It’s six days to one of the nation’s most contentious midterm elections. It’s likely that many advisors have clients who are obsessed with politics, people who share a never-ending barrage of emails, social media posts and memes filled with hyper-partisan opinions.

No matter how the election shakes out, advisors Michael Kitces and Carl Richards think their colleagues should know how to deal with such clients, especially those who become draining and start to make political decisions that interfere with their financial planning—because some clients believe that their political narrative affects their money and plans.

The two advisors discussed the problem on a recent podcast, “Handling Politically Charged Clients Who Make It Uncomfortable To Be Their Advisor.”

Kitces, the head of planning strategy at Buckingham Strategic Wealth and blogger at “Nerd’s Eye View,” said he has also been pestered by hyper-partisan clients. So has Richards, a wealth manager, New York Times columnist, and communications expert. And Kitces said he’s heard from other advisors facing the same trouble. In a recent Twitter exchange with Kitces, an advisor asked, “When is it officially appropriate for me to send out a mass email to clients that just says, ‘Stop with your political lunatic fringe? It's affecting my time dealing with this. It's affecting my mental health.’”

Is It Damaging Your Mental Health?
While some advisors are unflappable and the political jousting just rolls off their backs, others have a harder time, Kitces said.

“It grinds on us. It grates on us. It's frustrating. It can get exhausting. We do that long enough in today's political environment, it becomes damaging to mental health,” Kitces said.

Richards said it is not as easy as it once was to try to stay apolitical because “sometimes the client just won't let it go,” even if they did in the past. How does an advisor deal with it if a client keeps bringing up politically polarizing issues at the same time they are discussing ways to fund their goals?

When it gets to the point where clients want to change their portfolios over it, “you’ve got a decision to make there,” Kitces added.

“To me, there's at least two or three different scenarios [you can pursue],” he said. “So, there's one that's just, ‘I need this client to dial it down.’ There's a second version that's probably, ‘This relationship just needs to end. And how do I say that without becoming a pariah?’ And then there's [a] sort of Twitter advisor’s strategy that says, ‘Can I just send this email out to all my clients and tell them to tone it down?’”

If your client’s political obsessions are draining you and possibly affecting their financial judgment—and especially if their politics talk is escalating, Kitces asked Richards: “How do you tone them down in the moment?”

“We’re probably still going to get to the point where you have to fire the client,” Richards said. However, he added that there is diplomatic, defusing language that can be used with clients. “I think it's pretty simple to say, ‘Look, it sounds really important to you. Is this something that we can set aside to get the work done that we need to get done? Because if it is, that would be my preference.’ … That's how I would start.”

Another way to handle an opening salvo in a political debate is to say: “‘I'm not sure this impacts the decisions we're focused on today,’” Richards said.

Will The Client Back Off?
The next question after that is: Will the client back off the political conversation or won’t they? “I think that's an interesting litmus test,” Kitces said. It will tell advisors if a client is willing to focus on the financial planning meeting at hand or if the client still believes their political opinions are the center of the world and impact their planning.

Many clients will invariably back off. But what do advisors do if they find themselves drained by politically animated clients who can’t be refocused on the actual financial planning?

Kitces said bluntly, “It’s OK to let go of a client over this. You're not firing them for political reasons. You're firing them for your personal mental health reasons. It's OK to let go of a client for your personal mental health.”

Richards said it’s important to remember you’re not trying to change the client’s perspective, you just want to treat them as you would any other client you find difficult and draining to work with.  

“I think you could easily say, ‘Look, it sounds like those political views are so important to you and they affect your planning to a degree that you consider to be vital. And that's not something that's a good fit for me. … So, I would be doing you a disservice to keep you as a client with something this important that's not a good fit for me. So, can I help you find someone else? Or maybe you can ask some of your friends who share those political views for a planner that's a better fit. And listen, Mr. or Mrs. Client, I will pledge to you that I will do my absolute best to make that the smoothest transition possible ever so we can part friends. The next time I see you, I want high fives and hugs,’” Richards said.

Kitces said if he finds himself in the middle of a meeting and a client is fixated on politics, he might say, “‘Wow, we've been talking about this for an hour and a half. … It sounds like these political views are really important to you and they really affect your planning in a way that you consider vital, but I don't know that I can help you at this point. This kind of planning isn't a good fit for me. Why don't we work together to find a planner that will be a better fit?’”

But if you open the door for clients to separate the politics from the planning and they decline, you are probably past the saving point and will need to find the most gracious way possible to expedite the exit, by doing the right thing for the client and trying to find him or her another place to land that will be a good fit, Richards said.

Kitces recommends that advisors focus on unwinding the relationship as graciously and expeditiously as possible. Because their mental health is worth more than this, he added.