken care of.

I find the phenomenon all the more curious as time goes on because, as I’ve become a more seasoned financial planner, I’ve had the good fortune to attract more affluent and more complex clients. Therein, the phenomenon becomes even more interesting. Because there’s an obvious-on-its-face world where someone who has saved and invested in a manner that was okay but not great, tried to save on taxes but never really planned for it, or who has some insurance but not enough, should probably talk to a financial professional. That person obviously could use some help, and thus, help is what they should go get! So the phenomenon is interesting to me (I keep saying it’s interesting, but I have no other words to describe it) because as time has gone on, we’ve found ourselves working with fewer people who really need the help and more people who are opting into it despite the lack of necessity. We often say to potential clients that based on what they’re showing us or telling us about their finances, they’ll probably be “okay”, in the sense that they’re swimming just fine and not at any risk of drowning; the only reason or them to engage us then is that they’re tired of swimming or they want a coach to help them become excellent at more than treading water.

Thus, we’ve had the experience over the past few years that more and more of our clients are beyond the need threshold and more in the land of want. “I don’t need a financial planner; I want a financial planner.” And why? The self-diagnosis is often similarly phrased: “We make good money, we’ve saved and invested alright, and we find ourselves paying a lot in taxes, but I guess that’s a good problem to have!” All true. But more to the point, they’ve already made it to the point of what mathematically is “enough.” Many could stick their money in money market funds and US Treasuries and retire that very day comfortably, and be none the poorer in terms of getting what they want out of life, than if they chose to hire us to handle their money in a smarter or more effective way.

So what are they buying? Ostensibly, it’s advanced tax planning, highly efficient low-cost portfolios, and oversight into how everything ties together. The reality? Comfort and time. Even the most detail-oriented “let me check your math” type of client steadily turns into the type of client who spends the majority of their time talking to us about their life and what they enjoy in it, rather than asking what the most effective way to reduce their taxes for the year is. Not because it isn’t important, but because they know we’ll do that for them from the get-go, so rather than chatting about the logistics, let’s talk about where the logistics get them (the next vacation, their grandkid’s graduation, etc.)

I’ve made the observation before, both in the blog and the podcast, that I can count on one hand the number of clients who are still happily self-managing their portfolios and who do so with our blessing because they tend to do a good job of it. Yet, in the past few weeks we’ve gotten to put a finger down in that count, and we don’t aim to add to its number again in the future. Not because we have some deeply empirical basis to say that we can’t serve those clients well or that they wouldn’t benefit from being served by us; but because we’ve simply seen too much evidence that among our happiest clients, all but one or two are in the camp of saying “I know you’ll take care of it, so with that out of the way, let’s talk about something other than money.”

I’m not entirely sure what the aim of sharing all this is. Many of our clients will read this and say, “Oh, Dan’s writing about me.” Others will have the same thought, but think that perhaps I’m trying to nudge them or hint to them that they should join the ranks of the full-service folks in the interest of putting down the rest of the fingers on that one hand. That’s not really the point in sharing this, to me. It’s just to say, from me to you, as a financial planner to a friend, colleague, client, or member of the public, this:

When you find yourself at a point in life in which money is no longer the issue or the object getting in the way of living your one great and best life, you find yourself happily giving up its importance in your day-to-day thoughts and taking back the time it occupies in your life.

Some of us are already there. Others are on their way. A few won’t quite get there, but it’s a good goal to have nonetheless. I know of at least one person who is both there and also positively giddy to keep their eye on it; far be it from me to ask you to relinquish something that stokes your curiosity and brings you joy! But for those for whom money is a chore or a task of obligatory responsibility, let me be clear when I tell you: the happiest clients I’ve had the privilege of working with to this day do not pay money any mind on a day-to-day basis, and I daresay they might even be annoyed with me that I insist they pay it attention sometimes.

As my wife would say: “Goals.”