What Do Cleaning Closets and Financial Life Planning Have in Common?

Mitch Anthony

As financial life planners, our primary mission is to help our clients achieve the lives they want, and to help them figure out how to get there. We want to ensure our clients’ goals and life transitions are supported by strong fiscal resources. One of the ways we can help our clients achieve this is to help them get organized, so they know what to expect in both the short- and long-run. In other words, we need to help them clean out their life planning closets by helping them focus on what’s important and weeding out the rest.

As you help your clients take inventory of where they are, and where they want be, where can you provide the most value for your client? While the answer to this question will be as varied as the number of clients you have, typically you can provide the most value by helping clients through a change they might be going through, anticipate going through, or want to go through. You’ll need to hone your organizational skills to help clients anticipate or deal with changes in their lives.

There are financial implications that accompany most of our predictable life changes. The opportunity for you , the financial advisor , to reposition yourself as a financial life planner comes in making your clients aware of the specific financial implications of every potential life transition relative to their lives. This allows you to open up the discussion on life transitions and financial life planning. After all, as a financial planner, it is your job to acquaint your clients with the potential fiscal problems that life changes create. Approaching each life transition as a financial issue gives you the right to carry the discussion further and puts you in a position to provide your clients with some important non-financial information that they may find valuable. The following chart outlines some important life transitions that your client may be concerned about, and that you can use to help them organize where they are, and where they want to be:

Use this chart to help your clients get organized and focused on important transitions that they will most likely face down the road. Combine this with a list of their personal goals (begin an exercise program, buy a family vacation home, provide long-term care for a family member, increase charitable giving, etc.) and you’ll be on your way to fulfilling your role as a financial life planner.

Adapted from Your Clients for Life: The Definitive Guide to Becoming a Successful Financial Life Planner, Second Edition by Mitch Anthony. (©2006 by Mitch Anthony. Published by Kaplan Publishing.)

Mitch Anthony is the founder and president of Advisor Insights Inc. and The Financial Life Planning Institute, training companies serving advisors and the financial services industry. He is a contributing editor for Research magazine and his column “Financial Life Planning” appears in Financial Advisor magazine. Anthony has been named one of the financial service industry’s top “2006 Movers & Shakers” by Financial Planning magazine. His radio feature, The Daily Dose , is heard every day on 200 radio stations nationwide. Anthony is the author of several books for advisors, including StorySelling for Financial Advisors , The New Retirementality, Your Clients for Life , Selling with Emotional Intelligence , Making the Client Connection , The Financial Professional’s StoryBook, and Your Client’s Story. Contact him at mitch@mitchanthony.com