Would this word work for describing financial planning's garden of knowledge? Could it hold the complexities of money and all its manifestations within subject matters ranging from literature to theology to science to political science? Could it contain the complexities of modern life and issues grounded in money, including systemic instability, job unpredictability and notions of work, children, spouses, parents, education, risk management, investments, the CFP Board's famous "Appendix A," health, happiness and the meaning of life? Maybe.
Then we must ask: Why bother? Many reasons.
Simply put, our profession's progress is dramatically limited by the absence of words that can both communicate and enable important distinctions among financial concepts. Consider what has come from attempts to coin words for addressing emotional issues grounded in money. Twenty years ago, we had no words. Conversations were impossible. We could use terms from psychology or religion but we always needed to define them and explain our intent. Then when we did, it didn't really sound like financial planning.
When CFP George Kinder coined the phrase "life planning" in his book Seven Stages of Money Maturity in the '90s, he simultaneously opened vistas of creativity and expansion. Now we were able to develop concepts and applications. This was a very big deal. Today, the term "life planning" communicates something meaningful to almost everyone in financial planning.
Unfortunately, "life planning" contains a few terminological disconnects that have made it less than perfect. However, its shortcomings and the process for overcoming them are instructive to language development. For one, it did not confine its scope to the human/money relationship. Indeed, it was a huge land grab of a term. Obviously, "life planning" does not naturally limit itself to money but logically extends to all matters involving "life." What were its limits, if any? In fact, some people resented the term's implicit arrogance.
Soon, adventurous colleagues developed the antidote by coining the term "financial life planning." At least this confined the activity to something that engaged money. It prompted evocative conversations about the expansive aspects of the Kinder term along with meaningful discussions' about the word "financial" and what it added. Or not. Some thought that the term "financial planning" was enough-that "life planning" and "financial life planning" were nothing more than financial planning done right. Then we argued passionately (and in circles) about what is meant by the term "financial planning."
I thought none of these terms allowed us to look at money and how it affects us from the inside out-using psychological, sociological or spiritual perspectives. For many people, the money journey has to do with self-exploration and spiritual fulfillment. For others, money is highly toxic, harming their ability to function, even impairing their relationships with others.
In my mind, the issues clarified when I began to study Ken Wilber and his integral theories. The word "interior" especially captured the range of personal and cultural issues-those that could not be made subject to numerical analysis, objectification or quantification. However, "interior" is not a prescriptive term but a container. It encourages varieties of approaches. As such, it can recognize schools of thought, such as George Kinder's "life planning," without requiring that they apply to financial neuroses and self-destructive behaviors. It can also circumscribe the terrain being addressed by increasingly sophisticated financial therapists. Now we can talk about "innocent beliefs," "money scripts," "shopaholics" with exploration and understanding.
There are dozens, possibly hundreds of terms that should arise from financial planning. Remember, we work with numerators in a world obsessed with denominators. Financial planners are the world's foremost authorities on how macroeconomic realities affect the lives of individuals. Planners are "feet on the ground," as they say in the military. Mixing real world wisdom with substantial craft, we know things no one else knows.
This gives us a unique perspective that is not available to the ivory tower folks looking at statistics and reading filtered data. Literally no one else has our perspectives or concerns. When macroeconomic policies and products (like derivatives) end up weakening the financial health of regular people, exacerbating inflation, crippling local economies, causing currency fluctuations, costing jobs or otherwise harming the economy, the human reactions to these events need names. Warren Buffett called derivatives "weapons of mass destruction." But what was the internal experience of these bombs on the survivors? How will they strain people's financial resources, rendering them unable to do the jobs we anticipated when we helped them make financial planning decisions?