For a fifth-grade, sports-loving kid, this was equivalent to finding gold. I was fanatical about baseball cards at the time and loved the idea of trying on his old hockey gloves and playing catch with his well-worn baseball mitt.

In an instant the furnace room was transformed from a dark, scary cavern to a gold mine. The basement I thought was great before became even better as a whole new area was opened up and able to be experienced.

The same holds true for both advisors and clients. Not only do we have to recognize that there are dark shadowy areas that a client may not be ready to explore, but we also have to be that shiny flashlight that shows them what’s behind the furnace.

Reality is, fear is human nature, so we all experience it. As we get older, we may not verbalize these feelings as being scared or afraid because we have learned to replace them with words like stress or worry but it doesn’t matter. They can all grip us and stop us from living an abundant life, filled with new adventures and knowledge.

This is important because the desire for clients to have every question answered and to have it all figured out can be one of the many furnace rooms we see in clients. Other furnace rooms can include the fear of being alone, getting ripped off, feeling irrelevant and losing a major sense like vision or hearing. It’s a never-ending list that can take center stage in their life if the fear of the unknown is not addressed. Furthermore, the longer we let them avoid waiting to open up that furnace room door, the harder it’s going to be.

In addition to using stories with positive outcomes, advisors can use a philosophical approach with clients to help them see beyond their worries and concerns. That can be something as simple as adding a tag line or phrase to your regular email and communications such as “A successful retirement isn’t one without problems but rather it’s one in which you learn to overcome them.” 

Taking it a step further, clients often need to be reminded that we live in a world full of contrast. In other words, you can’t enjoy a vacation without work, love without a disagreement, or a fit body and mind without some discipline and hard work.

Ironically, we are trained to fight this contrast and seek ways to escape it rather than face it. As a result, clients struggle to experience retirement in a full and balanced way. In the land of the free, many people are trapped by their thoughts and feelings…overwhelmed by their options and choices…and more importantly, looking for someone or some way to help them create a genuine retirement plan that helps them resolve their deepest fears and concerns. 

One of the biggest barriers clients face in dealing with their fears in retirement and being the best person they can be is because they are afraid to use their resources. They have been brainwashed for so long to save and not spend, to sacrifice and monitor, that they don’t have a frame of mind for making changes.

Cracking that nest egg scares the hell out of many people. Blinded by the fear of running out of money and living like a homeless person behind someone’s furnace, clients slow down their potential for growth simply because they’re afraid of the future instead of making the most of right now. I’ve found the best way to address this situation is to remind people that the only guarantee that comes with retirement is that at some point they will die. It could be the first day, or come 20-30 years into it.