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We Need Better Words ...

January 1, 2010 • Page 5 of 5

Financial planners are looking at questions and issues that occupy huge portions of our lives. With the right words, we can look more thoroughly at those places where our lives touch money and where money requires responses and decisions. We could start to understand the nuances that would enable meaningful conversations. What does an individual need from money? What must individuals do to survive and thrive given the demands money makes on them? How can we more effectively address money pathologies?

Our words need to address the relationships between money and the other important aspects of our lives: Marriage. Children. Health. Jobs. Family. Education. Relationships with others. Relationships with the divine. Notions of what makes life worth living.
"In the beginning was the Word ..."
Indeed.

Richard B. Wagner, JD, CFP, is the principal of WorthLiving LLC, based in Denver. He is the 2003 recipient of the Financial Planning Association's P. Kemp Fain Jr. Award, which recognizes a member who has made outstanding contributions to the profession.

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14 years ago

Four "Better Words"

I have taken direction from this article since I came across it about 2 months ago. I have been peeling layers off of the onion and have even tried to define one of the "better words" on Wikipedia. Needless to say the slicers and dicers buried it. However we have honed in on 4 words/phrases that seem to define the core of the human relationship with money. They are Financial Literacy, Financial Psychology, Financial Coaching and Financial Therapy. The only one that is defined is Financial Literacy and that is because the OECD and 7 of the largest economies in the world have chosen to hang their programs for educating the masses on this particular word. The key is that to understand the psychology you need to follow the money. Inversely to understand the money you need to follow the psychology. Over 100 years ago Sigmund Freud identified this relationship as one of the most basic human relationships and also the most neglected by analysts. It has barely progressed since then.
14 years ago

Better words

Dick, you've done it again! You remind me of why I love this profession and the people in it. You've challenged me (and all of us) relentlessly to recognize how large our impact can be, should be and should have been. There is no escaping the nexus we find ourselves in on a daily basis and yes it is absolutely about words. I learned many years ago as I was acquiring the tools and knowledge my academic peers would use in the pulpit and in other missionary fields that culture - all culture arises from words and that culture therefore evolves, or more typically devolves in direct correlation to the language we use to transmit it among ourselves contemporaneously and to the next generation. It is very curious perhaps even unique that financial planning is a profession whose very quest is to birth a language and we keep attempting to do that. I am continually amazed at how much meaning is missed in our discussions because so much meaning is simply taken for granted. Your article is another splendid challenge to us all - let's start with an admission that the notion of one human being possessing a thought or concept and being able through some variety of gestures, scribbles and grunts manages to get that thought, idea or concept semi intact to become the shared possession of another human being to be a miracle in itself and that to accomplish such a thing is never to be taken lightly - all the more so to the extent that the subject matter has meaning across a wide span of one human life and more so again to humanity itself. Thanks, Dick!