Are you embarrassed to talk to a planner?
“I'm embarrassed to meet with a financial planner.” Does this sound familiar to you at all?
We've all been in a situation in life where we've avoided something because we were embarrassed or maybe had anxiety around that issue. It is no different when it comes to money. It's a complex topic.
Financially the list of reasons could be, “I have too much credit card debt, or I wish I had more money in savings before I can meet with a planner or I spend too much money and I need to get that under control before I come in for a meeting or maybe it's that you're just financially ignorant and when it comes to this stuff, nobody taught me about money.”
Other things we hear is that “I'm concerned that my income or my net worth is not the same as the other school parents or that my peer group and my buddies are making more money than me. And so I don't want to really deal with this topic.” Or it could be the total opposite is that you've had a financial windfall or a ton of success or maybe you're just a great saver and you've got too much money in the bank and that makes you nervous or embarrassed because you're afraid other people might know that at all of a sudden.
The list goes on from there. And speaking, honestly, I've been doing this job for almost 20 years. You don't have anything to be embarrassed about. This is a normal human psychological behavior, and everybody feels this way.
No one lives a perfect financial life and nobody expects you or me to do the same. We've all got financial skeletons and bad decisions in our financial closets. And, and that's okay. Financial planning is not something that is readily taught in school by most people. So a lot of the stuff we've got to figure out on our own or work with professionals or coaches to kind of get us there. And the reason we're embarrassed is it's those guilts about those past financial decisions.
This is the prime reason that people avoid meeting with planners and it's natural to avoid something that we're embarrassed by or possibly ashamed of. This is totally why we procrastinate in life for anything, not just meeting with a financial planner.
Our brains are totally hard-wired to deploy different avoidance, maneuvers, or mechanisms to not deal with things. And this works awesome in the short term, right? Is if “I ignore it, ignore it, ignore it” it will temporarily reduce my anxiety, but we know that the problem is still out there.
So whether it's that you want to pay off that credit card debt before you meet with a financial planner, or you want to have $10,000 in the bank or a hundred thousand dollars in the bank before you set up a meeting, that's not going to go away.
We know the one thing that we know is that we may see a temporary increase in our anxiety when we do schedule that meeting, but is whenever our clients are done meeting with us, even if it's that initial phone call they leave excited and relieved, and they're ready to move forward with this process.
So you've got nothing to be embarrassed about when it comes to money or anything else. We've probably seen a lot of worse situations. You're probably not the worst. Everybody thinks they are and they never are. Remember this: Financial planners are professionals. We're here to help you.
So your situation is going to be unique, and we're going to come up with a unique plan for you. Working with us at Beyond Wealth, we can pretty much figure out the right strategy for you, not just in the short term to maybe relieve anxiety, but also to hit those long term goals that we're looking to do.
If you're feeling embarrassed about something in your financial life, please feel free to reach out. That's what professionals are here to do to, help you out!
Andrew Comstock