Financial Coaching, Content Creation, and Other Services
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See, feel, and use the money in your life in a more beautiful way.
There’s a high chance that if you’re reading this, you’re one of the wealthiest people that’s ever lived. There’s also a high chance that you believe the one thing that would best enable you to live a more flowing, flourishing, fulfilling life is a bit more money.
That may be true! However, there’s enough evidence that it probably isn’t (not even for your special set of circumstances) to at least explore what else could be going on.
If more money, or better money information, knowledge, or even understanding, were really what was needed to make more of life, the multi-millionaire clients in whose heads I worked for a decade would have at least hinted at this.
Reader, they did not.
What’s far more commonly lacking than ‘enough’ money, is the ability to live more wisely with it.
I can help people with this.
If you’re interested, email me.
Want some more to think about before you do? Read on…
The most important money puzzles
When people think of money puzzles, or money problems, it’s usually ‘how can I make more?’, ‘how do I invest?’, ‘what should I buy?’
Yet those that have most obviously ‘solved’ these puzzles – the ones making the most, investing most confidently, and whose lives are one big walking ‘how to spend it’ advert – aren’t commonly living any better for it.
This highlights some rather more important puzzles to ponder:
Why do we struggle to make more out of our money? How did we end up making more and more money while making less and less out of it?
How is it possible to ‘have everything’ and still feel like something important is ‘missing’?
Why do those in ‘go go go’ mode still so often feel stuck?
Why do we believe that achieving the same result with fewer resources is better, except when it comes to the only result that ultimately matters: living a good life? Why do people brag about spending 10,000 a month to live as happily as someone spending 1,000?
Why do we want money so we ‘don’t have to think about money’, as if we make better decisions when we do so without thinking about them?
Why do we sacrifice our best time and energy in jobs we don’t enjoy, to earn money to then waste in ways driven by our perceptions of other people’s perceptions of us – people we don’t even care about, and probably don’t even know?
Why do we – almost constantly – use money in ways that don’t make our life any reliably, consistently, or sustainably better – that contribute little if anything to living in a more flowing, flourishing, fulfilling way?
Why do we commonly use the word ‘treat’ to describe something that leaves us poorer and in worse health?
Why do we distinguish between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ as if we didn’t ‘want’ a roof over our heads, or ‘need’ shared experiences with friends?
Why, having heard that it’s better to buy experiences than stuff, do we then buy experiences in a way that turns them into material goods, e.g. watching a gig through a phone, or going on holiday in search of the perfect Facebook profile picture?
For all the curated Instagram stories, no one would be happy to have their credit-card statements made public. Why?
Why do we act as if quality of life were measured with quantity of consumption?
‘No hell is worse than that in which one lives without knowing it’ as Alan Watts once wrote. To dedicate your life, to sacrifice so much in the way of physical, mental, spiritual, and relational health to solving the wrong puzzles – and to not ever see that they are the wrong puzzles – is far more troubling than having blown a bit of cash on some ultimately meaningless junk.
Understanding why, and doing something about it, should be a far greater focus for everyone.
Fortunately, when you listen to the seekers of timeless wisdom, rather than the seekers of a quick sale, the answers to these puzzles are, rather than being characterised by a money-induced blindness, actually blindingly obvious. And doing something about them can be almost annoyingly easy!
Want to know more? Email me.
What can I help you with?
I do not give formal investment advice anymore. I help with what I believe is far more valuable. If you need formal investment advice having come to understand when it is, and isn’t valuable, I can help you with that too.
What you most need help with, either as a one-off, or something regular, is likely to include one or more of the following:
Financial philosophy – Without a decent financial philosophy, you’re making everything pointlessly difficult and dooming how well you can live with money.
Financial psychology – Behavioural-finance environment control – the tips, tricks, and tactics to tilt yourself away from dumb financial decisions – are more limited in ultimate usefulness than addressing your philosophy, but are many people’s best starting point.
Investment basics – The different ways to hold investments based on their tax treatment (including pensions), the investment options likely to be relevant for you (not that big a list!), realistic returns expectations, the role of insurance, and so on.
Planning basics – How to view what you already earn and own, and are likely to earn and own in future. The questions you should be asking yourself (which are probably different from those you think they are).
One Hour Money Management – You should be able to manage your money (examining your expenditure, keeping on top of your investments, etc.) in an hour a year.
Financial education for young adults – Growing up rich can vastly improve a young person’s life. It can also ruin it. It pays to pay attention to the lessons learned in the financially formative years between about 15 and 25.
Finding an adviser that isn’t a crook or an idiot – Good financial advice can easily be the most valuable service you ever hire. Sadly, most advice is a rip-off. If you aren’t super clear on what you’re looking for before you go looking for it, you’ll get stung (and in the worst-possible way: you won’t even notice).
Tailored reading and guided reflection – Rather than chat through your personal puzzles, you may prefer to be pointed towards the best parts of the best books for helping you ponder the most valuable topics on your own time, with occasional prompts to check you’re getting the most out of doing so.
Services for advisers
Client meetings – Financial advisers are in a uniquely brilliant position to help people see what works and what doesn’t when it comes to turning money into living well. But most are simply not trained in how to do this. From a deep understanding of what a financial philosophy is, and why it outranks products, plans, planning processes, and even psychological understanding and ‘discover your purpose’ exercises, to improving client meetings with basic body-language and spoken-language awareness, I can help.
Content creation – As well as the philosophically inclined writing on this site, for many years I’ve also ghost-written more traditional content for advisers and providers, from blogs to ultimate guides to technical topics, chiefly about behavioural finance and compliance.
Behavioural reviews – Concerned that the messages sent by your website, and other remote forms of client communication aren’t the ones your clients are receiving? I can help.
Introductions – I also often get asked for good advisers to send people to. I’d love to know more of them!
What does this cost?
It depends!
To a certain extent, you can pay what you want.
I’ve worked for free, and for hundreds of pounds an hour.
A fair range is probably £75-£175 per hour, depending on both your circumstances and how much value we’re able to create together. Sometimes it makes most sense to price a project based on a set outcome, rather than an hourly input. In some cases, it makes most sense for you to decide what you’d like to pay after the work is done.
Want to explore further? Email me.