Life has been pretty comfortable and they are living the life of a dream, in terms of their home, their car, their lifestyle, their career and their family! Life is good so why should they need to change anything…. 

This is a couple who are high income earners. Husband is a doctor and wife is a senior director in a MNC in their 40s with 2 young children. They are comfortable with their income earning abilities and are competent in their work. Life has been pretty comfortable and they are living the life of a dream, in terms of their home, their car, their lifestyle, their career and their family! Life is good so why should they need to change anything! If you were looking at them from the outside, you wished you were in their shoes and time stood still. High income earners usually do not think that they have much money management issues to deal with because their income has been great. 

Since I work professionally with this target group of high income earners and doctors, I was personally referred to meet with them. As we started to ask them some life questions, I begin to delve deep into some unmet needs they actually are feeling that they are drowning out with.  

I asked them a question that is not the typical of a financial advisor, “What is it about the value of money that is most important to them?” The initial answers are the basic replies to provide for family and fund their lifestyle they have. Deeper into the conversation through appropriate questions, the real meaning behind why they were so concerned about having wealth is because the wife grew up in a background where the parents were constantly not around and she wanted to build the wealth quickly and head off to an early retirement and spend more time with the family. She also had the need to “Prove to her extended family and friends” that she was able to succeed in life due to her family upbringing. 

Halfway through the conversation, she eventually broke down and shared that she was hurting and struggling internally actually. She was torn between the fact that she was a successful working mum but that meant there was not much time left for the children. So she wished that she does not miss out the growing years of her child especially the important milestones but yet wanted to be assured of the future.  

We put things in perspective for them (showing them the financial planning projections by repositioning their existing resources with appropriate core evidence based investment strategies with us) and if she needed to take a more part time work role which meant a significant drop in her income. But she gets to achieve her goal of spending more time with the kids now till the time they turn late teenage years where they became more independent. And she still gets to keep some parts of the good lifestyles she is already having through proper planning and growing their wealth. They were still able to achieve all of their goals financially with confidence and reliability by starting to plan early. 

Having a thought provoking conversation like that can be challenging and maybe painful at times, but if taken with a good intention to improve your lives for the better, you can come out of it more inspired about your future. Our strength is to integrate the life conversations and goals, to connect them to the financial planning side of things so that you live your best life forward. 

So, what is it about the value of money that is important to you? Are you ready for the deeper conversation? Reach out and start to live your dream today!