Advisors must take up the noble obligation of leadership-because no one else can.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
- Irish proverb
Dear Colleagues ... Or perhaps you prefer "Your
majesties" or "Your Royal Highnesses." On the other hand, the slightly
more familiar form "My Lords and Ladies" might be more to your liking.
Maybe we should practice courtly arts or otherwise
learn the etiquette of nobility-though I cannot imagine such chivalrous
banalities playing well in our crowd. Nonetheless, it is high time we
retooled our respective self-images to include substantially more
regalities because, my dear friends and colleagues, we come by our
crowns quite honestly and, with them, the attendant "noblesse oblige,"
the "obligations of nobility," that have traditionally accompanied
royal privileges.
We are indeed the one-eyed ones in the land of the
visionless. The money forces swirl about all of us with Katrina-like
intensity, and they are still acting like these spring showers will
simply bring May flowers. In their face, our alleged leaders are
positively FEMA-like in their failures to anticipate their swirl, their
eventual demands and potential carnage.
No matter. Notwithstanding their ocular miasma, our
world of blindfolds and incapacity needs us to share what we see with
our one good eyeball together with all the craft and wisdom we have
earned over the past 37 years. They need us ... and we have work to do.
"Financial planning." "Financial plan."
"Financial planner." We have skills. Oh my, yes, indeed, we have
skills. And vision. And foresight. And perspective. And wisdom.
Let us just look. Let us spy with our little eye our
two main words, namely the terms "Financial Planning" and "Financial
Plan." The synonyms for "Planning" are "preparation, setting up,
developing, arranging, scheduling and forecasting." "Plan" as a noun
adds "diagram, map, table, chart, arrangement, preparation, strategy,
idea, plot and design" as its equivalents. As a verb, "to plan" yields
"to arrange, to set up, to prepare, to design, to intend and to
propose." Hmm. Looks like a lot of work and responsibility vital to the
interests of individuals and the body social.
Now let us engage in the same exercise with
"financial." This renders such sweeping terms as "monetary, fiscal,
economic and pecuniary." "Finance" gets us to "money, economics,
business, investment, backing, sponsorship and funding."
These span our proper expectations, framing the
implications of our self-proclaimed roles. To do them correctly might
even take two eyes, both of them wide open.
We need to grasp that we are the ones who are
glimpsing how money plays over the long term in the lives of
individuals and, from there, our families and local and global
communities. One thing we know: Life will most likely not be as we know
it.
If we keep our promises to our clients and our
profession, we engage where the money questions present themselves to
individuals and societies. Even with one eye tied behind our backs, we
are the ones who know that the columnists, politicians and partisan
prognosticators are mostly blowing smoke. We also are the ones who know
where the bleeding is and where the hurts are.
This is not to suggest that our talents entail
laser-like acuity or flawless discernment. Not hardly. Indeed,
collectively, we know we often do not even have the skills to see, much
less fix. Money and people is just that complex. Yet, we are learning ...
and seeing. At least we can separate the issues from the politics.
Of course, we can make erroneous interpretations,
have incomplete knowledge or, even, simply be mistaken in our notions
of what is there. After all, we are but one-eyed humans with the
depth-perception problems that keep our kind from playing professional
baseball or flying airplanes. Given our problems with distance, we can
even run into many issues without even realizing how close they are.
Since none is the number of functional eyes that
most folks have when it comes to seeing how money works in their lives
and communities, much less others, our single eyes give us our crowns.
Perhaps most importantly, our monocular blessings give us not only the
claim but also the responsibility to serve as guide for our poor
blinded species.
That is what professions do.
As the 21st century unfolds, it becomes increasingly
clear that money is the key to much of what is coming our way, for
better or for worse. On the one hand, money is the 21st century's
primary self-organizing force and the only known ticket for
universalizing prosperity. People respond to it with their best efforts
more or less naturally-generally without resort to violence or
government dictate. On the other, money seems oddly embedded within all
sorts of life necessities and sociocultural realities-many of which
seem incongruously, awkwardly balanced squarely on the back of
international trading currencies conceived for the industrial
revolution and the demands of pre-computer eras long gone.
Indeed, we are increasingly asking money to do our
work without understanding its necessary implications. For all that
people claim financial expertise, most do not have a clue when it comes
to these all-important issues. That is for us one-eyed types.
Financial planners watch people make financial
decisions. We see what is important and we see what gets in the way. We
watch greed, temptation, pride, fear, anger, sadness and joy work their
wonders-and we watch people work through them. Or not. For better or
for worse, we are in the room when people think about their life's
biggest decisions and we are there for the heartbreak or joy as these
lives unfold.
We see all of this, we know them and we know that
preparing for them will require more than individual savings accounts;
that markets do not function well when people are compelled to decide ...
NOW! We also know the raw fear of choosing between unsavory choices;
that sometimes choices engage two evils and that sometimes it is just
plain awful to be you. We know that even the best decisions can still
have raw, indigestible consequences or implications.
When people talk about the sufficiency of Social
Security funding for another 40 years, we understand the implications
for our mid-twenties children. We know they are forking over huge
portions of their total compensation without even the actuarial
expectation of eventual benefit.
We also know that the nature of "work" will be
changing, and with it the moral underpinnings of our primary method of
money distribution. Combine these mutating notions of work while
normalizing 90-year life spans-it seems obvious that there are some
culture-shifting issues coming down the pike. How will we be coping as
individuals and as members of communities dealing with tough decisions?
We think about these things.
We see money's demands and its costs in life energy.
We know the collateral implications of an array of financial decisions.
We know what it means for people to leave their families half way
across the continent. We understand limited childcare choices, the
conflicts between work and home and the simple yet high costs of
working.We know that life's last months can be grotesquely expensive;
that those last decisions give agony new meaning. How are we going to
decide life and death in an age of infinite capabilities but limited
resources?
How long can we throw greenbacks at certain issues
before we acknowledge that they are not inherently financial in nature?
Well, my regal friends, it is a brave new millennium
and the world is not always as it has been. It needs us one-eyed types
and it needs us now. It needs us to help with reconciling values and
perspectives. It needs us to serve as counterbalance to some of the
fiscal nonsense. It needs us to look at 50-year scenarios and address
their implications.
This world has trouble, the United States portion of
it especially. Promises are being made that cannot be kept except with
extraordinary sacrifice, doubtful even then.
We have gotten credit drunk and addicted to other people's money, both
individually and collectively. In the best traditions of spendthrift
leadership over the past 3,000 years, we have been diluting money's
worth, taxing silently and stacking up bills for tomorrow because we
cannot make decisions today.
So, what does this mean?
First off, it probably means financial planners need
to start taking ourselves and our issues seriously. We can begin
grasping the full implications of our work, our knowledge and, perhaps
most importantly, our vision.
It means we start fully addressing the "planning" part of "financial
planning" with greater appreciation and vision. It means deciding to
become an authentic profession and begin understanding money and its
implications. It means taking cold hard looks at our possible futures,
conceptualizing their realities for our clients, our communities and
our world.
Dear Colleagues, your Royal Highnesses, these eyes
of [y]ours perceive rightly. They need them to work. We need to accept
the responsibilities.
Richard B. Wagner, JD, CFP, is the
principal of WorthLiving LLC, based in Denver. He is the 2003 recipient
of the Financial Planning Association's P. Kemp Fain Jr. Award, which
recognizes a member who has made outstanding contributions to the
profession.