This week I was honored to speak to the Financial Behavior in Retirement Summit in Chicago on Monday. Pamela Black, of Financial Planning News, was there and covered my remarks. She quotes me as saying, “We need more skills than what we learned in CFP courses. We are number crunchers, not therapists. So we lack information about how humans change.”
I went on to tell the attendees that financial planners and advisors need to proceed with caution as they work with clients. For example, instead of reacting when a client resists change, planners might want to back up and explore the resistance rather than shaming or insisting on something.
Of course, the solution I use is to partner with a counselor. After all, money is associated with psychological and emotional issues, but planners are not trained to manage those issues. To read her entire article on my remarks, click here.