Financial planning's fundamental premise is helping people address the astounding forces money generates. Sometimes money goes whacky for unpredictable or misunderstood reasons. When that happens, genuine risk tolerances must be reviewed coldly and pitilessly, and investors should always understand that the worst could happen. That's why we call it "risk."

Lesson VI: We have not fully grasped the depth and breadth of the financial planner's domain.
Authentic professions claim their domains and serve them. Financial planning has not done this. It has not claimed the entire domain of personal financial advice as its own; that is we have yet to accept the full range of issues that arise in our personal relationships with money. I suggest we have been scared of the implicit responsibilities of an authentic profession.

Last year's events suggest there is huge public call for fiduciary advisors to help individuals intelligently deal with these money forces and the demands money makes of us. Quality fiduciary advice would have helped a lot of folks understand the swamp before they ventured onto quicksand. Instead, we punted. Or we went back to "business as usual."

Honestly, we fell short. It all suggests we should not take ourselves, our work or its implications for granted. Remembering that the exam elements for the CFP test have remained unchanged since 1971, in October 2008's aftermath we must ask ourselves: What is the financial planner's job in "tough economic times"? Do our training and education prepare us to address the full range of these challenges? What are we missing?

What do we owe society? Are we buyers for our clients or sellers? Do we apologize for our vendors or do we hold them accountable? What are the legitimate expectations of a fiduciary advisor? What should we know and what shall we do with it? How should we work with clients? How could we prepare for the next time?

Lesson VII: "Economic man" is a figment of the economist's imagination.
People are not rational. This is no longer truly open for discussion. Folks who look other folks in the eye and talk about money-namely, financial planners-need to spend some time with economists to help them with their understanding of the human beast. See Lesson IV.

Lesson VIII: It is imperative that we develop a more accurate and wholesome understanding of money and its nature.
Our nation's social and physical infrastructure is framed by money. We learned last fall that if the money does not work as hoped, we may experience dangerous social and physical fallout. Indeed, this has hit both the public and the private sectors with a vengeance. As post-World War II thinking gives way to mathematically impossible entitlement programs, as almost everyone confuses "wealth" with "income" and as fewer folks can recall other times, this money stuff gets scary. Some among us must forthrightly address issues of reciprocity and exchange while hosting conversations about possibilities and implications.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that money will ever work as hoped. Stuff happens. Economies are not machines and our money contains the elements of our souls. We must learn to talk about money with new language outside the tired shibboleths of capitalist/communist/socialist dialectics.

Sadly, our cultural taboos came to haunt last fall. The consequences of uninformed manipulation in the worlds of credit, housing and real estate created seismic jolts to our economy. Thus, we should all be very scared about pensions, health care, elder care, education, physical infrastructure, resource allocation, the social aspects of work and so forth.

No society in humanity's history has ever been so dependent on intangibles. No human beings in history have been asked to anticipate such long lives while being so dependent on money and unearned income. These circumstances are new and they are unprecedented. October '08 gave us a whiff of coming attractions.