I knew enough to be dangerous as they say and I knew that was a problem but instead of accepting help, I had to fight through feeling distrustful. He softened. I softened. If he hadn’t, I probably would have declined to use him despite his competence and looked for someone else.

The sprinkler guy assumed I knew nothing, but I think the mistake planners make more often with people that know a little about finance is they assume the client knows more than they do. There are many people that have been participating in their 401(k) plans for years but do not know what a mutual fund actually is.

The most difficult client education process for me is working with people that have much knowledge about financial matters but are simply wrong about a lot of issues. They don’t know what they don’t know or what they know just ain’t so.

“Unlearning” something can be tough. People often have to overcome varying levels of disbelief, confirmation biases and their own egos. Finding out you are wrong can shake one’s confidence.

In some cases, it isn’t a case of them knowing enough to be dangerous, it is that they are dangerous to themselves or their families. I see this a lot with taxes. A prospective client knew that an exemption exists for Required Minimum Distributions for 401(k)s but didn’t know that it only applied to active 401(k)s. He had an old account at a former employer and missed that RMD.

I had to straighten him out. Being the bearer of bad news is not fun but sometimes that is the role we have to take to help the client.

Jargon can be an impediment but the bigger issue is that when we have trouble helping clients it is often because we aren’t meeting them where they are on knowledge scale.

Some clients can handle jargon and assuming they cannot may offend them if the dumbing down persists. Others can’t handle any and need more basic education while other still are somewhere in between.

I will also note that there are some that say we shouldn’t educate clients at all. Doing so undermines our expertise and the value we bring. To some extent this is correct. If you are forcing education on clients, you are not delivering something of value.

I’ve found most clients need at least some level of education to boost their confidence in their decisions. Yes they can choose to do as I did with the electrician and just trust, but I chose to trust because he earned the trust by his effort to get me to understand—even though that effort failed.