If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. -Lewis Carroll

Proposition
Be it resolved: The mission and purpose of the financial planning profession is to help individuals and families meet the demands of money and the awesome forces that it generates.

This is not going to be a polite article. It is not a polite subject. In fact, it is one of those that pit friends against friends. Worse, it does not subdivide easily. Worst of all, it messes with our rice bowls.

My own beliefs are condensed in the "Proposition" above. I will get there. Meanwhile, feel free to disagree.
You wonder why this is important? I will get there, too.

From most perspectives, financial planning has been remarkably successful in its short, 40-plus years. We have good numbers. Our ranks include successful businesses and practices. We are gaining some respect in the media. In general, good people populate our profession. We have an excellent eye for the future. We are valued. All in all, this is not bad, not bad at all.

Yet something seems missing. It has to do with our identity. It feels like we can't quite make up our minds about what it is that we do, why it is that we do it and for whom we work. Indeed, who is "we"? Do we actually have a brand? Do folks know what to expect when they work with a financial planner?

In my early years with a financial services company, I was taught that financial planning's beauty was its excellence as the best financial product sales tool ever devised. If we gathered our data, honed in on an individual's values, soft spots and assorted vulnerabilities, and did an effective close, "financial planning" would enable us to sell a ton of the financial product manufactured by our employing entity or an associated company. And it did. The concept of "fiduciary" was not discussed; our primary loyalties went to the company. This is not to suggest we were encouraged to act contrary to a client's best interests. My company was a good company that kept its promises. That being said, nobody ever got praised for selling a term life policy rather than a cash value instrument. We rarely ventured outside the territory circumscribed by cash value life insurance, limited partnerships and mutual funds.

In the intervening time, financial planning has matured. For many of its practitioners, its extraordinary ramifications and importance to the lives of folks have become evident. We see it. We can feel it in our bellies. Yet for many others, financial planning remains a most excellent sales tool while primary loyalties remain with a primary financial product manufacturer, not the client. This is oil and water. The two factions cannot and will not mix.

Truth is, we are now more than 40 years in. This aspirational profession is no longer in its adolescence or its young adulthood. It is time for it to get a grip on its identity. We are old enough for this dialogue. If we crave the stature of "authentic profession," we can no longer skirt around commitment to a defining element: Are we needs-based salesmen or fiduciary advisors? The existing ambiguities are both palpable and malignant.

In the meantime, life has changed dramatically, both domestically and globally. Our ranks have exploded from not quite crowding an elevator to six-digit multiples spread throughout the world. Yet for the most part, financial planners are not really taken seriously-no small irony given that issues of personal finance dominate the news.

But think about it. Why would we be taken seriously within the public dialogues? We don't even know who we are. Without probing conversation and at least nominal consensus about mission and purpose, we lack the base required for legitimate authority.

I suggest that the financial planning profession will continue to stew in the juices of 1970 as long as we continue to be confused about whether our primary loyalties belong to our clients or to the financial services industry.

Meanwhile, our regulations continue as an unholy mess while our academics continue to teach to the test at the expense of wisdom and lineage.

Our conversations are not likely to be pretty. In fact, the two factions don't even like each other very much. For the most part, we don't go to each other's parties or read each other's tweets. I perceive that those who are devoted to the financial services industry think the advisor folks are fools who leave way too much money on the table, whereas the advisor folks think those who define "producer" in terms of sales volumes and "getting their share of the wallet" are not particularly trustworthy or worthy of respect.

This is not a "fee-only" issue but one of personal identity and professional loyalty. Do you work for "Chuck," a "good neighbor," a "green path," a "company that you keep," etc., or for your client? Hint: If you see your sense of identity flashing on television screens or magazine ads, you probably identify with the financial services industry, not the financial planning profession. My view? There is nothing wrong with that so long as you own it. However, I am getting very tired of seeing such folks described as "advisors." Yes, salesmen can "advise," but do they really need to confuse?

Meanwhile, it is time for those of us who claim to be financial planners to claim the advisory turf. How and why did we get here? Where should we be going?

Let me make something clear. I believe this is a collective issue. My notion of mission is just one man's notion. I would love to see a larger conversation within the FPA communities. I believe I am right about this, but take a shot. Who knows where this could take us?

Meanwhile, to parse the profession's mission, I suggest we look at a host of relevant factors ranging from a closer look at the world of financial planning's inception to the world as it exists today and into the foreseeable future to the various issues touched by our work.

From its beginnings, financial planning has had a history of ambiguity. After all, the first financial planners were basically combining financial products sales into one person's primary relationships and planning expertise. Remember, financial planning's initial scope was insurance, securities, income tax, estate tax and retirement planning. What these have in common is the fact that they are financial products that address the financial issues that emerged during the sales processes of 1970.
Theoretically, the financial planner served as "quarterback" to identify everything that needed doing within this framework. Then the relevant products were implemented.

Again, there is nothing wrong with this so far as it goes. It is just that these issues don't go very far if we are looking at an authentic profession of significant stature addressing personal finance in the 21st century. The world is bigger than this. The money forces have become so much more powerful than the sales of financial products. These issues are very much a part of the daily realities of our clients and fellow citizens. Accordingly, my proposed mission statement.

Our pioneers did not conceive of this profession in a vacuum. Neither were they omniscient or capable of seeing all that was implied by their creation. In 1970, the world was in financial flux. In particular, the United States was beginning to see the power of the baby boomers and the potentially unsustainable costs of Social Security and defined benefit plans. Moreover, the power of money and the money forces were starting to manifest. The succeeding decade brought unimaginable inflation, high tax rates, tax shelters, a horrific stock market crash, a housing boom, an oil crisis, a crowded job market and a jettisoned gold standard. Combine various forms of political crisis, including scandal, vice presidential and presidential resignations, an unelected president, social upheaval, the end of the Vietnam War and the realities of various "liberation" movements, and we had quite the time. There were no computers as we have today. (The IBM Mag Card Selectric typewriter doesn't don't count.) There were three established television networks with an effective stranglehold on televised news. TBS and PBS were just getting started, but there was no MTV or ESPN. It was within this cauldron that financial planning was generated.

I am frequently asked what I mean by the "money forces." By that I mean the fact of money itself and its role in 20th and 21st century life. I mean this uniquely human artifact of reciprocity and exchange that generates extraordinary forces with both positive and negative consequences and implications. Think of water, which is so necessary to all forms of life. Yet water destroys, rots and kills. It can convey poisons and diseases. Or think of fire. Fire is necessary for our food and physical comfort. Manufacturing industries require it. Life as we know it would be impossible without fire. Yet there is nothing more lethal when it is out of control. Air gives life as earth provides stability, yet we have seen the collective destructive powers of avalanches and earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis, tornadoes and forest fires. Life could not work without earth, fire, water and air. Human life at current volumes cannot work without money.

These metaphors are apt descriptors of money and its implications. And they start to frame the importance of our work. The money forces were potent when our profession was founded, but they were not as evident. They have become increasingly potent and evident with the passage of time.

Since World War II we have watched populations become urbanized. Money enables urbanization. It is useful to look at Wikipedia under "Urbanization: Causes" to get a sense of the money forces at work. It describes the money-based motivations for choices of residence, business and vocation and access to culture in some detail.

Think both historically and futuristically. Most likely, we are still too close to see the changes in America, grounded in that combination of depression and war, but we are not blind to the obvious. Primarily since World War II, money has generated powerful forces with extraordinary implications for human beings. Before the war, money was not such an essential aspect of daily life. Most folks worked in some form of extraction industry: agriculture, ranching, logging, fishing, mining or drilling. They did not commute to the office every day. Their retirement plans were in their backyard. We accepted death and disability as an inevitable personal problem. If someone aged without assets, relatives or social capital, that, too, was a personal problem.

This is not our world. In our world, agriculture employs less than 2% of the population, down from 41% in 1900, 21.5% in 1930, 16% in 1945 and 4% in 1970, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. Agriculture is not just an occupation, it is a way of life. Communities were overhauled by this massive demographic shift. The men were transported to the city and to their jobs mostly in their own automobiles. Then women were. Children no longer had daily access to their parents; childcare was professionalized. The implications are huge.

Money is central to this. People could not grow their own food; they had to buy it. They required access to massive public works projects for water, waste disposal and transport. With an expanding population, housing became vital and, with it, housing finance. Public schools, police and fire protection, parks and recreation and medical care were transformed from local hit-and-miss to money-based enterprises. This meant taxes and insurance.

In agricultural societies, family provides. Retirement plans and insurance policies are in backyards and offspring. Without family, accidents and illness are catastrophic, but there is nothing much to be done. In urban societies, food must be purchased. Moreover, individuals need extended periods of time where they are reliant upon unearned income for their daily bread. This means savings and investment. Meanwhile, insurance is accessible for money, and people want the best.

In this process, money has become the lifeblood of 21st century humanity. Throughout the world, money has become humanity's most powerful and pervasive secular force. Money skills are 21st century survival skills that do not come naturally to human beings. To the contrary, human beings are often financially self-destructive. To deal, folks need the financial planning profession.

Accordingly, I see a profession that has emerged with the mission of helping individuals and families relate to money and the awesome forces that it generates. This mission is vital and profound. It is worthy of an authentic profession.

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.