If you think you can't change your life (and the world) ... think again.
-Michael Port

As I cyber strolled, the margin message suggested that I might be among those interested in The Think Big Manifesto. Since I like to think I "think big" from time to time, I double-clicked on Michael Port's invitation to change the world.

Yes, that is me all right. Fully seduced, I hit "enter" on the site's "one click." When the book showed up in my mailbox within the week, I engaged. It is a quick read but it planted some seeds. It especially made me think about personal finance and its place in the world within the implicit "think big" challenge.

I gave it a shot. I looked first to our roots and current circumstances. Then I considered our possibilities to conclude we have lots of room for "thinking big" about personal finance. In fact, we have a terrific upside if we can only embrace the challenges.

First off: vocabulary. I have made my feelings on this known in previous columns, but I have not been disciplined myself. Accordingly, in order to "think big" from now on, I will mostly be using the terms "finology" and "finologist." These terms better describe the subject of our individual relationships with money and those who work professionally with individuals pushing the terms "financial planning" and "financial planners" beyond their current limitations.

Secondly: vision. I predict that finology will constitute the world's most important authentic profession of the 21st century. Seriously.
Thinking big ...

"To think big is to know what we stand for and let it guide us in everything we do," says Port.

What do finologists stand for? I suggest we must stand for understanding issues involving individuals and our various troubles and relationships with money. I am well aware that this concept is at odds with how many/most of us currently earn our livings. That being said, our best work is within the confines of these notions of finology. Product sales enable us to eat; they are not the essence of our real work.

Rather, our work within the people/money paradigm is unique within a world that generally focuses on macro concerns. The finology of our one-at-a-time problems involving money and our relationships with it is not within the macro world view. No matter that these human difficulties are ubiquitous, especially in economically troubled times and ultimately determinative of macro realities. The world needs us to bring our knowledge and our hearts to the fore.

Ours is a world where money and the money forces confront individuals with intensity. Truth is, folks don't get much help. The American Psychological Association recently reported that "the vast majority" of us are stressed. It cited "money, work and the economy [as] the top catalysts." In other words, money and the forces generated by money are the prime sources of stress.

Friends, this is our stuff. This is where the finologists ought to come in, thinking big and grasping our end of the rope. It would be exciting to push the boundaries of finology and our work with individuals to address stress, sustainability and genuine wealth building.

Holding the other end of that rope, the politicians and pundits, the marketers and the media constantly trip over themselves to describe their respective takes on individuals and money. This is mostly politically partisan or salesy self-serving nonsense repeating decades old arguments appealing to greed and fear. They rarely show an understanding of modern money, the money forces or the problems facing folks in their daily lives. Yet these talking heads speak with such authority, you'd almost think they spend their days working with these individuals and their relationships with money. In fact, one might even surmise that they know whereof they speak and can see into the future.

As Bill Cosby might say, "Riiiiight." They don't. They cannot.

In fact, there is only one group of people with the authority to speak to these matters. This group consists of those who work regularly with individuals and their relationships with money, namely personal financial advisors and their collaborators. We are the ones in the trenches dealing with the mucky, yucky stuff that attends our personal relationships with money. We are the ones seeing and hearing the consequences of confused money scripts and personal tragedies. We hear the stories and witness the consequences. In other words, we know.

Unfortunately, we have let the "macro" folks define the territory, generally without nuance or perspective. We need to take our share of it back.

Personally, I am a mission-driven kind of a guy. Similarly, I believe this business of personal financial advice should be a mission-driven undertaking with a full understanding of the implications of our work. Namely, we work with people, their money and their choices in their attempts to function within the money forces. At the end of the day, these individuals create markets, determine our collective uses of resources and establish our respective cultures. We work with numerators, one by one, and help them make better money choices. Done right, we get lives well-lived. Done wrong, we get chaos and, ultimately, disaster. We need to step up.

These "think big" thoughts come to mind:

1. Money and the money forces are the most powerful and pervasive secular forces on the planet.
2. Individually and collectively, our relationships with money are critical keys to humanity's qualities of life both now and in succeeding generations.
3. Finology is the most important profession of the 21st century.

First, we must consider our roots and thank those pioneers. They were "thinking big" when they started this venture currently known as "financial planning." They did something no one had ever done before in their work with individuals and money. Seeking relationships as advisors, not just as salesman, they pushed and expanded the boundaries of personal finance in ways unprecedented.

It is intriguing to imagine a time when individuals were simply seen as customers. The life insurance salesman had to describe investments as dangerous and inappropriate while securities brokers had to portray life insurance as staid, expensive and unimaginative.

The poor clients could only scratch their heads in confusion as they tried to decipher the gobbledygook from folks who were most decidedly not putting their interests first. And there were no rational alternatives. Those early pioneers addressed those needs wholly, helping them with those decisions together with looks at taxes, retirement and estate planning. They planted the seeds of a new authentic profession. No one had ever done that before. Thinking big.

Then they went even bigger. They began the College for Financial Planning. They instituted designations and started codes of ethics. They began membership associations and brought folks together within their vision. Of course, they did not have the sophistication available to us today. Pioneering is not sophisticated work. It is just thinking big.

It must have felt a bit like entering King Tut's tomb. They took the flickering lamp of "thinking big" into the unknown. In so doing, they changed the world. Especially, they revolutionized those staid industries of insurance and securities along with a couple more such as banking, accounting and law with ripples extending everywhere. In so doing, they discovered awesome treasures affecting millions of lives.

Of course, they could not have known where their thoughts were leading. How could they know what they had started? But 41 years later, we have both privileges and the responsibilities of seeing that cave illuminated, many of its nooks explored. But not all the treasures have been revealed. Now it is our time to "think big."

"Thinking Big" expands and fertilizes our gardens of knowledge. It takes us into fields our founding pioneers could not have imagined. Most especially, thinking big takes money away from the macro and into the worlds of the individual, worlds that have been excessively challenged of late.

Finology's most notable characteristic is that it works with numerators-one person at a time. Classical economics has mightily dissed it for the past couple of centuries. Thinking big says it is time to put our feet down.

The denominator folks, the macros, have in fact, dominated financial thinking and financial theory. They set the vocabulary and the rules of economic theory. They bulldozed individuals and marginalized us. Not that this is necessarily wrong for the development of macro theory. They needed to minimize the moving parts. Unfortunately, it is desperately wrong for the development of comprehensive economic theory that includes human beings. "Comprehensive" means "all inclusive." The macros forgot to include human beings.

Oops.

Note:
1. There is no word in the English language to describe the relationship between individuals and money. The implications of this are startling.
2. The macroeconomic view of individual humans is to confine them to that insulting filament of a human icon known as "Homo Economicus."
3. The macros see Homo Economicus, i.e., human beings, as serving "rational," narrowly defined self-interests and personal utilities. Of course, there is nothing at all human about Homo Economicus. Indeed, his very existence, even in theory, is an insult to authentic human beings everywhere. Nonetheless, he controls the economic/financial theory of large-scale systems-not a good thing, IMHO.
The macros view money as value-neutral. This fits with Homo Economicus, but it does not fit with authentic human beings for whom money is actually value laden.

We cannot cut the individual out of the large-scale conversation. What works theoretically for denominators does not generally work in actuality for numerators. Finologists are primarily in the numerator business. We have something to contribute to the large-scale conversations and their critical implications.

Unfortunately, we have collectively failed to pick up our end of the rope and enable a vibrant conversation that includes both individuals and the larger "we." "Thinking big" suggests that we accept these responsibilities together with their necessary repercussions.

For starter subjects, we could go with the implications of current economic realities for individuals and our families and communities. We could provide intriguing counter-perspective on the various attacks on wealth builders and job creators, governmental deficits and dysfunctions, the diatribes of class warfare and class envy, financial illiteracy at all levels, the constant rehash of the capitalist/communist dialectic and the money-based dysfunctions of many family units. We could look to the general lack of gratitude on the part of so many whose current lifestyles significantly exceed the material qualities endured by their ancestors.

As a country, we know we are headed straight for incredible financial trouble with health care, schools and the baby boomers' financial requirements as they age, yet we continue to leave these issues unaddressed. Worse, those who attempt to address them are demonized. Moreover, national infrastructure is a disaster that continues to be ignored. We seemingly cannot find the internal fortitude to address these problems or create new infrastructure that could provide the basis for increased wealth building. Individuals will pay dearly for this.

Without going all Ayn Rand here, where is the honor for the genuine wealth builders who enable genuine solutions to emerge while enabling others to be employed? There is genuine rage out there against the wealth builders [and, no, I don't include financial manipulators as "wealth builders"] but no apparent understanding of the relationship between wealth building and jobs. Where are those that would quell the rage with genuine answers? Instead, it seems our so-called leaders delight in throwing gasoline on the fire. Those that actually pay the taxes continue to be demonized. Moreover, otherwise intelligent people continue to confuse the terms "rich," "wealthy" and "current high earners." Our leaders spend money they don't have and/or undermine the quality of the money they do have.

Could we have gotten in the mess of 2008 in the absence of cultural/societal financial illiteracy? Could we continue to employ slimeball tactics in our elections?

Money has not been seriously addressed from a cultural perspective. We haven't looked at its role in our lives individually and collectively. Because our subjective relationships with it remain taboo subjects, these issues do not get addressed. Nonetheless, I continue to believe that finologists like us need to step up and take a role in the public discourse. These issues are serious. It is time for us to "think big."