Whenever I start off a conversation with someone, the person always goes straight into asking me about financial products and what I think of the market.

I was in the midst of one such conversation recently and I stopped the person in his tracks. And I asked him what he was it that makes him happy. You see, most people think that accumulating the next million will make that person happy. However, studies have also shown that once a person earns more than a certain level of comfortable income of about $80,000 a year, the incremental increase of income does not equate to the same amount of increased happiness in a person’s life.

Money is just a tool to be used to create happiness. In fact, through the work we do, I realized that once a person knows what it is that drives a person or keeps a person happy in a non financial aspect of it, then the planning around the money management becomes more meaningful.

Just to give an example, I was having a chat with this person who was referred to me and kept asking me about what is the product that he can purchase and the strategy, the returns and all the very technical things. I responded by asking him, “Before I talk about all of the above, may I know what is it about the value of money that is most important to you?” He stopped to think for quite a while before he could speak. He opened up shared. When he was growing up, he grew up with very little financial ability in his life and his parents probably did not know better either. He studied hard in school, but because his family could barely make ends meet, he had to give up the chance of education for himself to start working early. He felt lousy that he had to go through this in his life so young and so he made it a point that he was going to make a lot of money financially so that he and his family will never go through what he experienced again. And that is why he invested aggressively and also lost quite a fair amount of money in stocks (which is not uncommon). At some point of the conversation, there was even a slight welling of tears in his eyes. But he also knows that his current way of planning is also not able to get him to his goals, which is why he was trying to find another advisor other than the person he met at the bank who was only focused on the product offered.

Unknowningly, that was an uncovering of a human’s deepest desire to understand why a person does what he does. Allowing him to share also brings in healing and forgiveness to a certain sense and he was really trying to ensure that he and his family will never have to run out of money or worry about not having enough.

When we are able to identify what drives him and why with a sense of purpose, it makes the planning so much more meaningful to both himself and myself. So when we structured a financial plan for him and journey alongside with him to keep him on track, he knows that he and his loved ones will not fall into such a familiar situation again.

Happiness means different things to different people so what we do is try to uncover, understand his background, family and see if we are able to ensure he will still be happy and financially taken care of.

Would you like to be able to plan your life with meaning and purpose with a sense of happiness for yourself? Let us have an initial chat to see if there is a fit and the first consultation is at my expense.