Mitch Anthony - Life Centered Financial Planning: How to Deliver Value That Will Never Be Undervalued

1. Chapter 6
2. Chapter 8
3. Chapter 10
4. Chapter 11
5. Chapter 12
6. Chapter 13
7. Chapter 14

Mitch Anthony

Paul Armson

Copyright 2021 by Mitch Anthony and Paul Armson. All rights reserved.

Published by JohnWiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Anthony, Mitch, author.

Title: Life-centered financial planning : how to deliver value that will never be undervalued / Mitch Anthony.

Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : JohnWiley & Sons, Inc., [2021] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020023649 (print) | LCCN 2020023650 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119709091 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119709114 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119709107 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Financial planners. | Financial services industry. | Finance, Personal.

Classification: LCC HG179.5 .A578 2021 (print) | LCC HG179.5 (ebook) | DDC 332.024dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023649

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023650

Cover Design: Wiley

Cover Image: Mountaineer's mountain Brad Jackson/Getty Images

To the memory of Dick Wagner, a true fiscal philosopher, who always challenged me to think from multitudinous perspectives about how money impacts all of us individually, as a society, and as a world. Your voice is missed.

Mitch Anthony

This is dedicated to the rebelsfinancial advisers with spiritthe ones who put their clients' lives first and money second; the ones with the courage and conviction to stand up and be counted. Your time has come!

Paul Armson

It's time to redefine what the chief asset under management really is. It's plain to see what gets the attention from the financial industry at largethe money.

Compensation is tied to the assets under management, and a company's values are tied to the numbers in aggregate. In the money-focused advisory world, lip service is given to building relationships, but the money is what matters most. Now is the time to turn that notion on its head.

The principles driving life-centered financial planning are:

• A: Aligning means with meaning
• U: Understanding what makes clients unique
• M: Monitoring all life changes and transitions

Yes, these principles do form the acronym AUM (Mitch does admit to being an acronymaniac). How many times have we overheard advisers telling stories prefaced with, I've got this $5 million client and wondered to ourselves what would that client think if he or she were standing here listening to that prefacing characterization of the relationship. It's difficult to see who clients are when our eyes are so pragmatically tuned to seeing what they have.

Every client has a story, and it is our responsibility to discover that story and build a financial plan around that story. We might say that the true sum of this business is made up of stories under management. Advisers are like the financial director in the movie of their clients' lives. Financial directors need to know where their clients want to go, the settings that the next scenes will play out in, who the supporting actors are, and ultimately, how they want this story to end. Money is tied to this story, whether it be the story of the past, the present, or the future.

In this book we're attempting to paint a portrait in three sections that characterizes:

• How the financial profession at large and the advisory value proposition individually are undergoing rapid metamorphosis;
• How you can make the shift to a life-centered financial planning approach; and
• What some of the dialogues of the future will look like.

The world has begun to get a taste for a transcendent form of financial planning that merges what matters most with the assets being managed. It's about discovering the intention and purpose of the person and applying the assets at hand to those intentions. Life planning, financial life planning, lifestyle planning, and life-centered financial planning are all descriptors being used to identify a planning process that is anchored to purpose and not just the purse.

We're living in a day when the world of financial services is either embracing this truth or scrambling to understand it because their preexisting value propositions have proven hollow and are no longer valued as they once were. Being a successful practitioner of life-centered financial planning hinges on nothing less than showing up as the best person one can possibly be and showing up for nothing more than a desire to serve a client's best interests. This new approach requires a new skill setand a new dialogue. The conversations are not tied to transactions but instead to transformationto the adviser/client relationship, as well as the profession at large.