As we are nearly one-sixth of our way through the 21st century, I have aspirations. Specifically, I would like to feel as though financial planners and our ilk have earned and gained places of proper respect in the larger worlds of finance, public policies and healthy relationships with money.

I would also like to believe that financial planners and our ilk are perceived as something more than 21st century sales serfs and tenant farmers or as simply naïve children trying to act like we belong in the rough, tough real world. In other words, I would like us to be taken seriously and warmly welcomed to sit at the proverbial Big Kids’ Table.

Sad to say, in many respects financial planners are a bit like middle schoolers. Even though we’re past childhood, we think of that Big Kids’ Table as somehow down the road. As a profession, we are still relatively young and immature. We may have a charming exuberance that nicely complements a sense of unlimited potential, but various diversions have kept us from seeking the essences of our work. This seems especially true as baby boomers edge inexorably toward retirement and the emergent Age of Money becomes ever more starkly real.

That being said, most of us are acutely aware that few folks with any sort of prestige or authority could even imagine letting our kind participate in decisions they perceived to be of policy-level consequence—at least for anything more than show. CFP Board’s K Street address notwithstanding, in no respect have financial planners and our ilk made it to the Big Kids’ Table.

That doesn’t really work for those of us with aspirations for Big Kids’ seats. We look at the world around us and we see issue after issue and concern after concern that could/would improve with the perspectives and insights of folks with fiduciary loyalties who work daily and directly with individuals.

Let’s understand the current realities. In our world, the financial services industry (Industry), government and academia have essentially (though informally) combined to form and occupy a three-sided table where they hobnob with one another purporting to address important issues. Depending on their perspectives du jour, they look at these issues with blinders circumscribed by their commercial markets, their political bases or their academic silos. Ostensibly, this enables them to understand “average” folks, otherwise known as “hard-working middle-class Americans” for purposes of speeches and press releases.

It is not like they really know or learn much of anything, especially without the participation of financial planners and our ilk. They may give appearances of good and proper efforts to understand the satisfactions, fears and worries of genuine humans, but this are chimeras. Together, these three groupings will conduct countless surveys and polls together with miscellaneous (and mysterious) numerical aggregations, purporting to help us understand individual financial concerns. They will then feed these to the media, ceaselessly and, generally, ineffectually.

But this is where we get all those stats. You know, the ones that come at us machine-gun style addressing issues of employment, gross domestic product, educational achievement, lifetime earnings, various trends and on and on and on, relentlessly attacking our sensibilities and our abilities to draw meaningful connections between point A and point ΣΣ. And the conclusions … oh my goodness! Let’s face it, from the perspectives of financial planners and our ilk, they are only mildly significant at best.

Yet they abound. Between the financial services industry, government and academia, the affairs of individuals, communities and money fold neatly into little packages with cherries on top.

The issues are compelling. So many of them touch on the primary financial issues facing human beings with respect to money. Go down the rather lengthy lists. From race, class, religion, national origin and the other extensive distinctions between human beings, both real and artificial, we see money, money issues and the money forces serving in combatant capacities. From education, vested interests and student loans, to health care, to national defense, immigration, tariffs, issues of the environment and water, demographic changes, the nature of government, infrastructure, social interactions, science, natural resources and the international financial systems themselves, there are profound interrelationships within our financial systems both foreign and domestic. Many of these must be seen through the eyes of individuals to be seen fully.

Industry, government and academia work with aggregates of large numbers. These numbers come to them as breakdowns of income, ethnicities, religiosities, chronologies, vocations, geographies, health, marital status, children, and on and on and on and on. As aggregates, not only are their numbers large but they are also faceless, their theories simply lacking human touch or nuance. Since they work in large numbers encompassing entire populations, we will call this group Denominators; for sure, they sit at the Big Kids’ Table.

In evident and significant contrast are those working directly with individuals and families. We will call this group “Numerators.” The Numerators’ starkly contrast with the Denominators’ three sectors. They include financial planners and our ilk, namely the sundry CPAs, attorneys, bankers, social workers, psychologists, trust officers, wealth managers, coaches and pastors working directly with individuals and families, understanding both money and their fiduciary responsibilities.

Numerators know firsthand what is relevant, impactful and hopeful for individuals, at least with respect to their clients and markets. They understand money and take their fiduciary responsibilities seriously. Most importantly, Numerators have something of significance to contribute to the miscellaneous public policy conversations that are taking place. Numerators should have a place at the Big Kids’ Table.

Ironically, Denominators rarely talk to those working with individuals one-on-one as fiduciaries. Unfortunately, until those who work with individuals one at a time as fiduciaries sit with them at the Big Kids’ Table, it is a virtual certainty that much of their work will consistently miss the mark.

For all of the Denominators’ efforts, there will be no subtle distinctions in their daily work. None of this daily work will address individuals as individuals but rather only as ideally meaningful abstractions for such “big number issues” as sales and quotas, product and legislation creation, actuarial parameters and anticipatable cash inflows and esoteric research.

The Big Kids’ Table has been exclusive. For all the high-volume hoo-ha of our daily media, it has been rare to hear anyone speaking with power to the multitudes of money issues impacting real live folks. Shouldn’t this be within the wheelhouse of the financial planning profession and those self-proclaiming fiduciaries working more or less in parallel?

As self-presumed lairds of the manor, both industry and academia assume their lesser ranks include financial planners. Yet they twist its mission and purpose to serve their commercial purposes.

For its part, government doesn’t really even think we exist. Witness our awesome collective power for such personal financial issues, the “Affordable Care Act,” Dodd-Frank or the continued clumsiness and patent abuses within the Internal Revenue Code, complaints of the average citizen notwithstanding. Sarcasm. Our current power is mind-boggling in its nullity.

Question: Is this really a problem? Do we want a seat at the Big Kids’ Table? Do we believe in the power of financial planning and personal financial advice with sufficient conviction to risk stepping out into the big, hairy, scary, public arena on our own behalf? Or are we content to have our particular and vital issues addressed solely and exclusively by self-interested proxies from industry, academia and government? Seriously.

As I have done so often before, I suggest the world needs our skills and our perspectives. I further suggest it is high time to presume that we are worthy participants in the public arena. Indeed, we are not only worthy, we have the rights, duties and responsibilities to take more active roles. We have earned seats at the Big Kids’ Table.

In turn, having earned those seats, we must bring those skills and insights to modern, individual human beings for whom money skills are 21st century survival skills.

As advisors to individuals, we know many have worked hard, both saving and providing. Unfortunately, we also know many just can’t make it. Large numbers of adults are simply incapable of earning a living as these times demand. Personal injury and/or illness have torpedoed many well-conceived financial plans.

Economic shifts are not diversified for those dependent upon geographically local employers. Age, mental capacity, skill levels, access to capital and education. For most of human history, those without family or personal competencies simply died at early ages. That is not happening today. Likewise, technology is forcing change in notions of “work.” This undermines financial systems. What are appropriate social safety nets in the 21st century?

Ultimately, these are not political issues. Red/blue, liberal/conservative, Republican/Democrat, black/white/red/yellow/brown, the assorted and relatively unprecedented issues are not going away. Yet we continue to find ourselves embroiled in counterproductive/unproductive arguments grounded in competing economic/political theories with combined ages approaching 400 years. These theories were conceived at times wholly unlike our own, where agriculture and extraction industries were the dominant economic forces and compassion could be effectively localized. They do not address issues of our changing notions of “work” or demographics and demands of age.

Capitalism and socialism/communism may well have exceeded their “sell by” dates. Certainly, the issues their original advocates addressed have changed dramatically.

The job of the financial planner/advisor is to provide comprehensive advice and service to individual human beings. We have profound fiduciary obligations, especially with respect to those individual human beings with whom we have contractual relationships. The question is whether the spirit of those fiduciary relationships implicitly requires us to be more active protagonists within the public discourse.

I’m not talking about the occasional quote in local or national media. Neither am I talking about Twitter or even the LISTSERV of my beloved Nazrudin Project. Rather, I’m talking about playing large on issues of public finance, welfare and entitlement programs, health-care systems, education systems, social safety nets, the integrity of currencies both commercial and complimentary and the very nature of work.

Each of the three existing interests at the table—financial services, government and academia—have ongoing vital roles to play in each of these. It is simply that they need to involve financial planners and those others as they do so. We need to be at the Big Kids’ Table.

These perspectives are not being generated through our relationships with the financial services industry. If those folks can’t sell it, they really don’t care. Nor should they. Their job is to manufacture and sell financial products, not to be experts in personal finance and related issues. Product development does not include the vital perspectives of those who work directly with individuals and families.

But this is on us more than on them. We need to step up and begin to realize how important our work is along with careful considerations of our working arrangements with industry, government and academia. This means recognizing that if we are serious fiduciaries, our primary obligations are to the client, not to any principal company. This means recognizing that if we claim the status of fiduciary, we must understand that this has serious implications.

Financial planners and our ilk who work with individuals in fiduciary capacities will become ever more critical to society and individuals in helping folks thrive amid complex and demanding money forces.

This work is more than assets under management, “production,” or expanding organizations. This work properly includes profound mission and purpose. The Big Kids’ Table is attractive because that is where adults live and do the work of adults. If we are serious, we should want to be there. Doing this right and taking our rightful places at the Big Kids’ Table requires that we must act like we deserve to be there, ready to claim our rightful positions in the world.

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.