Life planning: a more personal approach to finance.

• Author: Astrinos, Mark
• Position: Art heart science

Many CPA financial planners can set themselves apart in this profession by combining two skills: working with numbers and helping people. The typical client engagement is all too familiar: A client approaches you with his or her issue, such as a down payment for a vacation home. Being the financial doctor you are, you collect details of the client's financial life: assets, liabilities and cash flows, then spend hours crafting the perfect plan with various scenarios and articulate the results to the client.

You and the client both have a sense of accomplishment because you quantified a tangible goal and your spreadsheet supports it. But what if your plan is missing something? What if you set your client down the wrong path? Or perhaps even more common: What if the client never followed through with the plan you created?

Traditionally, financial planners have focused on the quantitative side of the equation--such as taxes, investments, insurance and estate planning--while underestimating the impact of the qualitative side. Some financial planners have a discovery process to learn about their clients' goals and values, but without a certain qualitative finesse, these inquiries elicit vague, boilerplate responses.

While the quantitative projections are incredibly important to the success of any financial plan, the qualitative side may be even more critical to transforming success on paper into reality. Advisers must have a deep understanding of their clients' life goals, personal values, fears and approach to money. Leading the way is a new breed of life-centered, financial professionals who are helping clients realize purposeful lives using money as the tool.

What Is Financial Life Planning?

Life planning starts with a basic premise: An adviser should first discover the client's goals and aspirations before developing financial recommendations. Seems simple enough, right? The DOL fiduciary rule is leading the industry in this direction. However, life planning is further rooted in the belief that every person strives to live a meaningful and purposeful life.

As such, life planning focuses on the human side of financial planning to discover a client's deepest and most profound goals through a process of structured and non-judgmental inquiry. Using a mix of professional and advanced relationship skills, life planning inspires clients to pursue their aspirations, resolve obstacles through discussion, create a concrete financial plan and provide...